Saturday in the Park: What is your earliest memory?

Asking people about the very earliest thing they remember in their lives is a tricky business, for at least two reasons:

• What they think is their earliest memory may not actually be their earliest memory. You're going back to toddler-hood here, and I'm not sure your brain's recollection of those times is to be trusted, at least so far as sequencing events goes.
  
  
• What they see as a memory may not have happened at all, but may be something they think happened or that they actually dreamed at some point.

Which is why I'm not entirely sure this really happened, but I believe my earliest memory to have occurred sometime in the latter half of 1972 when I had just turned 3, or maybe slightly earlier. And here's why:

The memory itself is walking out of my room (or my parents' room...wherever it was I was sleeping at the time) very early one morning into our living room, which back then had these hardwood floors. And I remember picking up a copy of the album pictured above, which is "Chicago V" by the band Chicago.

I remember that part distinctly because I thought the cover was so cool. Chicago V came out in July 1972, and I'm guessing my brother Mark would have bought it soon after its release. Or maybe my sister Debbie? Either way, we had a copy.

I can't go back further in time than that, and it was a relatively minor thing that I believe to have happened.

What's your earliest memory, and how confident are you it actually happened and/or that the details in your mind are accurate?

(By the way, "Chicago V" included the classic Chicago song "Saturday in the Park," and today is Saturday and all, so you were getting this post no matter what.)

I'm comin' home...

The title of this post? It's the name of a song by Skylar Grey that my daughter Melanie always, always sings when someone takes her to Wendy's (her favorite fast food restaurant). In fact, she records herself singing it each time she pulls into a Wendy's and then sends the recording to everyone in her family via Snapchat. True story. Terry's kids are so weird.

Anyway, I didn't mean to make reference to the song. I really am literally comin' home today after nine days on the road for business travel. I started off in Chicago two Saturdays ago and then flew out to Anaheim, California, the middle of last week. Both trips were for trade shows. Terry and our daughter Elissa joined me in Anaheim, and now we're all flying back to Cleveland today.

I used to semi-like business travel. And when I say "semi-like," I mean just that. I've never loved it. In fact, I've written before about the hassles that are involved in seemingly each and every business trip I've ever taken.

So I try my best to avoid it. I've been to most of the U.S. and several countries, and now I'm really only attracted to travel opportunities that are 100% fun and 0% business. As those are few and far between for me these days, I tend to stay away from airports and airplanes to the greatest degree possible.

I was trying to think what I dislike most about business travel and I had trouble settling on just one thing. It always feels good coming back to your own bed, of course, but most hotels I visit have nice, comfortable beds, so it's not that.

Some people don't like the food choices when they travel, but I'm essentially a goat and will eat anything, so it's not that, either.

I think it's just the disruption of my routine. Yes, I have five children and thus am subject to varying levels of chaos each and every day, so you would think I don't even have a routine. But roughly speaking, I do. And the older I get, the more I like to just stick to that routine: Getting up at roughly the same time in the same place, doing the same things, enjoying the company of the same small group of people.

That may sound boring to you, but it's heaven to me. What an old guy I am.

Anyway, nine days is more than long enough to be away, so I'm anxious to get back to the sunny(?) North Coast of America. I like Chicago and I like California, but I love Wickliffe. Always have, always will.

Comin' home, comin' home. Tell the world I'm comin' home...

From snow shovel to lawn mower: The transition looms

You're reading this on March 11th or later, but I'm writing it on February 2nd, which of course is Groundhog Day.

(NOTE: I've been cranking these blog posts out at a prodigious rate this winter. I like being ahead of the game. Way, way, way ahead of the game. It makes me feel better about the whole enterprise.)

As I type, there is something like a foot of snow on the ground here in the Cleveland area, which is guaranteed to happen at least once every winter but generally occurs two or three times. We don't get as much snow as, say, Syracuse does, but we do tend to get more than Minneapolis or Chicago.

Which is why mid-March is such an interesting time in our part of the country. Depending on how quickly spring feels like coming, I am often able to put away the snow removal equipment by this point in the year. But some years, our worst blizzards hold off until the latter part of March and even early April.

It's all seemingly random, and we Northeast Ohioans just kind of roll with it. We start complaining well in advance of Valentine's Day, of course, but we put up with it as long as we have to because we obviously don't have much choice.

By this time of year, I'm itching to break out my lawn mower. I don't really like shoveling snow (in part because it screws up my morning routine), but cutting the grass has never been something I've minded all that much.

We have a decent-sized yard. Not huge, but spacious enough on three-quarters of an acre. We inherited a riding mower when we first moved into the house, but I was never a huge fan of it and didn't mourn when it broke down.

Instead I use a push mower. One with a drive system so that I'm not forced to push the entire weight of the machine around, but still a push mower that cuts only a two-foot swath at a time.

It typically takes me just over an hour to cut our entire yard, and what I love about it is that the results are immediate. I get to the end and then look back over a nice little field of green, uniformly trimmed grass blades that conveys the message, "Hey, this guy actually does at least a little something to take care of his yard. You should admire him."

My wife makes fun of me when it comes to lawn moving, and deservedly so. I plan entire weekends around cutting the grass and when I'll be able to do it, influenced by such factors as the weather and what else is on our schedule. We'll be out someplace and I will, without irony, say the words, "I can't wait to get home and mow the lawn."

It's one of those man things that most husbands do because...just because, I guess. It's a job that falls to us and most of us do it willingly. Or at least we complain less about it than we do about other jobs.

But I'll continue to enjoy pushing my mower around until I can't do it anymore, which given Toro's ingenious Personal Pace Drive system will probably be at least another three decades.

And if I do hit the age of 75 and am still push-mowing, you can be darn sure I'll be wearing plaid shorts and black socks while I'm doing it.

Snow, go away. Bring on grass-cutting season!