Family

Dinner Is Served. If You’re Home

After our hockey boy numbers dropped to an abysmal one, Judy and I had to examine ourselves and decide how we felt about the situation. Emotionally, we enjoy having a few boys around. They keep life interesting and prevent me from getting bored, which is important because Judy’s work has rendered her incapable of sustaining some of the conversations I would otherwise inflict on her. More boys also give us more motivation to cook. There are practical benefits to having a few extra people around, even if they do occasionally consume food at a rate that suggests they are preparing for hibernation.

The biggest challenge is knowing how much food to make. We have developed a protocol for the hockey boy who treats our house as a convenient place to sleep and do laundry while maintaining an active social life elsewhere. We will cook for you when there is a reasonable expectation that you will be home for dinner. A morning conversation in which you announce your dinner plans carries very little weight. The only reliable confirmation is your return home by 4:00 p.m., preferably accompanied by a declaration that you are taking a nap. At that point, we can reasonably conclude that dinner might actually happen at our house.

We appreciate that the boys have social lives and are exercising their social skills on a regular basis. However, their social outings do not cause the extra food we prepared to disappear when they check in just before bedtime. So, if their feelings get hurt because we’re feeding them something prepared in the microwave or air fryer, they might want to consider giving their words a little more value. When “I’ll be home for dinner” no longer requires an implied “unless something better comes along,” we’ll know we can cook for them without filling the refrigerator with containers of food that eventually become part of a science experiment. We are adapting.

The Grandkids Have Opinions, Too

The hockey dinner challenge is complicated by our efforts to cook a couple of meals each week for our daughter’s family. We want to give them some variety while providing Ellie with food a toddler can successfully feed herself. Soup isn’t a great choice unless the objective is to see how much of it can end up everywhere except inside the child. Pasta can work, and corn will always get her vote. We also get some pleasant surprises. Who would have guessed that Ellie would enjoy dipping her meatloaf bites in barbecue sauce? We may have a future food critic on our hands, although her current reviewing process seems to involve eating something and then demanding more of it.

Between the hockey boys and the grandkids, we’re doing our best to keep everyone fed. The difference is that Ellie hasn’t yet developed the ability to tell us she’ll be home for dinner and then disappear for six hours. We’ll see how long that lasts.

We Don’t Do Drama

Whether we have one boy or three, our rule about drama remains the same: we don’t do it. That doesn’t mean drama never tries to find us. Hormones spike, relationships get complicated, and people occasionally experience crises that seem to require the participation of everyone within driving distance. We simply don’t invite it into our home.

After seven years of billet parenting, we’ve heard enough stories to know that some houses experience considerably more turbulence than others. I can’t speak to every rumor or confirm every story, but I can listen when our billet son describes things happening in other homes and wonder how adults manage to make a young hockey player’s life more complicated than it needs to be.

A recent golf outing sponsored by the team provided another example. Words were exchanged, or people were accused of saying things, and the resulting complaints found their way to the coaching staff. The coach was expected to have conversations with players accused of disrespecting others, and his list of potential troublemakers began to grow. I don’t know all the details, but alcohol may have contributed to the situation. Give people a little alcohol, lower their inhibitions, and sometimes the event ends with a few more people convinced they’ve been wronged than when it started.

The boys are left to navigate the fallout. They have hockey to play, relationships to manage, and coaches to keep happy. The last thing they need is to wonder whether the adults responsible for their housing have the emotional maturity of the teenagers living under their roofs.

When the Billet Home Becomes the Problem

Our current billet came to us from one of those more challenging households. There still seems to be some lingering resentment surrounding his departure, and we’re hearing stories about disagreements involving the player, other billets, and the coaching staff. Whatever the full story, the situation has become another complication in a season that already has plenty.

Our billet coordinator has had her own challenges this year and seems reluctant to approve additional moves between billet homes. As long as a house isn’t considered dangerous, the boys’ requests to move may not get much traction. I understand that coordinating a hockey team and its billets isn’t an easy job, but I also think there’s a difference between a boy being unhappy because he doesn’t like the house rules and a player who continues to deal with unnecessary stress from the adults responsible for him.

This isn’t a billet mom deciding she’s had enough because a kid stepped over the line. We’re talking about a starting player whose life, for eight months, should be relatively straightforward: sleep, eat, practice, play hockey, and repeat. With some minor variations, that is the job. He shouldn’t also have to worry about an adult repeatedly demanding to know his exact location or trying to pressure a coach into reprimanding players over perceived slights.

These boys are young, and they still have growing up to do. That doesn’t mean the adults around them should be adding obstacles to that journey.

Natural Consequences Are Still a Thing

As a billet parent, I’m supposed to enforce a curfew. That requirement has always struck me as a little funny because I grew up without one. If my dad wanted to cut wood on a Saturday morning, I needed to be awake and ready to help. He wasn’t going to accept an explanation that my alarm hadn’t gone off or that I hadn’t realized what time it was. The wood still needed cutting.

I take a similar approach with our hockey boys. If they want to play for this team, they need to learn to manage the basic responsibilities of life. Set an alarm. Get yourself to practice. Know when you’re supposed to be somewhere. If you oversleep or miss something important, the coach is likely to be unhappy. That consequence might do more to teach you about responsibility than a billet parent delivering a lecture on time management.

If I were coaching a player who repeatedly couldn’t manage his schedule, I’d expect him to improve. If he couldn’t, we’d need to figure out what was going wrong. Moving him into a special-supervision billet home might solve the immediate problem, but it could also postpone the day when he learns to manage his own life. They won’t always have someone standing outside their bedroom door making sure they can tell time.

We’re happy to help the boys succeed, but we aren’t interested in enabling someone who refuses to learn the basics. There’s a difference between providing a stable home and becoming a full-service life-management department.

A Few Requirements for the Next Boy

If we’re going to add another hockey boy, we’d like someone who appreciates the advantages of living with us. We have a few expectations, none of which should require an advanced degree in human behavior. We’d like him to turn the thermostat back up after cranking it down at night to create a Minnesota chill-vibe in his bedroom. We’d like him to show up for dinner more often than he doesn’t. And if the grandkids are around, we’d appreciate a little willingness to play with them.

We’re not asking for much beyond that. Help clear the table. Refill your water and Gatorade in the refrigerator. Be reasonably pleasant company. If you can accomplish those things while managing to attend hockey practices on time, you may be exactly the kind of young man we’re looking for.

Of course, we have an opportunity to screen potential candidates at our Friday pregame breakfast. Some of the boys are perfectly happy, which is always encouraging. With only one player living with us, we’ve continued the breakfasts, and we had nine attendees last week, with a tenth being a realistic possibility. The more boys we house, the more are likely to attend. That also spreads my labor across more hungry hockey players instead of requiring me to produce roughly the same breakfast operation for a single houseguest.

There are advantages to having more than one boy, particularly when injuries and trades are part of the equation. I would hate to give up the breakfasts if something happened to our current player. Having at least one more boy around would give us a little insurance against the inevitable changes that come with junior hockey.

Last night, I told our player, “We’ll work on getting you a buddy.”

I think that would be good for him. He could spend more time with someone his own age without having to drive all over the place to find company, and he wouldn’t have to spend every evening hanging around with the old people. We do our best to be entertaining, but there’s only so much wisdom and questionable humor a young man should have to endure after a full day of hockey.

If the drama continues, we’ll deal with whatever comes our way. Patience will be important. Pushing the billet coordinator too hard could move us to the bottom of the list, and we don’t need to make a difficult job harder for her. Over time, the more stable homes will establish their reputations. We don’t need to toot our own horn. The breakfasts, the experience we’ve accumulated, and the way we treat the boys should speak for themselves.

Keeping the Bigger Picture in View

It’s been a tough year, but we’re hanging in there. Judy has stuck to her commitment to make the pancakes and eggs, and I’ve handled the meats. We continue to open our home, feed the boys, and try to make their time here a positive experience. If we focused exclusively on the frustrations of the moment, we’d have to conclude that this hasn’t been a particularly rewarding season.

Fortunately, we’re capable of occasionally stepping back far enough to see the bigger picture. Not every valuable thing we do in life feels valuable every moment of every day. And not every life we influence comes in groups of two or more. Sometimes the difference you make for one person is enough to justify the effort, even when that person is currently eating your food, monopolizing your refrigerator, and trying to turn his bedroom into a walk-in freezer.

We billet because we believe we can provide some stability during a period of life that can be difficult for young men. They leave home, pursue a demanding sport, and try to figure out who they are while living with people they barely know. We have an opportunity to make that transition a little easier. We can provide a comfortable home, some decent meals, reasonable expectations, and adults who don’t need to make everything about themselves.

We didn’t sign up because it’s easy, and we certainly didn’t do it because we needed someone else’s problems to work through. We are on a mission as long as this mission wants us here.

As long as that mission still wants us here, we’ll keep making pancakes, cooking meat, and trying to find another boy who understands the value of a good home. If the burden eventually becomes too much, we’ll look for another place where we can make a difference and feel that our efforts are appreciated.

For now, we have one hockey boy, nine breakfast guests, a refrigerator full of food, and the possibility of adding another player to the household. That’s enough to keep things interesting.

And if our next billet boy can tell us by four o’clock whether he’s coming home for dinner, we’ll consider that a promising start.

If You’d Be in Walmart, I’d Marry You

“You are smarter than me. You are more beautiful. You speak better. Your voice is more beautiful.”

This was Fabiano’s assessment of me during one of our weekly Zoom calls. I was beginning to wonder what he wanted from me. Then he answered that question.

“If you’d be in Walmart, I’d marry you.”

I explained that I was already spoken for, but thanked him for the offer. A guy doesn’t get that kind of attention every day, particularly from a guy who lives in Brazil.

For the record, I pointed out that I was probably cooler than he was, too. My air conditioning was on.

Fabiano is working on his doctorate at a Brazilian university. I am a retired-ish American with a blog, a landscaping habit, and a remarkable ability to wander off topic. Somewhere along the way, we became friends. I suppose there are stranger things in the world, but this ranks pretty high on the list of things I didn’t see coming.

How This Started

I began volunteering with an organization called Let’s Start Talking before COVID. The organization uses English as a Second Language as a way to share the gospel with people who might not otherwise have much interest in it. I read with people from Vietnam, Ecuador, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other places. The format was straightforward: talk about our lives, read something, work through vocabulary, answer questions, and discuss the ideas. The trick was getting people comfortable enough to keep coming back.

When COVID arrived, my in-person reading arrangements went away, and I shifted to online conversations. I now meet with three readers. I’ve been talking with Fabiano for close to three years, although I would not bet money on the exact anniversary. We have bigger problems to solve, such as why English needs so many words that mean almost the same thing.

Fabiano already spoke English fairly well when we started. He is also harder on himself than he needs to be. I regularly remind him that his English is much better than my Portuguese. This is not a particularly high bar, but I mean it as encouragement.

Our calls are supposed to last an hour. For the first forty minutes or so, we generally talk about whatever has happened in our lives. Eventually, I try to steer us toward the lesson. That is the plan, anyway. Plans are useful things, provided you don’t get too attached to them.

Fabiano sometimes forgets it’s our meeting day. I give him ten minutes before sending a WhatsApp message to see if he’s still alive. Other weeks, we have no trouble filling the hour. He has plenty of opinions and curiosity, along with enough confidence to tell me things that probably wouldn’t occur to a more cautious person.

For example, he has joined our calls without a shirt more than once. He knows to put one on when I point out the situation. I appreciate his casual approach to life, but I have no particular interest in conducting an English lesson while staring at a hairy chest.

English Is a Strange Language

Once we get around to the lesson, we read a short passage, discuss its meaning, and work through any words or expressions that give him trouble. Sometimes we can figure out a word from context. Other times, we consult a dictionary or find an online pronunciation. Occasionally, a word refuses to cooperate, and we have to give it more attention than either of us thinks it deserves.

Recently, we spent time on the difference between “seek” and “look for.” Another week, we talked about “maybe” and “perhaps.” You might think those are simple distinctions, but try explaining why two words that seem interchangeable aren’t always used in the same way. English speakers absorb a lifetime of these little rules without realizing how odd they can sound to someone learning the language.

I get to rediscover my own language while trying to explain it. This is educational for both of us, although I’m not sure the original lesson always gets the attention it deserves.

One of my favorite examples was the word “hangry,” a combination of hungry and angry. I used it spontaneously near the end of one lesson, when it was also getting close to Fabiano’s lunchtime. He loved the word and immediately understood the concept. He left the call promising me he wouldn’t be hangry much longer.

Then there was the discussion about his academic paper being “camera ready.” Fabiano was proud that his paper had reached that stage. I understood what he meant, but I didn’t immediately recognize the expression as academic terminology. To me, camera-ready sounded like something you would say about a person who had finally combed his hair before a photograph.

Fabiano had to explain the usage to me. This was a refreshing change from our usual arrangement, in which I get to explain English to him. I am not in academia, and I don’t pretend to understand all its terminology. I was happy to let him have that one.

Of course, the conversation eventually returned to my superior intelligence and beauty. I try to remain humble about these things.

We Don’t Always Stay on Topic

The truth is that Fabiano and I don’t have many conversations that follow a predictable path. We talk about his studies, his life, my family, my landscaping projects, and the hockey players who live with us during the season. He asks about my granddaughter Ellie and likes to see her on camera when she’s around. I ask about his life in Brazil, his interests, and whatever he has been doing since our last call.

He has told me about Brazilian beaches, including the unpleasant experience of visiting one when the weather is cold and rainy. We’ve discussed religion, missionaries, books, music, and the dirty sodas that have become popular around here. I have explained some of the oddities of American culture, and he has helped me understand parts of Brazilian life that I would otherwise know only through travel stories or the internet.

There are weeks when I have to carry most of the conversation because he’s tired. Other weeks, I have trouble getting us back to the lesson. Neither of us is a particularly good actor, so there’s no point pretending a conversation is fascinating when it isn’t. We show up as ourselves and work with whatever we have that day.

I sometimes dread these calls before they begin. I look at the clock and think, “What am I doing? What am I going to talk about for an hour?” Then we connect, get past the first few minutes, and usually find our rhythm. If I find myself looking at the clock too much, I often think I could have prepared a little better. On the days we run over, I know I did just fine.

I don’t know whether Fabiano would say he gets as much out of these conversations as I do. He has told me he would be happy to meet twice a week, but I haven’t figured out how to add another hour to my schedule without inconveniencing the rest of my life. We make adjustments when babies, academic demands, or other obligations get in the way. Otherwise, we keep showing up.

That’s how a friendship can sneak up on you. You start out with a purpose and a schedule, and then the person on the other end of the screen becomes someone you genuinely want to hear from.

So Why Do We Keep Doing This?

I didn’t go into online English reading expecting to become friends with people scattered across the planet, but it has happened with several of my readers. One of them, a young man from Poland, has become almost like a grandson to me. Fabiano and I took a little longer to find our groove. During the time we’ve known each other, he finished his master’s degree, began his doctorate, and moved through some significant changes in his personal life. As he became more comfortable with himself, our conversations became easier and more relaxed.

I like hearing about his life, and I hope he likes hearing about mine. He gets to practice English with someone who will slow down, explain a word, or ask whether I’ve understood what he meant. I get a window into a life and a culture I wouldn’t otherwise know nearly as well. We don’t have to share all the same interests to enjoy each other’s company.

One thing I’ve learned is that people like to feel needed and appreciated for who they are. That sounds simple enough, but it’s easy to forget when we’re busy with our own routines. I may not be able to help Fabiano with his doctoral research, and he probably isn’t going to ask me to coach his favorite sport. But we can give each other an hour of attention every week. We can ask questions, share stories, laugh at each other, and occasionally learn something useful.

Near the end of one recent call, Fabiano said he didn’t know why he liked me. I suggested that it was a character flaw. He assured me he wasn’t teasing me that time. I reminded him that he keeps showing up every week, which seems like fairly compelling evidence.

My social circle in Oklahoma isn’t enormous. Add the people I talk with online, though, and I cast a pretty wide shadow over this planet. I like the idea that a few conversations can make somebody’s week a little better, even if all I’ve contributed is a vocabulary word or a questionable explanation of American culture.

And if all else fails, I can tell Fabiano I’m drinking a dirty soda while he works on his doctorate. I may have the air conditioning, but he’s the one working toward a doctorate. I’m not sure which of us has life figured out.

Grandpa’s Job Description Is Still Under Review

Two days in a row, I got to help my daughter with a different assortment of kids. Both adventures were worthwhile, although one definitely fell more in the grandma column.

On Wednesday, with very little notice, Abby let Judy and me know that the twins’ echocardiogram appointment was in just over an hour. Could one of us go with her? I’m pretty sure this was the first I’d heard of the appointment, but my schedule was more flexible than Judy’s. Rather than have me drive to her house and leave from there, Abby swung by to pick me up.

As we drove, Abby caught me up on her week. With her mother-in-law in town, we hadn’t seen as much of her or the kids. Their house isn’t that big, and we wanted to make sure the other grandma, who lives out of town, had plenty of time with her son and family. Living with an in-law can be challenging in unexpected ways. Abby may have shared a couple of examples, but I’ve forgotten the details. Since I’m also somebody’s in-law, I’ll stick with the unofficial motto: “Smile, nod, and pretend we didn’t hear that.”

The underground parking garage threatened to delay us further. Drivers waiting for a space could block the entire flow of traffic until they gave up or attempted to squeeze into a spot clearly designed for a smaller vehicle. After watching three or four of these negotiations, we finally got lucky. A truck pulled out of a space that required no complicated maneuvering, but a couple of cars coming the other way seemed to think they had dibs. We’d traveled all the way to the end of the garage and back, and I wasn’t about to let somebody who hadn’t earned the spot take it from us. After briefly considering a career in parking enforcement, I removed my male-Karen hat and returned to Grandpa mode.

Once we found the right office and entertained the waiting-room crowd with a few peeks at the twins, we got down to business. Incredibly, they had two echocardiogram setups, so Abby could stay with one baby while I handled the other. Newborns can have heart murmurs, and since the insurance was available and my daughter is thorough, we were there for the full experience. The technicians examined the little hearts from several angles. Not much real estate to look at, but the technician knew what she was doing.

Twin A, the second one born, was a little more restless than her older sister, Twin A. Abby started feeding Twin B while I stayed with Twin A. When Twin B finished eating, I walked the halls burping Twin A while Mommy took care of the other end of the operation. Abby was grateful they gave her a place to feed the girls. I just looked like a lost grandpa with reasonably good baby skills. We hit traffic on the way home, but since this was Abby’s old commute to work, there weren’t many surprises. One appointment down, two babies cared for, and no one had to explain the burping procedure to me.

Thursday’s mission was more straightforward: spend time with Ellie while Mommy ran errands. My first assignment was to get the garage-door guy taken care of, which requires a little background.

I have one rule for airport transportation: Make your reservation so I don’t have to leave the house before 6:00 a.m. Judy was heading to North Carolina to see her parents, and her sister had arranged the flight using points. Judy’s 4:20 Uber pickup had been uncertain the night before, so I’d removed Ellie’s car seat in case Judy needed to take my car and park at the airport. When I woke up, the car was still there, but the front door and light were on. Judy had successfully escaped without my assistance.

All week, she’d told me her flight was sometime after 8:00, so I’d prepared for a 6:00 wake-up. Four o’clock was another matter. My taxi service has limited operating hours, and sleep deprivation isn’t covered by the family discount. Book an early-morning flight at your own peril.

After taking nearly ten minutes to reinstall Ellie’s car seat, I was ready to ask the garage-door guy to do it for me. His online bio mentioned six kids. Surely, a man with six children could handle a car seat faster than I could. I agreed to new garage-door rollers and the maintenance we’d already discussed, paid him, locked the doors, and headed out before he finished.

Abby had a few stops on her list. First was Carter’s, where she wanted to find clothes for the first professional family picture with all three kids on Saturday morning. While Mom shopped, Ellie and I wandered the parking lot collecting a few “balls” from the cypress trees. An older couple had deliberately parked under one of the trees, despite the threat of dripping sap. They were wiser than I was. At least they had some shade. I was more concerned about the paint job than the people inside the car.

Next came Walmart. Abby had a few things to pick up, and I needed baking soda, the bargain-priced version of the pool chemical that pool stores are happy to sell for five times as much. Both raise the alkalinity just fine, but one costs a whole lot less. Ellie, meanwhile, seemed determined to pull as much Gatorade and peanut butter off the shelves as we would tolerate. The glass jars of jelly were where we drew the line. Grandpa has his limits, and they include broken glass in the grocery aisle.

Costco was our final stop, and that’s where Abby had a realization: “I should probably teach her how to better drink from a cup.”

With all the samples available, Ellie got to try several different drinks. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get the bottom lip of the cup above her tongue. She drank every sample like a butterfly extending its proboscis into a flower. It was an impressive demonstration of how to get liquid into your mouth while bypassing most of the equipment designed for that purpose. Her shirt left Costco considerably wetter than when she arrived.

Then the hangries hit. After tracking down the new location for the freeze-dried mangoes, we ripped open the bag right there in the cart and bought ourselves enough peace to get Mom and Ellie home. Ellie’s hands and cheeks were sticky, her shirt was wet, and she’d consumed enough mango to make the rest of the trip manageable. By the time we arrived, she was no longer my problem. She was the other grandma’s problem, because Abby had twins to feed. That’s what I call a successful handoff.

When I was raising my own kids, I generally knew my lane. As a grandparent, particularly one in a semi-retired state, I’m still looking for the lane markings. I get a request and enthusiastically embrace it. I want to help, and I appreciate Abby giving me the opportunity to make her life a little easier. Whether that means accompanying her to a medical appointment, walking the halls with a baby who needs burping, or supervising a toddler’s experiments with drinking cups, I’m happy to pitch in.

If Abby is nearby, I don’t even have to be the responsible party. I can concentrate on the fun stuff or the burping. I know what to do with both ends of a baby, so there isn’t much I’m going to walk away from. Some requests might require a deep, cleansing breath. Others will get an enthusiastic, “I was hoping you’d ask.”

I’m still learning the grandpa job description, but the basic requirements are simple: show up, pitch in, and don’t be afraid to get your fingernails a little dirty. I’ll keep enrolling students in Grandpa’s Diaper Rash Academy for as long as my kids keep giving me the opportunity. Tuition is free, the hours are flexible, and graduation usually involves somebody handing me a baby who needs changing.

I May Have Been Too Excited About This

As I’ve described before, the hot tub was not supposed to become my weekly chemical experiment. My years of playing chemist with our pool in Texas were supposed to give me substantial credit on any outdoor full water immersion projects for a number of years. When the hot tub arrived, I encouraged my wife to use the chemicals as directed. The problem was that the chemicals were dropped off with the hot tub, while any meaningful support apparently took a different delivery truck. The hot tub slowly spiraled downward until we decided a random lagoon would probably be more attractive. Judy eventually transferred some of her many wife credits into one of my individual virtual bank accounts, and I became responsible for water quality. I may not have excelled, but things have been improving.

With hockey boys and family using the hot tub, the chemistry is no longer my biggest concern. The bigger problem has been opening and closing the lid and, more specifically, clipping and unclipping all the latches. Early on, my daughter failed to unhook one of the back corner clips, and it snapped right off. Disappointing, but not worth making a fuss over. I figured I would probably be responsible for breaking one eventually, too.

That day was Tuesday.

After we had gone through a few hockey boys who had no interest in clipping all of the available clips on the hot tub lid, our newest boy, with my knowledge and encouragement, was determined to do a complete job. That included clipping the last back clip, which had rarely been used during the previous year. The only time we really needed it was last winter, when the wind was blowing hard enough that we needed the back clip secured to keep the back of the lid from flipping over the front and turning our hot tub into a very expensive outdoor cooling device.

Tuesday, while I was cycling through the series of chemicals necessary to maintain a happy hot tub, I popped that last back clip. At first I thought, “Why is it so hard to flip the lid off?” Then came the pop, and I knew the clip had given up the good fight.

When my daughter popped a clip, I thought, “Oh, darn.” When I do it, it needs to be fixed immediately so I’m not reminded of my stupidity every time I look at the hot tub.

The problem was that the existing clip was on a strap sewn directly onto the cover. Replacing it the traditional way would mean cutting the strap that was sewn into the cover or figuring out some other solution. I was a big fan of the “some other solution” option. This led me to a video featuring a guy with an English accent replacing the same type of clip without cutting the strap. I don’t know why an English accent makes a repair seem more trustworthy, but I was willing to accept the evidence.

The replacement clip has a small opening in an otherwise solid piece that allows the existing strap to slide into place without cutting it. The video sent me to an eBay listing, but after some significant trepidation, I eventually found what appeared to be the same thing on Amazon.

This is the important part if you have the same problem: look for replacement male clips that have slots for attaching the strap without cutting it. (see image below) That allows you to remove the broken clip and install the replacement without cutting or sewing the existing strap. Even better, the male portion of the replacement clip fit into the existing female portion already attached to the cover.

That meant I didn’t have to replace the entire latch assembly. I just had to replace the broken male clip.

And it worked.

In fact, it worked so well that I decided to fix the two clips that were already broken. Then, apparently overcome by the thrill of my own success, I decided to cut one of the perfectly good clips and replace it, too.

I really can’t explain this.

I was so drunk with success that I broke another thing just so I could fix it again. At some point, I need to develop hobbies that don’t involve destroying things that were working perfectly well five minutes earlier.

Still, there was something satisfying about solving the problem myself. Usually, Judy is the one who finds the part, orders it with complete confidence, and eventually fixes the recliner or whatever other household problem I have probably helped create. I’m perfectly happy to watch her do this because she has a much better track record.

This time, though, I found the solution, ordered the part, and actually fixed the problem. I may not be ready to become the primary “Maybe Amazon has a kit to fix that” shopper in the family, but I’m willing to volunteer as the more enthusiastic second-stringer.

I take disappointment pretty hard, especially when the disappointment is something I created myself. But there’s something pretty satisfying about finding the right solution, making the repair, and watching something that was broken work again.

Even if you did have to break one more thing to celebrate.

NewClipOldClip_sm — The clip on the left is the replacement clip. The clip on the right is the clip that came with the hot tub cover. (I cut the plastic and removed it from the strap to properly contrast the two pieces.) The top gap in the clip on the left is how the clips can be replaced without cutting the sewn strap. The part name is: “4 Sets Spa Hot Tub Cover Clips Latch Replacement Kit”.

This is the Amazon link to a set of 4 of the clips as shown on the left: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BM5DLT2B?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title

Technically, I Had a Day

I don’t have an exciting life.

That isn’t necessarily a complaint. I’ve actually worked pretty hard to get here. My problem is that I write about my life, which means I occasionally need something to happen. Not anything dramatic. I’m not looking for a house fire, a police chase, or an unexpected invitation to appear on national television. I just need enough stimulation to convince my brain there is a story hiding somewhere in the day.

The trick is getting the right amount of input. Too many new things and I’m outside my comfort zone, where my brain starts throwing warning lights. Too few, and I stare at a blank page waiting for a thought to develop a pulse. Ideas are ultimately supplied by my brain, but sometimes the poor thing needs a spark. Too much input, though, and I blow a fuse and lose the ability to organize any of it into something resembling a coherent thought.

Yesterday may have been one of those days.

I ran errands with my daughter and Ellie, and I was convinced I had enough material to put a story together. My daughter’s mother-in-law was staying with the twins, so we had temporarily reduced the number of children requiring adult supervision from three to one. Someday we may attempt a trip to the store with all three girls. That day will not be tomorrow. We were trying to be home by noon because 12:30 was the next feeding, and there is a very specific point at which “we’re running a little late” becomes “the babies have threatened to fire you.”

At Sam’s, I picked up my usual supply of vitamins while Ellie treated the bottles like toys. She moved them from the bulk displays to the floor as though Sam’s had thoughtfully installed a vitamin-themed play area for toddlers. We already have an empty Omega-3 bottle at home that has become a miniature storage facility for golf balls and various other small objects. If you put the objects into the bottle correctly—or incorrectly, depending on your definition of success—a simple tilt won’t empty the contents. I keep thinking I need to find something long and skinny to control the flow. A few weeks ago, this would have been a much bigger issue with Ellie because she would have been emotionally invested in immediately solving the problem. Now she still loves the bottles, but she has matured enough to accept that sometimes the contents of a bottle remain in the bottle.

I was also planning to pick up some country-fried steak for our hockey boy’s dinner. If Sam’s still sells it, I couldn’t find it. Then the hockey boy texted to say he was going to Top Golf with a teammate, which eliminated the need for a dinner plan. One text message and my culinary responsibilities disappeared. With my wife gone, I would eat whatever was easiest.

The rest of the Sam’s visit consisted mostly of chasing Ellie during the moments when she wasn’t providing the muscle necessary to keep the shopping cart moving. She gets behind that cart, gets low and drives her feet with the determination of a high school football player hitting a blocking sled. Her technique would probably result in a holding penalty if she were doing it during a football game, but at her age and gender, I’m reasonably confident she’s safe from those particular flags for the rest of her life. When she wasn’t pushing the cart, Ellie was wandering into the pathway of other shoppers. My daughter and I were on constant tag-team duty, making sure she didn’t exit an aisle directly into the path of an unsuspecting shopper who had come to Sam’s for toilet paper and was not prepared to participate in a toddler obstacle course.

My final contribution to the outing was mistaking the Iranian employee checking us out for an Indian. This was less about geography than conditioning. My son is in India for the next few weeks, so my brain has temporarily decided that everyone from South Asia is Indian. I spoke to my son on FaceTime Monday night, and he told me that in the ten days he’s been there, he has seen only four other white people. Most of those were at the Taj Mahal. He’s getting used to being stared at. I’m guessing I would be getting used to it, too, although I would probably assume I had spinach in my teeth.

After Sam’s, my daughter decided she needed a “dirty soda” before I dropped her off at home with her three-pack of pumpkin and container of Medjool dates. Fortunately, there was a Swig on the way. There weren’t many cars, but there was a surprisingly slow-moving line. This was my first Swig experience, and given the limited number of flavors I am willing to voluntarily suffer through, my daughter suggested something with root beer. I was tempted to stop right there, but eventually settled on the Butter Beer. Root beer and butterscotch are two of my favorite flavors, and I figured the vanilla crème probably wouldn’t be enough to ruin it.

My daughter went with the “Spice, Spice Baby,” which contained Dr Pepper, vanilla, cinnamon, pumpkin pie sauce, half-and-half and a cinnamon stick. I tried it. It was better than I expected, but I don’t think I could have made those 24 ounces disappear.

The ordering process was interesting. Someone would walk out the back door, take the order on an iPad, collect payment and then tell you, “I’ll meet you at the window.” We watched two cars ahead of us go through the same process, so by the time it was our turn, we were practically veterans. Then the employee told my daughter they were out of cinnamon syrup.

Did she still want the drink?

She did.

The employee explained that this was the reason the line was moving so slowly. Her manager had gone to another store to get the cinnamon syrup. Meanwhile, the line at our store continued moving at the approximate speed of continental drift. When it takes more than 15 minutes to place an order with four cars in line, my Butter Beer is probably not going to become a regular habit.

It was pretty tasty, though.

Ellie slept in the back seat the entire time, which should have been relaxing. It wasn’t. My daughter was slightly concerned because her normal nap time is after lunch, and her sleep schedule has become considerably less predictable since the twins arrived. Apparently, even babies have organizational meetings.

After I dropped them off, I headed home to a house my wife would soon be vacating for the night. The hockey boy made a brief stop, then asked if he could spend the night with the teammate he was going to Top Golf with.

So there I was.

Alone.

I wasn’t particularly in the mood for a solo night, but that was what had been offered. Warmups and a solo walk around the neighborhood weren’t my first choice, but sometimes you don’t get what you want. You get what you need.

I prefer a light social schedule. I just don’t prefer a non-social schedule. There is a sweet spot somewhere between a trickle and a hydrant. A trickle leaves me wondering where everybody went. A hydrant makes me want to go to my room and wait until the excessiveness of life has drained out of the house.

My wife knows the balance. She doesn’t know me perfectly, but she knows me very well. She knows when I need people and when I need fewer people. She knows when I need a little space and when too much space starts to feel like nobody is around. She also knows that I am considerably more entertaining when someone is nearby to appreciate the entertainment.

Most importantly, she gives my brain a reason to stay awake.

Judy is mostly the straight man in this little comedy routine, although she would probably dispute the word “mostly.” I spend a ridiculous amount of my day looking for something unexpected that might make her smile. Sometimes it’s a story. Sometimes it’s a comment. Sometimes it’s nothing more than the look I give her when one of us realizes we have once again made a completely unnecessary decision.

That is probably why yesterday felt a little incomplete. There were plenty of things happening. A toddler nearly became a Sam’s Club linebacker. I confused an Iranian with an Indian. I waited 15 minutes for a soda containing enough ingredients to qualify as a chemistry experiment. I watched my son describe what it feels like to be one of four white people at the Taj Mahal.

Technically, I had a day.

But Judy wasn’t in it.

And as much as I enjoy the occasional quiet night, I’m reminded that I don’t really need an exciting life. I need someone beside me who makes the ordinary parts worth noticing.

Tomorrow, I’ll have something to look forward to.

Judy will be home.

The Billet Gods May Have Made Their Decision

Our philosophy with hockey players, and any other strays who may wander through our front door, is pretty simple: If we have an open bed, you are welcome.

We don’t always know how long that welcome will last. Some boys fit into our house easily. Others discover that living with us isn’t quite what they expected, and sometimes we discover the same thing. We like having people to cook for, though, and hearing, “Wow, that was pretty good. What was it?” will always score more points than, “I only eat pizza and hamburgers.”

After the rapid departure of our previous hockey boy, I tried to process things from his side a little more. For four years, his identity had been, “I am wanted by an Ivy League school to play hockey.” When that suddenly disappeared, I could understand why he needed to make a change. I stopped taking his departure quite so personally.

Then, because apparently the best way to deal with one hockey boy leaving is to put another one in his room, NEW showed up.

Our EX, who is also one of the team captains, seems to have been keeping track of the other boys by creating his own unofficial “billet happiness” spectrum. He apparently knows which players are happy, which ones are less happy, and which ones might be one bad dinner away from packing a suitcase. When he left Wednesday evening for his new home, he casually mentioned, “I was talking to another player who is really unhappy at his billet house.” I thought, “Great. I’ll believe it when I see it.” I assumed he was just trying to say something nice on his way out the door. A little verbal reassurance that his leaving wasn’t personal.

Then he texted me the next morning. EX gave me more background on a particular player and suggested I contact the billet coordinator about him. My text to her was simple: “Yeah, we are interested if this kid is looking for a place.” Her response came shortly afterward: “This wasn’t supposed to be communicated at all.” That seemed like a strange way to respond to someone volunteering to take a hockey player off your hands. Despite her frustration, she completed the transaction. By “transaction,” I mean she sent us his paperwork and let us know we could go ahead and contact him. Her terseness left me wondering whether she was simply having a bad day or whether there was more to the story than we were being told.

When NEW arrived before dinner that night, he volunteered to fill us in on “the rest of the story.” Before he got very far, though, his previous billet’s social media post told us most of what we needed to know. He showed it to us. We don’t follow her, so we weren’t exactly sitting around monitoring the situation. I repeated my commitment to him, although this was the first time he had heard it: “Our job is to feed you well and do everything we can to make sure you sleep well.” He took that commitment seriously. Especially the sleep part. He took a few liberties with the upstairs thermostat. Those Minnesota boys would sleep with the window open in the winter if you let them.

NEW arrived on a Thursday night, which meant Friday was a home game. That meant I would be frying bacon. Or at least I thought it did. Since we had been hockey-boy-less for 24 hours, the rest of the hockey breakfast club had already made alternate plans. Once that little hypocrisy was cleared up on breakfast eve, I quickly graduated to putting a few trays of bacon in the oven after my coffee in the morning. The breakfast club showed up, ate well, and then I made another questionable decision. I mentioned the de-commitment story involving our EX to the early arrivals. Their dropped jaws immediately told me I had stepped into an unsafe place. This was not my news to tell. I swore them to secrecy and hoped the statute of limitations on being a bad breakfast host was shorter than the hockey season. The chatter was good, the boys were grateful, and eventually they all left with full stomachs and eyes that had narrowed to barely functional slits. The rapid eye movements were clearly getting close.

The final piece of the story came during the hockey game. We met our EX’s mom a couple of weeks ago. She had a gift bag for the twins at the game. I had told Judy beforehand that I wouldn’t be surprised if she brought something for the girls. She struck me as the kind of person who took care of billet parents in an above-and-beyond sort of way. We talked with her for close to an hour. Early on, I asked the simple question, “How is he doing?” She opened up and told us more than I expected. Then she dropped the nugget that connected everything. “You know my son played a pretty big role in getting you your new hockey boy.”

My eyebrows went up. She explained that the billet coordinator had told EX that we needed to reach out to her if we wanted NEW. My quick response confirmed what I had already suspected. Whatever drama the billet coordinator had been trying to avoid was no longer avoidable. Not surprisingly, she was considerably less chatty with us at the game that night.

The verdict is still out on whether this will be our last year billeting. I had already looked at a few trips for February, but those may have to wait until at least next year. Billeting can be a little like dating. You end up with someone who looks like a good match, hope you’re compatible, and discover a few things after they move in that probably should have been included in the profile.

NEW has a lot going for him. He has lots of nieces and nephews. He says he will eat anything. He even says he always cleans his plate. And then there’s the big one: he would rather pack a lunch than go out for lunch every day. This makes him a very rare find.

We didn’t swipe left or right on any of our hockey boys. They just showed up, stayed awhile, and eventually moved on to whatever came next. We weren’t a great fit for our EX. He was dealing with his own stuff, and we were dealing with ours. But somewhere along the way, he decided we were a good, stable place for another kid. So he did a little greasing of the skids on his way out.

I kind of like that. The boy who left our house may have helped us find the boy who replaced him. Maybe that’s how this whole billet thing is supposed to work. You open a door for one kid, learn a few things, occasionally buy 47 pounds of food that nobody eats, and eventually another kid walks through the same door.

We still don’t know if NEW will be a keeper. For now, he eats what we eat, cleans his plate, wants to pack his lunch, has his own upstairs bedroom, and apparently sleeps well enough to keep the thermostat company.

After everything that happened this week, I’m willing to let the billet gods have the final say. So far, they seem to be saying, “Keep this one.”

The Hockey House Is Cursed

Sometimes, when you’re writing something, you get the feeling the end hasn’t happened yet. As I was writing my most recent hockey installment, that is how I felt. It just seemed like there were a couple of threads that hadn’t quite finished unraveling. My intuition isn’t always right, but when it comes to hockey boys, I seem to have developed a pretty good feel for when the next shoe is about to drop.

Our newest hockey boy has been with us for two weeks yesterday. While that easily works out to 14 days, he has not actually been here for 14 days. Less than a week after he arrived, he left for Minnesota for the NAHL Showcase. With driving time included, they were gone for more than five days. Now that the season is getting into full gear, the volunteering has started to kick in, too. So, while we have been a place for his stuff for two weeks, Judy and I have had exactly one true sit-down meal with him. Apparently, we are running a hockey-themed storage facility with occasional breakfast service.

Three weeks ago, our present hockey player was a potential captain of his NAHL team. He had what he thought was a good relationship with his coach, and he was excited about the season. He had been committed to an Ivy League school for almost four years, and even though there had been a coaching change at the school, he was excited to finish this season and start that part of his life. Then life decided it had other plans. He was traded more than two weeks ago, completely out of the blue. Then he caught a stick in the eye and needed stitches. If the stick had hit him just a little lower, it could have blinded him. So, even though the rules don’t require it, he wears a full mask instead of just a visor when he plays. Then he got stuck living with us and our somewhat boring form of existence.

Until this past weekend, he at least had a buddy at our house. That “buddy” told the coach he wanted to be traded over the weekend and left first thing Sunday morning. While our current boy had already started connecting with the other guys, that accelerated the process. Then came Tuesday’s big bomb. The Ivy League coach de-committed him. In English, he won’t be going to that school to play hockey. If he wants to play hockey in college, he and his advisor now have to start from scratch to find the right school. And he had nobody at our house to really discuss it with beyond Judy and me. With our exposure to hockey only beginning when we started billeting seven years ago, I’m not sure we were equipped to provide the kind of support he needed.

On the good side of the equation, he has played a lot of games in the NAHL, and he continues to get opportunities here. He was selected as one of the captains earlier this week. In only two weeks, he has established himself as an important part of the team. His coach let him know he has his back and won’t let him finish his junior hockey career without a D1 commitment. So, after getting the news, he let us know he was going to hang out with one of his hockey buddies for the evening. That eventually evolved into, “I’m just going to go ahead and spend the night at his place.” This is where the previous version of this tale ended. Except, apparently, it wasn’t the end.

There were clues that things were moving toward us having an empty house. The night before, I received a text from the man who is now the “billet dad.” He texted me, “I contacted the coach about him staying the night. The coach said it was fine.” I knew he was spending the night at the other house, but getting the coach involved did escalate the possibility that their house might become the permanent solution. Then there was the sausage. When I was at the store yesterday, I was picking up a few things to make sure my daughter’s family had some variety for dinner. I already had regular andouille sausage at the house. But knowing our billet boy might eat some, I grabbed turkey sausage as a substitute. As I put it in the cart, I actually asked myself, “Will it even matter?” At the time, I thought I was wondering whether he would eat any of it. Looking back, I think part of me was already assembling the evidence. Turkey sausage may have been my subconscious filing a missing-person report.

Since then, I received a call mid-afternoon from the billet coordinator. There was a poor attempt at small talk before I finally asked, “Good news or bad news?” Good news would have translated into finding out whether a new player was a fit for our house. Bad news would involve a player leaving. My pause earlier in the day suddenly seemed a little more prophetic. Judy doesn’t remember me mentioning it to her, but maybe she wasn’t paying close attention. “Well, it does seem like your house is cursed. With the news he has gotten lately, the coach thinks he should have a house where he has a buddy.”, said the billet coordinator. And so it went. We were told we had done nothing wrong, and I said our only concern with him was the pork allergy. It was cordial. Nobody was mad. Nobody was blaming anybody. But I can’t lie. It hurts a little.

Presently, we still plan on having our breakfast on game-day Friday. But if there are no replacement boys in the house two weeks from now, Judy has already said she doesn’t want to do it anymore. And I get it. After being assigned five boys and losing all five, it starts to feel like we are the hockey version of the last apartment available after the good ones have been rented. We have had some fine young men in our house. But based on the coaches’ evaluations, more than half of them weren’t good enough to play hockey for him. The other one didn’t get enough playing time, and the one who hasn’t quite cleared out his stuff yet wants a house with a buddy.

I understand that not all houses are for all hockey boys. Our tolerance for some qualities probably isn’t as high as it is at other houses. If we are rejected for that reason, I can take it. There are worse things than finding out that your house isn’t the right fit for a teenage hockey player. There are also fewer teenagers involved.

If this stretches out for too long, we can start planning our lives a little differently. Judy wanted to take a cruise this winter. If we go too many weeks without boys, it will allow me to start thinking we are ready to retire from the chaos and planning they bring into our lives. We can still go to all the games if we want. It is just different when you are watching games where it isn’t “our” boy or boys playing. If I don’t feel invested in the players, it is hard to feel invested in the whole hockey package.

After losing five kids, I am very jaded. Getting emotionally involved with another kid takes effort. Last year was easy compared to this. We had one boy for the whole season, and the other two split the season. Three kids. Very manageable. This year, we have already exceeded that, and we aren’t even six weeks into the season. So, if it seems like my opinion of billeting hockey boys has flipped to a “no” vote, it isn’t far off.

When things go smoothly, or at least have some amount of stability, it really isn’t a bad gig. I enjoy ratcheting my age back a few years and talking strategy and life with the boys. There is something pretty cool about having a teenager sitting at the kitchen counter one minute talking about hockey and the next minute asking you about life. But when they move on so quickly, the effort just barely outweighs the “Why bother?”

Tomorrow, my opinion may change. I know myself well enough to understand that another hockey boy could walk through our door, fit into the house, eat my food, make us laugh, and completely ruin this carefully constructed argument. Right now, though, it would have to be a pretty good fit to convince me to disrupt our lives again.

Next year was going to be our last year anyway. Maybe we are just meant to bow out a little sooner. It seems our kids and grandkids need us more than the local NAHL team does this year.

The Protein Policeman

Sunday night was the first dinner Judy and I had with our hockey boy. He had gotten back from Minnesota by bus before sunrise and helped our other hockey player, who was leaving Sunday, pack a few things before going to bed. When he woke up, he woke in a house that had only one hockey billet living in it—the guy he saw in the mirror.

He talked to us about the previous week of hockey life before meeting one of the other players for breakfast. The team had lost all three games at the Showcase. He claimed the somewhat lopsided scores weren’t the result of the goalies. They were the result of defensemen who had lost their first love. They prefer offense to defense.

I was a little nervous about the responsibility that had been handed to me for dinner. I marinated the chicken like I always do. The remaining hockey boy was the one with the pork allergy, which meant this wasn’t just a matter of putting dinner on the table. Now I had a small food-safety operation involving a teenager, a grill and my reputation as a competent adult.

I had already sprayed a couple of types of oven cleaner on the cooking grates. I scraped and scrubbed them, trying to remove every memory the grates had ever had of touching a sausage or a rack of ribs. I heated the grill to “really hot” a couple of times to cook off anything that might still be left on the grates. At that point, I was pretty sure the grill was cleaner than most surgical equipment.

And beyond all that, it would make me physically sick if something I fed him caused a reaction. I didn’t want to be the guy who sent our hockey player upstairs for the evening because Dad couldn’t properly decontaminate a grill.

After 5:00, Judy put the smashed potatoes into the oven to bake. The potatoes had already been boiled, so they would crisp up nicely. Paprika, onion and garlic powder, salt and pepper made these things almost good enough to eat without ketchup. Judy and the hockey boy seem to think Chick-fil-A sauce makes them even better.

The roasted broccoli isn’t incredible, but it does round out the textures the meal offers.

In parallel with everything else, Judy threw together some dough for cinnamon rolls. It quickly became clear she had done something to spank the yeast a little too hard. She gave the dough some more yeast vitamins and hoped she could salvage them. One tray would be for the “three of us.” Until we get another hockey boy, that’s what we are. The other tray would be for the family that had just had twins—aka my daughter’s family.

Shortly after 6:00, we sat down for dinner. I had some reservations about saying a Christian prayer with our Jewish hockey boy. Yes, the pork allergy does add a certain level of irony to that sentence. But Judy showed no hesitation, and we prayed.

As he ate his first plate, I kept waiting for him to spasm and fall off his chair. Then he had a second piece of chicken. Then a third. He let me know that any ill effects would take a little time to show up, which was exactly the kind of information I wanted to hear while eating dinner.

I attempted to enjoy my meal while still dealing with taste buds whose sensitivity had been dialed back to almost COVID-like levels. Would I pass this test? Would his mom come down hard on me if I fed him something that took him off his game? After dinner, he grabbed a couple of waters and headed upstairs. He’d let me know how he was doing when he came back down.

That was reassuring.

Sort of.

After Judy’s transformation back into her normal self while the “dish fairy” cleaned up the kitchen a few days ago, the dishes were piling up again. We put the leftovers we actually observed into appropriate containers and put them into the refrigerator. It appeared the dirty dishes would get at least another day to thrive while minimizing the amount of usable space on our counters.

While our hockey boy watched football, played video games or talked to important people in his life, including his hockey advisor, Judy coaxed the reluctant cinnamon rolls into a fluffy enough form that they should bake up okay. She covered them with cream cheese icing, which made whatever yeast trauma they had experienced earlier largely irrelevant.

They were good, and our hockey boy even decided they were worth the calories. He also let me know I hadn’t served him any flawed chicken. The pork cooties from the grill had been successfully purged, and I was free from guilt.

At least where the chicken was concerned.

After watching our show—we’re in Season 5 of Modern Family—we went to bed and read for a while. At some point, we heard noise in the kitchen that involved the microwave. Was chicken being heated up? Was another cinnamon roll being consumed? Was he eating something else?

At least one of those questions had to be answered “yes.”

I didn’t think much more about it until morning.

I started the coffee and inventoried the cinnamon rolls. No obituaries were necessary.

Then I thought about the chicken.

I looked in the refrigerator and didn’t see the chicken pan. I looked around the kitchen, wondering where that pan might have ended up. Of course, it was at the bottom of the stack of last night’s dishes.

And the chicken was still in it.

It had been sitting there the whole time.

For more than twelve hours, my carefully prepared, grill-decontaminated, pork-free chicken had been conducting a completely different food-safety experiment.

If we’d caught it before bed, we might have salvaged it. At that point, though, the difficult but correct move was to throw it away.

I tried to express my frustration to Judy without pointing fingers. Ultimately, we share the kitchen, so I deserve as much blame as she does. The bigger downer, at least from my perspective, was that I had spent all that time preparing and cooking the chicken. I had already factored it into the meal plans for the rest of the week.

Fried rice? Barbecue chicken pizza? Rice bowls?

All of those plans would now have to be rejiggered around the chicken that no longer existed.

Darn.

Just because we’re old and have accumulated a little wisdom doesn’t mean we’re always wise. Sometimes we assume the other person has something handled because, in our heads, of course they do. A simple question can prevent twelve hours of perfectly good chicken from becoming garbage.

And if you’re afraid of being considered a whiny nag, there’s a choice to make. Would you rather take the grilled chicken you labored over to the trash can with your tail between your legs, or get a little pushback from your wife because you asked whether somebody put it away?

Maybe this is the reminder I needed to take my role as the resident protein policeman more seriously.

I just need to figure out what hat a protein policeman wears.

The Plans Could Wait

As my daughter and the twins prepared to spend their first night together outside of a hospital, my daughter’s body was remembering that it was no longer pregnant. Her body was rushing back toward its original configuration, and she realized it would be helpful to have a support parent nearby, just in case. Judy also fulfilled an earlier request from our daughter by delivering a French toast casserole for breakfast. Evidently, postpartum support now comes with catering.

When Judy returned around 8:30 in the morning, she wasn’t alone. Ellie was with her. I had been given a few days off from grandpa duty, so I was mentally prepared to give up whatever part of my day was necessary to keep her entertained. After our usual clementines, with the optional dried mango, I was ready to reacquaint myself with my granddaughter. The plans I had for the day were only marginally important anyway. The next few hours were a blur.

We walked to a different, more toddler-friendly playground about a mile from the house. Ellie was a little timid at first, but she eventually dove in. The slide was better than our usual one, and the tunnel was perfect for a game where Grandpa reached through one opening while Ellie crawled toward another. This qualified as premium entertainment. We wandered around the open area near the park, where one of Ellie’s favorite words, “doggie,” quickly became relevant. We found a dog in the backyard of one of the houses. He looked old, and I was initially concerned about his temperament. Then I noticed he had three legs. He didn’t look threatening, and he certainly wasn’t a threat, but we still had to return to that yard several times so Ellie could announce “doggie” to the appropriate recipient.

The playground also contained a pair of socks and shoes that appeared to belong to the same person. There was a small water playground nearby, but the water had been turned off for more than a couple of weeks. I have no idea how someone could leave their shoes there for that long without realizing they were missing. I know Ellie wouldn’t. The mile home was a different story. Ellie was ready to be home shortly after we left, which meant Grandpa eventually carried her for a significant portion of the trip. When she was walking, however, she was busy collecting weed samples from the yards along the sidewalk and dropping them into the storage compartment underneath the stroller. Eventually, she realized she would have to run tests on all of these samples and had failed to document where each one came from. The scientific process demanded that she throw them out.

She was more successful with some of her field research. At one house, she insisted on completely denuding a birch tree of its bark from about her shoulder height to her knees. She peeled off each piece, scrunched it in her hands, and moved on to the next piece. There was a “For Sale” sign in the yard, and I don’t think I saw any cameras capturing my discomfort. If this had been my child, I would have bolted her into the stroller, smiled through the screams, and kept moving. I am, however, a grandfather. Grandfatherhood has given me a remarkable ability to redefine questionable behavior as “a learning experience.”

Even dogs that showed no particular interest in participating from the other side of the street were awarded the title of “doggie.” I had to keep Ellie from hopping the curb and attempting to catch them and give them a hug. The dog walkers generally understood the situation and kept their doggies moving. The “Grandpa-carrying” portion of the walk introduced another concept: touching trees that hang over the sidewalk. Ellie saw no meaningful distinction between those trees and the trees that required Grandpa to walk across the brown stuff formerly known as grass. Grandpa won that battle, barely.

We share water on most walks. I tolerate a higher degree of floaties and crusties on my straw than many people would find acceptable. Ellie especially likes it when I drink a small Gatorade and leave a little in the bottom. I fully tighten the lid, then back it off just enough that she can unscrew it herself. She then buries the mouth of the bottle in her mouth and works diligently to extract every molecule of flavor remaining. This is one of the privileges of being a granddaughter.

Lunch was spaghetti, and its journey from plate to mouth was not especially efficient. Her clothes provided the clearest evidence. The bib captured what it could, but the fork-and-fist feeding techniques still have some limitations. The backup plan of peanut butter and toast also experienced some logistical challenges. When Ellie finally went down for her nap, I ran to the store for a couple of things we needed for dinner.

At WinCo, I ran into someone buying what appeared to be every bulk bay leaf in the store. “We live in the country,” she explained. “Our neighbor likes to make curry, so she always has us buy them when we come to WinCo.” There was obviously a reciprocal agreement involved, but I didn’t dig into it. Some relationships are best left to the bay leaves.

At Sam’s, I needed two bundles of flowers. Pink roses for our daughter and a nice arrangement for Judy. The woman handing out chip samples next to the flowers wasn’t having much luck. “I’m not moving any chips, so I might as well help you out.” She proceeded to help me pick out both flower bundles. She also showed me that there are bags on the side of the flower station to cover the bottoms of the stems. I have purchased flowers for decades and had somehow missed this entire system. I scanned everything with the app and checked out. I also avoided the chip samples. There are some sacrifices a man must make.

I wasn’t home for long before Ellie wailed. She had been talking to herself before I left, so I have no idea how long she actually slept. My attempt to watch our hockey boys play the Cow Punchers in Minnesota didn’t get very far. It wasn’t quite snack time, but Ellie had reviewed the schedule and decided it was. With Judy gone to take our son and daughter-in-law to the airport for their long journey to India, and me trying to keep a toddler entertained until her parents returned from doing “new baby” things, I didn’t make much progress on the dinner I was preparing for them.

Eventually, Judy returned, and everyone else left. I started prepping onions and stew meat for what I eventually called “Hungarian Beef Fajitas Pasta.” It isn’t the real name. It just seemed to best describe whatever combination of ingredients ended up in our bowls. Judy looked at the pile of dirty dishes and temporarily transformed into her alternate form: Dish Fairy. I’m not a Pokémon person, but the description seemed appropriate.

Between now and whenever our daughter’s life settles into some sort of manageable rhythm, Judy and I are going to be a couple of the lackeys who help make that possible. It isn’t exactly the vision I had for retirement, but I wouldn’t choose any other path. I get to attempt mind melds with my granddaughter. I get to watch two tiny babies begin their lives. I get to see our daughter figure out what it means to be a mother of three while knowing she doesn’t have to figure it out alone.

I’m learning that being involved isn’t a scheduled activity. There isn’t always an appointment on the calendar or a defined block of time where Grandpa is officially on duty. Sometimes it’s a casserole. Sometimes it’s flowers. Sometimes it’s carrying a tired toddler home while she collects weeds for a scientific study she will never complete. Sometimes it’s just being there.

I’m still working on the flexibility part of this retirement thing, especially when it involves putting my own plans aside. But there are worse things to learn how to do.

And right now, I’m in a pretty happy place.

Two More Players

Yesterday, I had no babysitting duties and no expectations to spend time with my pregnant daughter. It was the big day. Those creatures she had been supporting for a few months were finally going to come out, breathe their own air, and circulate their own blood. Her headaches, swollen legs, and all the other things I had heard about secondhand would either disappear forever or eventually convince her that her house needed more humans to love.

This left me with a rare set of circumstances. How was I going to spend a long day without something involving my family? Of course, Judy is family, but she is a big girl and can take care of herself. After the morning routine, where I refill her coffee a couple of times, she puts on her headset and goes into work mode for most of the day. Until dinner, I am only slightly more important than a piece of furniture.

Grandpa 2.0 was planning a more relaxed introduction to the new additions. I was excited to meet them, but with our first grandchild, we may have been a little closer to the smothering end of the spectrum. This time, we were more chill. We had been doing the “old, but still nimble enough” routine for a few months, and we knew our daughter had a much better grasp on parenting than we did when we first became grandparents. She was going to be locked into full-on mom mode. Beyond some tag-teaming of Ellie and a few nights when Momma Judy would stay over to help get the babies on a schedule, my role would remain at home with the hockey boys. I had my own small population to manage.

So, what did I do with this rare free day?

I did one really dumb thing.

My email is hosted at Google, and I decided I would play IT guru and clean up a few things. My email was working fine, but Google suggested a couple of tweaks that would supposedly make things better. After dipping my toes in the water and not breaking anything, I dove in. The result was that my usual ton of slightly-better-than-spam emails became almost nonexistent. The actual spam dried up, too. The only emails making it through were being forwarded from my Yahoo account.

I don’t need spam emails to feel popular, and I don’t need much of my regular email either. With all my bills on autopay, I can go days without an important email. So, while I am a little mad at myself, I suppose I have given myself the gift of not having to create new rules for the new breed of incoming emails or spend time deleting them. I will take the gift and thank myself.

You’re welcome.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw the guy who “lives” in the model home in our subdivision. With all the new construction going on, he told me about a pallet of rock that was free for the taking. I noodled on it for a while but couldn’t think of anything I could use it for. Then I noticed the tree near our mailbox was living with a ridiculous grade between the sidewalk and the street.

Obviously, the solution was free rocks.

I made two trips to gather enough stones to try to build a little stone wall around the tree. Many of the rocks were ugly, misshapen things, but as I dug through the pile, I found some pretty good ones on the bottom. Nothing worthy of its own photo shoot, but if I can pull this off, the tree should be happier. I also won’t have to buy any more “mulch glue” to keep the mulch from being sucked into the street. If the whole idea goes wrong, my biggest problem will be figuring out what to do with all the rocks I gathered. They’re pretty heavy, so it could become a multi-week project of selectively dropping them into the rolling trash bin. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

Since the hockey boys had blown us off for sushi the night before, and Judy and I don’t love garlic bread quite as much as they do, we didn’t bother making it for our Italian meal Sunday night. That didn’t mean it couldn’t become French toast. Judy cut the leftover bread in half and set me up with eight slices, which would get me through two meals. There was still some leftovers from Sunday, so Judy ate that.

We like breakfast for dinner. It just doesn’t make for much conversation. When two people are eating different things with limited options, you can’t say, “Give me another small serving of watermelon,” or whatever else might fill that little empty space in your belly. The plates were cleared, Judy headed to her bike for a few laps around the neighborhood, and I put my AirPods in and listened to my book while doing what I hope was the last watering of the year. I’m happy the heat is gone. I’m also really tired of watering every other day.

At some point during the day, one of our brief interactions produced the question, “I’m really hungry for some custard. What do you think?” Judy didn’t disagree, so I pulled up a recipe that has appeared on my Facebook feed approximately seventeen thousand times. While I finished watering and she got back from her bike ride, she jumped in and made it. After it went into the oven for 55 minutes with a water bath, we climbed into the hot tub. After the hot tub, we had time to start watching our shows before we even had the custard. Did we already watch the second season of The Pitt? Darn. I was looking forward to that.

We eventually ate the custard.

We both had seconds.

It was a pretty normal evening.

Except that somewhere in the middle of all this very important business, we were tracking the progress of our daughter delivering twins. We had been getting updates by text. Pitocin. Epidural. A trip to the OR. More waiting. More texts. We didn’t know exactly how things were going, but we knew enough to know that things were moving.

And then they were here.

Two healthy baby girls.

Our daughter didn’t need a C-section.

Just like that, the most spectacular thing happening in our family was unfolding while I was fixing email, collecting rocks, eating French toast, watering plants, making custard, and watching TV.

I’ll take a month of boring. I’ll take a year. I’ll take years where nothing particularly exciting happens and still call myself fortunate if days like this occasionally show up.

At our age, things happen. We don’t sweat every detail. Our kids are adults now. We get to cheer for them and give honest answers when they ask. We get to watch them navigate their own lives without feeling like we have to jump into every problem and solve it for them.

Before the kids were adults, one of my fears was, “What if something happens to my wife or me?” Now they’re out of the house, building families, solving adult problems, and occasionally making us grandparents twice over in a single evening.

We get to cheer. We get to compliment them when they handle something well. If they have a rough time, we can ask, “What did you learn? What would you do differently if something like that happens again?” We get to meet them wherever they are.

If we did our job well, maybe that’s what this stage of parenting is supposed to look like. Less hands-on, more coaching. We get to watch our kids use the skills they learned while they were living under our roof and hope they realize we weren’t completely clueless.

And if one of the benefits of being a coach is getting to interact with the second team, I’m pretty excited about my new roster.

Two more players.

I can’t wait to meet them.

Walking Down Life's Road With Andy