My interactions with recreational fireworks as a kid were nearly disastrous

I don't know if kids still do this, but when I was growing up, my friends and I would play with fireworks any and every chance we got.

By "fireworks," I mean not only things that make loud noises, but also relatively innocent stuff like black snakes, smoke bombs, pop-its, and jumping jacks. If you could light it or throw it, and it did something cool, we were all over it.

In general, we were all over anything involving fire. I don't know what drove us to be such little pyromaniacs, but we loved us some flames.

The problem was, at least as far as I was concerned, the potential for injury was real and frequent. I never actually got hurt playing with fireworks, but that was only by the grace of God.

I remember once being with my friend Matt, who had gotten his hands on an M-80. These little bombs were the kings of neighborhood fireworks simply because of the explosive power and noise they generated. We couldn't have been more than 10 years old, yet here we were playing with something that could have blown our fingers off.

We decided to wedge the M-80 into a little crack in a picnic table at the playground. Matt lit it and we backed up a few feet. When it went off, splinters of wood flew in almost every direction, with one whizzing within an inch or two of my head. It could easily have gone into my eye.

Then there was the time Matt and Kevin were shooting bottle rockets across the street. I opened the front door to our house to see what was going on, and they very smartly decided to shoot one straight at me. I didn't get hit, but it did enter our house before exploding just inside the storm door.

I almost got in big trouble for that one.

My worst near-miss, without a doubt, was the time I nearly burned down my school with a jumping jack.

I've told this story here on the blog before. Here's how I described the incident in a post 10 years ago:

I was playing with a pack of jumping jacks I'd, um, borrowed from my dad. I was with my nephew Mark, who had to have been only 6 or 7 years old at the time. We were by the old Mapledale Elementary School, and ringing the building was a two-foot-high pile of dry leaves. My genius idea was to light a jumping jack and throw it into these leaves, so that's what I did. The leaves, of course, immediately caught fire, and the flames started spreading rapidly around the perimeter of the building. Mark and I ran away as fast as we could. Someone who was there told the cops I had done it, and by the time I got home, there was a Wickliffe police cruiser waiting in the driveway for me. My mother was, to put it mildly, not happy.

You'll want to know what I was thinking there. Heck, I want to know what I was thinking, but I don't know. Not even an 11-year-old boy can fathom the thought processes of an 11-year-old boy.

The only positive outcome was that the school did not, in fact, burn down. But that's only because the good folks from the Wickliffe Fire Department came and put out the mini inferno I had started.

Anyway, it's Fourth of July here in America, which means recreational fireworks will be out in abundance. If you celebrate in this manner, please stay safe and use a little common sense.

Like, for instance, make sure that when an M-80 explodes, it doesn't create projectiles that could potentially kill you and your friends.

That would really put a damper on the holiday.

International travel in Basic Economy is the ultimate test of endurance and old personhood

Earlier this week I mentioned how my wife and two of our kids traveled to Brazil in late May. It was a wonderful experience, and I'm glad we had the opportunity to go.

The part I enjoyed the least is the part I enjoy least every time I travel to other countries, which is the actual travel.

Getting to Rio de Janeiro required a flight from Cleveland to Houston...easy enough as domestic flights go. But then we had a 10-hour jaunt from Houston down to Rio. It was an overnight flight that we experienced in the most cost-effective way possible: sitting in Basic Economy.

Maybe I'm just getting on in years, but those Basic Economy seats simply aren't designed for restful sleep or even basic human anatomy. It's the truest example of "you get what you pay for," a feeling you experience as you're walking through the Business Class section of the plane on the way back to your pathetic accommodations in steerage.

I've flown Business Class internationally before, and let me tell you, once you do it, you have no desire to go back to a regular seat.

You have oodles and oodles of room in Business Class, a couple of shelves for storage, and even a tiny, gnome-sized closet that doesn't hold much but to me symbolizes the power and prestige of sitting among the privileged. You can lay flat with a pillow and warm blanket that allow you to sleep comfortably for hours at a time.

You will note that on those occasions I've flown Business Class, it has always been because my company paid for it. I would never spring for it personally, which is why we sat in the cheap-but-decidedly-cramped economy sections of the Boeing 767-300 aircraft that took us to and from Brazil.

By the way, I feel like there was a time when you could find daytime flights to Europe and South America, but they seem to be far less available these days. My first trip outside of North America in 1999 was an Air Canada flight from Toronto to London that left early in the morning and got us to the UK a little past dinner time. No sleep required.

Nowadays, though, it's all about overnight flights. I'm not one to try and experience a new country on zero hours of rest, so I feel obligated to get some sleep even though I'm sitting on a hard "cushion" in a sky chair barely wider than the diameter of my hips.

Terry supplied me with a Tylenol PM to knock me out on the way to Rio, and while this helped, it didn't solve my #1 issue when it comes to airplane sleep. No matter how hard I try, I have to switch positions roughly 437 times a night because my butt inevitably starts hurting if I don't shift around.

Which means that even with the help of the Tylenol PM capsule, the sleep I get comes in fits and starts and is punctuated by strange dreams and long periods in that weird state between wakefulness and slumber.

After a while, my legs start to hurt, too, largely because I don't get up and walk around as often as I should.

By the time we land, I have experienced a combined 2-3 hours of low-quality sleep, which is enough to survive on but not nearly enough to feel well-rested and ready to experience customs, travel from the airport, and whatever we have planned for Day #1 of our vacation.

Someday, when I win the lottery (which I never actually play), I'm going to start taking all of my flights in First/Business Class. Each time I fly, I'll do it lying on a bed of goose feathers covered in sheets with an absurdly high thread count while a flight attendant feeds me grapes and tells jokes.

In the meantime, it's sore butt muscles and lack-of-sleep-induced colds after every international trip for me.

Oh, the price we pay to experience the world.

In the mood for some joyous chaos? Try a Brazilian soccer match

My daughter Elissa, my wife Terry, and me before the match enjoying some Brahma Chopp beers, which I would describe as Brazilian Bud Lite.

Last month, four of us (my wife, our kids Elissa and Jack, and me) took a one-week vacation to Rio de Janiero, Brazil. It was the first time any of us had been to South America, and the trip lived up to our every expectation.

Rio is a wonderful place with a rhythm and vibe all its own. I highly recommend it to anyone anxious to experience Brazilian culture and the friendly Brazilian people, though it does present some minor obstacles for the American traveler.

For one thing, while there are English words on signs all over the city, relatively few people there speak our language well. I wouldn't expect them to (it's THEIR country, after all), but we tend to get spoiled traveling to many popular destinations in Europe and Asia where you can find English speakers on almost every corner.

We learned the words you need to be polite in Brazilian Portuguese, including "hello," "goodbye," "please," "thank you," and "I request that you not steal my iPhone." Beyond that, we relied on hand gestures and the godsend of an app known as Google Translate.

Fluminense supporters waving flags
and screaming at the top of their lungs.

There's also quite a bit of traffic in Rio, so don't expect to get anywhere quickly. The locals accept this as a fact of life and make up for it by driving like suicidal maniacs.

That's an exaggeration, of course, but not by much. We got around via Uber, and we found the Uber drivers to be somewhat aggressive in their driving. By "somewhat aggressive" I mean changing lanes on a whim without really looking, not bothering to even tap the brakes at stop signs, and seemingly targeting pedestrians for no other reason than the sheer sport of it.

While the Uber rides provided enough thrills to last us a long while, so did my favorite part of the trip, which was the chance to attend a soccer match between Rio-based teams Fluminense and Vasco de Gama.

We did this through a tour company that specializes in bringing foreigners to Brazilian soccer games. Buying tickets directly as a non-Brazilian is a difficult experience – perhaps intentionally so – so you have to do it through an accredited agent.

Our tour guide Leo was outstanding. He was effortlessly trilingual (Portuguese, Spanish and English) and did a good job preparing us all for the experience.

Because Brazilian soccer is an experience. From the pregame festivities outside historic Maracanã Stadium to the match itself, rare is the time you can even hear yourself think. Everything about it is loud. All the time.

A small portion of the pregame crowd near Maracanã Stadium.

The streets around Maracanã were filled with people sporting Fluminense and Vasco de Gama colors. While it was technically a home match for Fluminense, the Vasco supporters seemed to be out in greater numbers.

We were told that Vasco fans generally draw from the region's working classes, while Fluminense fans are somewhat more affluent.

Regardless, we didn't overtly root for either team. We just tried to soak in the atmosphere. Outside the stadium there were fireworks aplenty (M-80s and bottle rockets mostly) and people yelling specific chants/cheers for their team. Europeans and North Americans mingled freely and happily with Brazilians and other South Americans, giving the whole thing an air of intense but friendly rivalry more than dark menace.

Once inside, we were struck by a few things that differed greatly from American sporting events:

• The only reason we knew the Brazilian national anthem was playing was because the players stood at attention and the words appeared on the video boards. The fans continued cheering loudly as if nothing important was going on. We couldn't hear the song at all.
  
  
• Once the match began, everybody stood. Everybody. The whole time. There was virtually no sitting.
  
  
• On a related note, people clogged the aisles of our section rather than just staying close to their seats. If you wanted to go get a beer or visit the restroom during the match, you had to wade through a dense sea of screaming fans standing in your way.
  
  
• I say "their seats," but there is no assigned seating in Maracanã Stadium. You just claim a seat and sit in it. If you leave, the seat is fair game for anyone else.
  
  

That's me and my son Jack before the start of the match.

Each side's supporters seemed to have an arsenal of chants and songs they would shout together in large groups. These were obviously in Portuguese (as were all game announcements and video board messages), and Leo tried to teach me one for Fluminense.

When the Fluminense fans launched into this particular chant, Leo turned around and looked at me like a teacher quizzing a pupil, but I immediately forgot almost everything I had learned. Instead I just sort of yelled along using nonsense words that somewhat approximated what I heard from the fans around me.

No matter, though. It was still a lot of fun.

In fact, the whole thing was a lot of fun...loud, crazy, and carried out in a beautiful language I will never be able to learn no matter how hard I try. But in the end, Fluminense's 2-1 victory (even including the shower of beer that hit us when Vasco scored the first goal of the match) was undeniably enjoyable.

I will not, however, be trying out anything I learned in Brazil at, say, the next Cleveland Guardians game. Between standing in someone's line of sight the whole game and claiming seats for which I don't own a ticket, something tells me I would be in a lot more danger at Progressive Field than I ever was at Maracanã.

Is tearing up at old Raffi songs a symptom of man-o-pause?

Elissa & me, 1994

When my now-31-year-old daughter Elissa was born, Terry was working a 9-to-5 job at Lincoln Electric while I worked nights as a sports writer at The News-Herald.

This was an ideal arrangement from the standpoint of child care in that, once Terry went back to work following her maternity leave, I was there every day to take care of Elissa.

When Terry got home around 5:30pm, I would eat some dinner then head out to cover a game or go right to the newspaper office for a shift on the copy desk.

Elissa, a champion sleeper almost from birth, thankfully slept until about 9:00am every day, which was a good thing for someone like me who didn't get home from work until 1:00 or 2:00am.

Many weekday mornings, I would awaken to the sound of Elissa on the baby monitor quietly playing in her crib or babbling the way infants do.

I would get out of bed and go into the nursery, and Elissa and I would greet each other with smiles and hugs.

I would then put her on the changing table, take off her onesie or whatever jammies she was wearing, give her a fresh diaper, and dress her for the day.

Usually I would pop a cassette into Elissa's little Fisher-Price tape player to give us some music as we went about this morning routine. We had a lot of kid-oriented cassettes, but the ones I remember most were from Canadian musician Raffi.

Raffi put out a string of smash hit children's songs in the 70s, 80s and 90s, my favorite of which included "Baby Beluga," "Morningtown Ride," "Bananaphone" and "The Changing Garden of Mr. Bell." These songs and many others of Mr. Raffi's take me back to those mid-90s glory days of new parenthood like nothing else.

Elissa, of course, remembers none of this. She was too little. But I think back to the way I would sing to her and she would smile, and suddenly the room gets very, very dusty.

This wave of nostalgia is perhaps unsurprising for someone like me whose kids are mostly grown and who is 2 1/2 months away from becoming a grandfather.

I also wonder whether it's a byproduct of the tongue-in-cheekily named "man-o-pause," which medically speaking is more about the gradual loss of testosterone in men and its related physical effects.

In my reading about male menopause, I don't see anything about hormone-related emotional swings, so either I'm just making this up or else I haven't read the right sources.

Either way, I wouldn't mind going back for just one hour to 1994 and listening to some Raffi tunes while changing and holding a smiling baby who was as happy to see me as I was to see her.

What a time that was in our lives.

Did I suggest that my son should commute to college because I thought it would be best for him, or because I don't want to move yet another futon into another dorm room?

Recently Terry accompanied our youngest child, Jack, to his orientation session at Cleveland State University. I've been to a couple of these orientations, and I've always found them to be at least somewhat fun and exciting for both parents and the freshmen-to-be.

As Jack gets ready to go back to the classroom after a two-year absence, he texted us a few weeks ago asking whether he should consider living on CSU's campus in Downtown Cleveland, rather than commute five days a week.

We've had three other kids live in dorms and/or off-campus housing near Cleveland State, so it certainly wasn't an unreasonable request.

Terry and I both, however, counseled Jack that, for him, it's probably best to commute for at least a year and get used to being in college before diving into the on-campus experience.

There's also the matter of student loan debt, which would rise considerably for him if he chose to live in a dorm (what with the cost of housing, food, etc.)

Jack wisely agreed with us, but then I reflected on the true motivation for the advice I had given.

On one hand, yes, I do think this is the best approach for Jack. I really do.

On the other hand, I have helped four of our children move into dorm rooms and apartments, none of which ever seemed to be on the ground floor but involved endlessly waiting for a single elevator that five dozen other students and their parents were trying to use.

It's a tiring process that involves lugging heavy bins and boxes of clothes, bedding and other dorm room accoutrements.

And I'll admit: While I strength train every week, it was one thing doing all of that in my 30s and even 40s. It's a somewhat different thing to do it in my mid-50s.

Oh, I can do it. I'll manage. It's not so much the actual moving as it is the prolonged recovery from moving that will inevitably follow.

Because, you see, that's what I notice about being this particular age: I can still do almost everything I've ever done, but if it's at all strenuous, my body (which used to bounce back in hours) will let me know about it for a solid day or two afterward.

I'll move your couch up the stairs, sure. I'm just desperately hoping you won't ask me to move the love seat, too.

In the end, I'm confident that what I told Jack came from the right place.

But if he decides to stay on-campus in future years, I'm requesting that a case of ibuprofen be kept close by at all times.

Every once in a while, I like to offer my wife examples of things an idiot would say

The AI-generated wife in this picture is looking at her AI-generated husband the way my real-life wife sometimes looks at me.

This is a fairly common exchange between me and my bride of many years:

ME (cleaning up the kitchen after dinner): What should I do with your glass of water? Dump it out?

TERRY: You should leave it it where it is and not touch it so I can have some later.

ME: Yes, of course! I knew that, but I wanted to show you what an idiot might ask in this situation.

This happens all the time. I ask what ultimately turns out to be a dumb question, and when I hear the answer, my only chance at recovery is humor.

Other situations in which I end up having to offer the "I was just letting you know what an idiot might say" defense include, but are certainly not limited to:

• When I'm looking for something in our house and she points me toward its easily discernible (for a non-idiot) location
• When I'm unloading the dishwasher and ask – for what may be the 37th time – which black plastic kitchen tools go in the tool turnabout and which ones go in the sliding drawer to the right
• When I ask what she's doing today after she has already told me twice
• When I'm trying desperately to open a package from the wrong end and she gently points out the "tear here" direction on the other side
• When I ask what time our family get-together starts instead of just looking at the calendar on the fridge
• When I'm trying to put something together and somehow miss the very clearly marked Tab A that goes into Slot B

And so on.

I view all of this as a helpful service. Without me, my wife would never know how to identify an idiot in her life.

Even though she has lived with one for 33 years.

How will I fill my days when I retire?

For many years before he passed, my father-in-law Tom liked to point out that he was retired and rarely had significant obligations on his calendar, unlike those of us still working for a living.

It would be a family get-together on a Sunday, and someone would say something like, "I have to work tomorrow." Someone else would chime in, "Me too."

Then Tom would flash that funny little mischievous grin of his and say, "Not me!"

I have often wondered what that life would be like.

Actually, we all get glimpses of it on our days off. Especially our weekday days off.

The stores and the roads are relatively empty. We're free to structure our time however we like.

And sometimes, after that giddy feeling of being unencumbered by job-related responsibilities passes, we're also free to be bored.

I look ahead a decade (or so) hence to my own retirement, Lord willing and the creek don't rise. The possibilities are intriguing and exciting, but I also worry I'll run out of things to do.

I imagine it takes a little while to get the hang of being retired. By the time I call it quits, I anticipate having been in the full-time workforce for 44 years or more.

That's a fur piece, as my dad used to say. Certainly long enough to develop deeply ingrained patterns of behavior necessary to survive and thrive in the world of work.

Changing those patterns can, I assume, be a bit of a challenge, especially when you reach an age when change of any sort is met with skepticism or outright annoyance.

How am I going to deal with that?

Maybe more importantly, how will Terry deal with having me around all the time?

I can't say for sure, but I can tell you something I noticed recently when talking with her.

It was a particularly stressful and busy week, and I sighed and said to her, "Am I retired yet?"

It took her less than half a second to reply with a sharp and emphatic, "No." The message I took away was, "No, you are not, and I would prefer you not be retired for as long as possible so I don't have to share this gloriously empty house seven days a week."

Maybe, if she has her way, I'll never have to worry about how I spend my retirement days because I'll never be allowed to retire in the first place.

So much of my mental wellbeing depends upon a nearly empty inbox

 

Please, as a favor to me, don't do this.

(NOTE: This post was originally published here four years ago on June 18, 2021. As is usually the case with these blog reruns, I have not changed my opinion on this subject.)

You may have heard it said that there are two types of people in this world: Those with zero emails in their inbox, and those with 5,000 emails in their inbox.

I am of the former camp. You can almost always fit my inbox onto one screen. It is stressful for me to have unread emails in any quantity, let alone a list that numbers into the tens, hundreds, or (gulp) thousands.

There have been times when I was watching a presentation by a co-worker sharing his/her screen, and for a brief second you could see Microsoft Outlook with an ungodly blue number like 32,418 next to their inbox, representing the total number of unread messages in there.

I would have a heart attack. Seriously, at that point you need to just start over.

I maintain an orderly folder system for both my personal Gmail and work Outlook accounts. These folders are divided into categories, and I place emails into each upon receiving and reading them. And many I just delete right away.

"What about emails that need to be acted on but I don't have the time to do it right when they come in?" you might ask.

Then have a "To Do" folder or something that tells you these are messages that need to be addressed in short order. Or make good use of a program like Microsoft OneNote or Evernote that allows you to easily create tasks and reminders for yourself.

Just, please, don't allow that blue "unread" number to get into the five digits. Or the three and four digits, for that matter. The aneurysm you save will probably be mine.

I was never a hat guy until long after the hair decided to leave the top of my head

This is me in a golf cart on the grounds of the Palace of Versailles in France, and well, I just think that's a funny sentence.

I think it was the late 80s or early 90s, but at some point, guys in my generation decided they should start wearing baseball caps.

I should say American guys made this decision, as we seem to be the only ones who have done it.

I should also add that other guys besides me started wearing hats, because until the last couple of years, I never embraced the trend.

That was partly a result of my big head. I never felt I looked all that good with a hat on. Plus, there's a certain reality to buying a hat for a large skull. Sometimes even the adjustable ones are uncomfortably tight.

I lived happily this way for decades. At the same time, starting in my mid-20s, I began losing hair on the crown of my head. This is a genetic thing and, hey, it happens.

One result was that, at least five times every spring and summer, I would be outside for an extended period and my bald spot would turn red and uncomfortable.

I've always just lived with this, never quite making the connection that, if I were to start wearing hats in the warmer months, I would not get these sunburns.

It was only when my wife strongly suggested I keep a supply of hats in my car that I started wearing them, and even then it's really just an occasional thing for me.

In fact, I'm recovering from a crown-of-the-head sunburn as I type this in mid-May because I didn't wear a hat recently when announcing a high school baseball game. The temperature was on the cool side, and apparently to my brain, that meant there was no danger of sun damage.

Which is of course silly and wrong. It doesn't have to feel hot for the sun to burn you.

So I'm trying to get myself into the hat habit. I have 3-4 baseball caps and a floppy brimmed hat in the car, all of which make me look exactly like what I am: A middle-aged suburban dad and soon-to-be grandpa trying not so much to be cool but rather to ward off melanoma from the top of my oversized head.

It's an ongoing struggle.

Cable TV taught me never to become a counselor at Camp Crystal Lake

I'm not sure of the exact year, but at some point in the early 80s, I got a cable-equipped TV in my room.

This was like the hitting the jackpot. It included the full package of premium channels like HBO, Showtime and Cinemax.

These channels were great for watching movies that had been in theaters only weeks earlier. It was a big deal when the first of the month rolled around and HBO introduced its new lineup of movies, including the blockbusters that were otherwise only available at, well, Blockbuster.

It was on HBO that I saw the first four (I think) "Friday the 13th" movies.

I remember sitting in my room one very late Friday night watching the first "Friday the 13th." My parents were asleep, the house was quiet, and I was scared stiff.

I wanted to turn it off when Mrs. Voorhees got her head chopped off, but I couldn't look away.

You have to understand, back then we hardly ever saw anything like that in movies or video games. It was terrifying.

With today being Friday the 13th, I think back on how cheesy those movies really were, and how they probably weren't particularly scary compared to some of the things you see today. But believe me, back in the Reagan Administration, Jason and his hockey mask were the height of the horror genre. They made you think twice about ever working at a summer camp.

And you sure as heck knew not to run to the basement when you heard a strange sound down there. That was just common sense.

When you see a number on the bathroom scale you don't like...

One evening a month or so ago, I decided to weigh myself.

This isn't an especially remarkable occurrence except for two things:

1. It would be the first time I had weighed myself in 2025. I hadn't done it at all this calendar year.
2. When I did get on the scale, the number that came back was one I had never seen before.

220 pounds.

Yikes.

Now, to be fair, it was late in the day after I had eaten, which isn't the ideal time to weigh yourself. And the weight I've gained over the last year or so is partially fat and partially muscle from strength training.

There's also the fact that no one would have looked at me and guessed I weighed a lifetime high of 220 pounds.

My face was fuller than it normally might be, and for the first time I ever remember, I had a bit of a belly. But I do carry weight well, and at most you probably would have said I weighed 195 or maybe 200.

No, 220 it was. I was a little stunned.

I knew I hadn't been eating well. And I knew, for the sake of my health, I needed to get back on track when it came to my diet. But I didn't anticipate that particular number on the scale.

Five days later, I found myself sitting in a Weight Watchers workshop for the first time in more than two years.

Weight Watchers has always been the most effective method of weight loss for me. Their point system works well for someone who is goal-oriented and likes clear direction.

I am what's known as a lifetime member of Weight Watchers in that I hit my physician-assigned goal of 185 pounds back in 2013 and maintained it for a period of six weeks.

Once you do that, you no longer have to pay Weight Watchers a fee. You just need to weigh in once a month within 2 pounds of that goal weight and everything remains free.

I did that for a while, and then I thought I could do it on my own without Weight Watchers.

But I couldn't, and of course I gained weight, so I went back to WW in 2016 and lost even more weight than before (getting down to a gaunt 166 pounds at one point...that wasn't good).

I experienced more ups and downs with my weight over the next several years, and now here we are.

I have been following the WW program, and of course I'm losing weight. I always lose weight when I do this.

My goal is to get back to that 185 number, which may be more difficult than it used to be given my age and the muscle I've gained. The latter is a good problem to have, but the fact is that muscle is heavy relative to fat, so getting the number on the scale to drop can be tricky when you're lifting.

The real question, of course, is whether I can maintain it over the long haul. That's the challenge, and it's going to require a change in thinking.

I can't obsess over the number on the scale every week. It has to be about developing daily habits that get to me to my goal.

My high school track coach, the great Al Benz, always taught us to concern ourselves more with the means than the ends. That is, worry about your form, technique and training, and the end result (times/distances) will take care of itself.

I was never very good at that. Before meets, I always worried over whether I would break 20 feet in the long jump or get into the low 11s in the 100-meter dash. I should instead have been thinking about the steps in my long jump approach or perfecting my start in the 100 meters.

In the same way, my focus now should be on a balanced, healthy daily food intake and getting plenty of water, rather than the exact amount of weight I'll have lost by the time my Monday morning weigh-in rolls around.

If I do the first part, long-term success (with some inevitable small bumps in the road) is guaranteed.

So this is as much a mind exercise as it is about meal planning and label reading. It's about long-term health and a more satisfying pattern of eating.

It's about finding ways to feel good that don't involve late-night carbohydrate loading.

So far, so good. I'm making progress, and it doesn't need to be fast.

Maybe this time I'll figure out how to keep on doing the things I've always known I should have been doing in the first place.

Here's what I've noticed about going to the gym: Everything is heavy

"Yeah, that's the idea," you probably said to yourself upon reading the headline of today's post. But hear me out.

I know the point of weightlifting is to move heavy things around in an attempt to build strength. You're supposed to make your muscles fail, thereby breaking them down and allowing them to rebuild themselves bigger and stronger.

And the only way to make them fail is to lift heavy objects.

Yet there's a difference between "heavy" and "HEAVY."

Like, the first set of everything I do is "heavy." By the time I get to the last rep, I'm working hard to get that weight into the air (or out to my side or whatever the movement calls for). But it's not to the point that I've lost the will to live.

That's not the case when I'm dealing with "HEAVY" weights. These are generally the types of weights my trainer Kirk will give me when I'm working out under his tutelage.

We'll be doing, say, a dumbbell incline bench press exercise. He'll walk over to the dumbbell rack and select two that are, for him, not a problem to move, but that are, for me, at least a small problem to move.

He'll hand me the dumbbells, I'll lean back on the bench, and I'll proceed to lift them 10, 12 or 15 times, however many reps he tells me to do. The last few reps are decidedly uncomfortable, and my earnest desire is for the set to end so I can go back to the mostly comfortable lifestyle to which I'm accustomed.

But then we'll proceed to a second set, and this time Kirk will hand me a Volkswagen or a small elephant and tell me to lift it about the same number of times.

I'm not speaking literally, of course, but he inevitably picks large dumbbells of the kind I normally associate with Mr. Universe contestants and that one women I see every day at the gym who is way stronger than me.

Even if/when I successfully complete this new and decidedly unfair task, Kirk will keep handing me larger and larger objects to lift. It's as if he's playing a practical joke of which he and all the rest of the gym-goers are aware, and I'm serving as a source of endless amusement for them.

I know what my face looks like when I'm really struggling to get a weight into the air, and I'm sure it's hilarious if you're just standing there watching. I also start to contort my body in a way that undoubtedly defeats the purpose of the exercise but also makes me feel like I'm making some progress toward lifting the 4-ton anvil Kirk has given me.

When we get to the heaviest weights, I'm quickly beyond caring whether I live or die. All I know is that existence = suffering and the only way I will make it through is to perform the prescribed number of reps, whatever it takes. This is when I know we have reached the level of "HEAVY."

And, if you'll pardon my language, it really sucks.

Then, suddenly, without me realizing it, my 1-hour session with Kirk is over. He gives me a fist bump, tells me I did a good job, and walks with me back into the gym lobby.

I collect my things from the changing room and head out to my car, noting that while my arms are fatigued to the point I simply cannot lift them over my head any longer, I have logged another workout. Victory.

The next day I am sore. And weak. My daily creatine powder helps, but there's a certain level of muscle fiber breakdown my 55-year-old body simply cannot overcome without the passage of at least a few days.

Yet there I am back at the gym soon after, sometimes the very next day to work on another part of my body while the first part tries desperately to repair itself. This cycle of suffering ends only if I die or decide to give up lifting, which in the eyes of the gym rats around me is kind of the same thing.

So back I go. It's hard knowing that while "heavy" is at least manageable, "HEAVY" is the only way I'm going to get better at this.

And worst of all? I'm paying both Kirk and the gym owner Frank for this suffering.

It always bears repeating: No one ever said I was a genius.

The day-to-day stuff that makes a marriage

Today is our 33rd anniversary. We were married on June 6, 1992, nearly one-third of a century and six U.S. presidents ago.

Relationships, particularly marriages, are very much about such milestones, but you only have so many of these big moments along the way.

What you have a lot more of is the stuff of life. You get one honeymoon and several thousand trips to the grocery store. One wedding and countless trash pick-up days. One each of your silver and gold anniversaries, and many hundred times each of cutting the grass and going to your kids' sporting events and school concerts.

This is not at all to take the romance out of marriage. I've just found that the deepest connection comes from the shared experience of late-night newborn feedings, exhausting family vacations in the minivan, sitting together reading quietly in the living room, and working as a team to catch the little mouse your cats have cornered in the basement.

It's worried discussions over finances, small compromises that keep the peace, gently making fun of each others' little faults, and laughing way too hard at the dumb joke you asked Alexa to tell at bedtime, right before you turn out the lights and both fall asleep.

It's kids' drawings on the side of the fridge, dust balls in the corner of the kitchen no one has the energy to clean up, and going together to the vet to put down a beloved old pet who will never be healthy again.

It's all of that and many other things you won't find preserved in a scrapbook but that are the substance of a lifelong commitment.

Today that's what I celebrate. Not so much the fact that it happens to be exactly 33 years, but rather the often-forgotten but deeply valuable, minute-by-minute reality of life spent as a couple.

It's worth celebrating. Every bit of it.

My conversation with the protein muffin in the refrigerator

ME (opening fridge door): Hey.

MUFFIN: Hey.

ME: So I'm probably going to eat you.

MUFFIN: What?

ME: I'm probably going to eat you. You look delicious. Thought you should know.

MUFFIN: You can't do that.

ME: Why?

MUFFIN: Because Terry made these muffins for herself. You're not allowed to eat us.

ME: Says who?

MUFFIN: Says your wife. She even told you that when you asked whether the muffins were fair game.

ME: Doesn't seem right.

MUFFIN: What doesn't seem right?

ME: Her eating all the muffins.

MUFFIN: But we're her muffins. She made us, put us in little containers, and placed us in the upper right corner of the fridge with the other Terry-only food.

ME: I just want one muffin. There are six of you. She won't miss it.

MUFFIN: She will miss it. Nothing escapes her. You know this.

ME: I just feel like anything she makes and puts in the fridge should be available to all of us.

MUFFIN: And that's how it works 99% of the time. For all the incredible meals she has made for the family over the years, being able to reserve 1% of the food for herself isn't asking much.

ME: Well, I paid for the ingredients. I should be entitled to at least one muffin.

MUFFIN: That's not necessarily true. What if she used the cash she makes at the library to buy those ingredients?

ME: It's impossible to say. It all goes into the same bank account, so you can't know whether it was "her" money that bought those ingredients.

MUFFIN: Nor can you know whether it was "yours." The point is, let her have her muffins.

ME: But you look delicious. And I'm hungry for some sweet carb-y goodness.

MUFFIN: What happens every time you eat something she wants for herself or that she's saving to use in a recipe?

ME: When have I ever done that?

MUFFIN: The chocolate chips, the block of Swiss cheese, the muesli cereal, countless restaurant leftovers. Shall I go on?

ME: No.

MUFFIN: Should you have eaten those things?

ME: No.

MUFFIN: And when you did, was she happy?

ME (cringing as I recall each incident): No.

MUFFIN: Back away from the fridge and find another snack, Hamburglar. We're hers.

ME: Just one muffin?

MUFFIN: No.

ME: How about half a muffin?

MUFFIN: No.

ME: One bite?

MUFFIN: NO! Taking a bite out of a muffin and leaving the rest in the fridge is going to make her madder than if you had taken a whole muffin. Now go away.

ME (resigned): OK.

MUFFIN: I'm glad you're finally listening to reason.

ME: Do you think it's OK if I only eat half the block of Swiss cheese and leave her the rest?

We're going to have a wedding in the family

 

Recently my son Jared proposed to his longtime girlfriend Lyndsey, and she said yes.

None of this was a surprise to us. It was eventually going to happen and was just a matter of when.

Lyndsey and Jared have been together for nearly eight years. They went to the same high school but didn't become a couple until the summer after graduation. As I often say, she is as much a member of our family as any of our kids, as Elissa's boyfriend Mark, or as Chloe's husband Michael.

Now it becomes legal.

Whenever this wedding occurs, it will be the first involving one of our kids. Chloe and Michael have been hitched for 5 1/2 years, but they never had an actual wedding (though not for lack of trying).

They were married by a judge back in October 2019, in part because Chloe was beginning her academic research career and wanted to change her name before she began publishing. This was to maintain consistency and avoid any confusion further down the line.

Their plan was to have a formal wedding in June 2020, but you might remember a little pandemic that popped up a few months prior to that, causing them to push the wedding to October 2020.

That little pandemic refused to cooperate, though, and eventually their wedding was cancelled altogether.

So Jared and Lyndsey's big day will be Terry's and my first time as parents of the groom/bride.

As I write this, we don't yet have a date or a location for that wedding. But whenever it is, it's going to be quite the shindig, I'm sure. These kids have a large army of family and friends who love them and want to be there when they tie the knot.

I can't wait. It's not often I get to show off my Hokey Pokey AND Chicken Dance skills in the same night.

Thanks to my youngest daughter, we built our collective family vocabulary, five words at a time

Until recently, on many weekday mornings, my daughter Melanie would pop into our family chat with a text that looked something like this:

Morning vocab

- Puerile
- Stasis
- Maxim
- Recrudesce
- Corrugated

These were lists of words that Melanie had picked up in her reading (she has become quite the voracious reader). When she came across a term she didn't understand, she would write it down and look it up, an admirable practice with which the vast majority of us are too lazy to bother.

She would then assign a member of the chat to use at least one of the words from that day's list in a sentence. The penalty for non-compliance was losing the opportunity the next time it was your turn to come up with the sentence.

As you can see from the list above, these were not necessarily strange or obscure words. Rather, they were words that Mel and the rest of us may or may not have come across before, and even if we had, we may or may not have known their precise meaning.

Given that we have some writers in the family, and given the wide age range among the nine of us, some people's vocabularies are necessarily larger than others. But everyone participated regardless, and it was one of my favorite uses for the family text chat, which otherwise can go in some pretty strange directions.

There were always bonus points if you could come up with a sentence using all five words on the list, something that was achieved with regularity among the more ambitious in our group.

Recently, Mel informed us she was running out of words for the daily lists. I hope she either comes up with more or maybe reduces the frequency with which she sends them out. I will never be guilty of floccinaucinihilipilification in assessing this practice of ours.

When you and your spouse have different senses of humor

Terry and I have many things in common, but we also differ in enough ways to make life interesting.

Take, for example, what each of us finds funny. Again, there is some overlap, but overall, our individual senses of humor are markedly different.

WHAT MAKES ME LAUGH: British comedy, the Airplane! move series, standup comedians who make you work a little to get the joke, puns, and the broad genre of dad jokes.

WHAT MAKES TERRY LAUGH: Any time I hit my head on something.

As far as I can tell, nothing in this world is funnier to my wife than when I experience some sort of misfortune, particularly physical misfortune that results in near-injury.

She will tell you it's not so much the actual act of me, say, bumping my skull on something, but rather the way I react to it.

All I know is there is an undeniable link between my pain and her amusement.

If we could somehow find a movie that combines Monty Python-style humor with a man randomly popping up and whacking me over the head with a stick, it would be the perfect date night for us.

One soldier's life, maybe not so forgotten

 

The gravestone on the left is that of Merwin Brewer. He is buried in a civilian cemetery in Buckinghamshire, UK.

(NOTE: This post has appeared more often than any other in the history of this blog. It originally ran on Memorial Day 2012, then again on Memorial Day 2015, and yet again on Memorial Day 2021. I also included it in my book "5 Kids, 1 Wife" because it is among my favorite things I've written. Merwin Brewer is still in my thoughts each year on the last Monday in May.)

Every Memorial Day, I think of Merwin Brewer.

There probably aren't many people who think of Merwin Brewer on Memorial Day anymore, or any other day, for that matter. He has been dead for a century.

Merwin Brewer was an American soldier who died on the Western Front at the tail end of World War I. His official address was listed as Cleveland, Ohio, but he was born in my hometown of Wickliffe, Ohio. Our local American Legion post is partially named after him (Brewer-Tarasco).

The annual Memorial Day parade is a big deal here in Wickliffe. It's one of the better parades around, with the high school marching band, lots of candy, and 40 minutes or so of entertainment for anyone willing to stand and watch the whole thing.

The American Legion used to have a group of local kids walk in the parade carrying signs with the names of Wickliffe natives who have died in war. At the front of this group was always a young person holding a sign emblazoned with Merwin Brewer's name.

The 30 seconds or so it took for that sign to pass by was the only time the Memorial Day parade turned truly somber for me. This is partly because, as I've mentioned before, I have a morbid fascination with the First World War and the way millions of young men were killed during it. No war is good, but this one was particularly tragic.

According to this site, Merwin Brewer died on November 13, 1918, from wounds. That was two days after the war in Europe had ended. No one wants to be the last man killed in a war that’s already over, but Merwin was one of those who fell just short of making it through alive.

Merwin served in the Argonne and in Flanders, both the scenes of brutal, bloody fighting. I often wonder exactly how he died. It was quite possibly from a shrapnel wound. Artillery was the #1 killer in the war, and countless soldiers succumbed to infections and internal injuries suffered when they were hit by flying hunks of metal from exploding artillery shells.

His story doesn't sound particularly distinctive. His life ended the same way millions of others ended, probably in some military hospital. But Merwin Brewer is as real to me as any one of my family and friends, because he was born in the same place I was born. He was a real person whose death, now long forgotten, probably brought unimaginable grief and sorrow to his family back in Ohio.

He was only 22 years old. Just a baby. "Virgins with rifles," that's what Sting called the soldiers of the First World War.

I'm as guilty as anyone of treating Memorial Day as a festive day off from work instead of a time for reflection. But while I'm eating my grilled hamburger later today or lounging outside with my family, I promise I'll spend at least another couple of minutes thinking about Merwin Brewer.

It seems like the least I can do.

Guys, here are three reasons you should just listen to what your wife says

It's time for our monthly Blog Rerun. This post was originally published 10 years ago on May 22, 2015. I still find it to be true.

I've been married for nearly 23 years (EDITOR'S NOTE: That was in 2015. It's now nearly 33 years.) Not as long as many people I know, but longer than some. I'm occasionally asked how Terry and I make it work, and when it's a guy/husband doing the asking, I always tell him one thing:

It's largely because I just do what Terry tells me to do.

Seriously. 98% of the time, if she says something, I pretty much follow her lead. And it works.

Here's why:

1. She's smart: I'm not saying your wife is necessarily smarter than you, though my experience suggests she probably is. Regardless, if your wife is like mine, she's pretty sharp and will very rarely steer you wrong.
   
   
2. She has thought this through: Chances are, whatever big decision you're considering or whatever task you're facing, your wife has given this far more thought than you have. This isn't universal, of course, and many guys I know are very thoughtful in their decision-making. But by and large, my wife spends more time thinking about important issues than I do, from how we raise our children to whether or not we should move to Florida. So in most cases, her argument is more well-reasoned then mine, seeing as how I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about hockey and apples. In cases where hockey and/or apples are important elements of the issue at hand, she allows me to make the final call. In all other instances, I defer to her.
   
   
3. There's less effort involved on your part: Maybe this just applies to me, but I'm generally looking for the path of least resistance. And given items #1 and #2 above, I think you'll agree that your wife's judgment is likely to be sound. Therefore, you don't need to go down the path upon which she has already trodden. Go along with whatever she says and you have that much more time and energy to dwell upon your own personal version of hockey and apples, whatever it might be.

I am now vaccinated against yellow fever and never thought I would have to say that

Very soon, I'll be headed to Brazil with my wife, my oldest daughter, and my youngest son. We're looking forward to nearly a week in sunny Rio de Janeiro, home of the world-famous Christ the Redeemer statue as well as, apparently, various exotic tropical diseases.

Well, to be fair, there's really only one main disease they warn you about, and that's yellow fever. And even that is more of a thing if you venture into rural areas, rather than Rio itself.

Still, if you're going to Brazil, the U.S. Department of State and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) make it pretty clear that you should consider being vaccinated against yellow fever.

Both entities take a decidedly passive-aggressive approach to this warning. Read what each has to say about traveling to Brazil and you walk away with a message along the lines of, "Look, you don't have to get the yellow fever vaccination, but if it were me..."

So we got it. All four of us.

Let me say two things about that:

• We had the vaccine administered at a place in Willoughby Hills, Ohio, very near our home. I found it on a list of approved yellow fever vaccination sites, but it was only after Elissa went that we learned it's less of a medical clinic and more of a beauty/wellness center that also happens to stock some vaccines. This was somewhat disconcerting.
  
  
• Guess how much the yellow fever vaccine costs. Go ahead, just take a guess...If you said $400, you were correct. Now guess whether anyone's insurance actually covers this cost. I will give you only one hint, which is that the answer is not, as I had hoped, "yes."
  

To that second point, the vaccination was just one of many unexpected costs and hassles we incurred getting ready for this trip.

Another was the Brazilian tourist visa, something that only just became a thing last month. If we had taken this trip in say, January, we would not have had to worry about it. But now travelers to Brazil have to apply for a visa.

The visa itself is $80 per person which, eh, isn't so bad, I guess. But the Brazilian government's frustratingly exacting standards when it comes to uploading your passport bio page, submitting a precisely edited and cropped head shot, and answering questions written by someone who likely did well in English classes at school but still lacks that real-world touch when it comes to getting across their true meaning, made the whole process more difficult than it should have been.

One good thing in all of this is that our travel itinerary and reservations were completed early on by Elissa, our oldest child and top-notch travel planner. At least that part of it hasn't been difficult.

What could be difficult, though, is getting back from this trip in one piece, given the list of other diseases besides yellow fever the State Department says can sometimes be found in Brazil. Those include chagas, chikungunya, dengue, zika, leishmaniasis, rabies, tuberculosis, schistosomiasis, and the always-festive traveler's diarrhea.

Why didn't they just throw cholera. diphtheria, beriberi, rickets and the vapors in there to complete the cavalcade of 19th-century maladies we could theoretically contract?

Despite all of that, though, I'm very excited to go. It's going to be like the Oregon Trail of international vacations.

Reading names for our school's commencement ceremony: The single most terrifying gig ever

This evening, the 102nd Wickliffe High/Upper School graduating class will walk across the stage and receive their diplomas.

It will be an occasion for celebration and reflection, as it always is.

I wouldn't normally attend this commencement, as all five of my kids have already graduated, but I'll be there tonight in a working capacity. I have the distinct honor and dread of being the person whose job it is to announce the graduates' names.

Look, I'm not shy when it comes to a microphone. I've announced hundreds of sporting events from the youth level to the minor leagues. I've done freelance MC work for corporate events. For some years I was the superintendent/MC for our church's annual Bible school. The announcing/hosting thing is what I do.

This is different. I always try to be perfect when I'm on the mic, but with a soccer game, for example, there's some leeway if you mess up a kid's name.

Not so with graduation. Each of those young people in the caps and gowns will have several friends and family members in attendance cheering them on and recording the moment on their phones for posterity.

The person who announces their name has one shot and one shot only to get it right. Botch it and the kid's parents will be stewing over the memory years later.

This is the first year I've taken on this assignment. Recently I talked it over with Ryan Beeler, the person who handled the reading of names at Wickliffe commencement for many years before me. Ryan is an articulate guy and an excellent teacher and football coach. He knows how to speak to large groups of people.

But when I brought up the fact that I was taking his place (as he is now teaching at another school) and asked him for any advice, the first thing he said was, "Oh man, I hated it."

He didn't hate commencement, of course. He hated the pressure of getting 100+ kids' names right at one of the most important moments of their lives.

I'm right there with you, Mr. B.

Still, I wasn't especially nervous about this until a month ago when I was talking with a soon-to-be Wickliffe graduate named John Colacarro. John is a funny, bright, highly accomplished kid who has achieved a lot in his high school career and will achieve a lot in whatever he chooses to do in life.

I casually mentioned that I would be reading names at commencement, and he jokingly told me, "Make sure you get mine right!"

I laughed. I've known Julie, one of John's moms, for decades. I was saying "Julie Colacarro" long before John was ever born.

Except I always said it the way most Wickliffe people said it: "col-uh-CARE-oh."

Turns out that's wrong. Dead wrong. John informed me it's actually pronounced "cola-CAR-oh." "Cola," as in the beverage, middle syllable "car" like the vehicle rather than "care."

I'm sorry, what? How did I never know that?

More to the point, he's one kid out of dozens whose names I'll be tasked with announcing. What other pronunciation traps await me tonight if I can't instinctively nail the one I thought I was most familiar with?

To be fair, I'll be attending commencement practice this morning, and I'll have the chance to ask each graduate personally how to say their names correctly.

But I won't lie: I'm already sweating this one out. No one will be more relieved tonight when the last kid gets his/her diploma and they all toss their caps into the air.

It will give me just enough time to run home and avoid the angry mob of families whose names I've butchered.

Q&A with the Wife - Let's hear from Terry

(NOTE: On Wednesday we wrapped up our five-part "Q&A with the Kids" series. Before returning to your regularly scheduled blog content next week, let's take a few minutes to pick the brain of Mrs. Terry Tennant, my wife of three-plus decades and an absolute whirlwind of love and service. You won't find many like her.)

What's your favorite thing about your husband?

For as long as I can remember, the deal has always been I make dinner and he cleans it up. I take that totally for granted until I hear other women say they do both and how much they hate it. He knows my love language is acts of service and has always tried to frame things around that like planning time with the kids for a Mother's Day yard clean-up, a birthday Lego party, or a whole-house clean-up from top to bottom. So, I guess the answer is he's always thinking of how he can make my life easier – even with fewer kids around to take up my time.

If you could change one thing about him, what would it be?

The very obvious answer to this is that he could fix things. It wasn't that big of a deal in the beginning, but now I'm tired of fixing things, painting things, etc. Fortunately, we're in a position where we can just pay someone to do things now. The underlying answer, though, would be that he wasn't so hard on himself to be perfect. He's pretty good at most things and he doesn't tend to see it that way.

That's Terry and me with jazz saxophonist Dave Koz.

On that note, how hard has it been over the years being married to someone with next to no mechanical ability?

It has its ups and downs. I mean, fortunately, I do have the ability to fix a lot of things, but I'm just getting tired of doing it. And the older I get, the more difficult it is. Probably the hardest part is that no matter how you try to explain something, there are many times where it just makes no sense to him and that can be difficult because it's completely clear to me.

Did you ever imagine you would have five kids? How did that happen?

No!  I do remember thinking 3-4, and then I vaguely remember Scott saying 4 or 5 and thinking, "What?" But then it happened and I wouldn't change it for anything because I really like #5.

That's Terry when she was a little kid, celebrating a birthday.

How do you like having an almost-empty nest? What do you miss most from the years when the kids lived at home?

It has its pros and cons. Pros would be the house is much cleaner, bills are a lot less, bathrooms are always open, more down time. Cons would be it's always quiet. I sometimes miss the noise and the big dinners around the kitchen table. The constant on-the-go is gone, which is sometimes good and sometimes bad. I miss the football games for the band and for Jared, the soccer games for the first four, the track meets and cross meets for Jack (and Melanie and Chloe). I also miss the parents we used to have in our lives. Some are still hanging on, but many just fell out of touch. I miss watching movies with the kids. From when they were little, I miss dance parties and wrestling tournaments and making cookies and doing crafts and constant snuggles and book reading and all that comes with kids in the 0-10 range.

What is the most exciting thing to you about becoming a grandma?

I am just excited to have a baby in the family again. One where I won't be tired all the time and I can just smother with love. I want to be the best Grammy I can be – making cookies, having sleepovers, playing on the floor and basically spoiling him the best I can!

Q&A with the Kids - Part V - Jack

NOTE: You always hear from me, so I thought it might be fun to hear from the kids for a change. Here's our latest Q&A With the Kids interview, this one with my 19-year-old son Jack. He's the last one still living at home with us, and I love the chance to talk with him every day. He continues to impress me and make me laugh.

What was the best thing about growing up in a big family?

The best thing about growing up in a big family (specifically being the youngest growing up in a big family) is that you get to see everything. Even if I don't remember it all that well, I've watched all of my siblings slowly but surely move out, dozens of parties being thrown (whether birthdays, anniversaries, or concerts), and different collections of my siblings' friends over the years. And though it IS sad to be the last one to do everything, with not as many people watching, I'm really, really appreciative to have had people to watch and learn from over the years.

What things didn't you like about it?

Splitting up all of the attention among five kids is hard, like REEEALLY hard. And it made it so that until around high school, I didn't really get as much time as I could have with Mom and Dad. Although I have been VERY spoiled at home ever since I became an "only child" around 2021. They say you spend 90% of your time with your parents before 18, so it's somewhat unfortunate. But one thing it did teach me is independence and being able to thrive on my own. And I'm grateful for that.

What are your favorite memories of things we did as a family?

To name a few, going to Red Robin for everyone's birthdays, getting our trees at Christmas (when we got real ones), hanging out around our firepit, and ALL of the family dinners.

What is something you wish you could have done or had growing up, but you couldn't because you had four siblings?

For me personally, there wasn't really anything wrong with growing up with four siblings. I truly believe I had a really great childhood and I can definitely attribute that to Mom and Dad. Anyways, a pool and a trampoline.

Do you want kids of your own? Why or why not?

Yes, definitely. Once again, it can probably be attributed to me being the youngest and not having to experience the terror of having five small kids in your home. But I can definitely say that being in a big family has made me want at the very least a medium-sized family. Up to the wife, though, to be fair.

What was your favorite thing Mom used to make for dinner? Do you ever make it for yourself?

Chicken marsala. I've never, ever had any chicken marsala like Mom's. I believe I've helped her make it once, haha. But you better believe I'm gonna be making that recipe WEEKLY when I'm moved out.