What it will be like when my kids move out someday...

Reasons I Want My Kids to Grow Up and Move Out

1. I'll no longer have to chauffeur them every time they have a practice or school activity, or want to go to a friend's to hang out.
2. My house will be 57 times cleaner.
3. If someone eats the last apple (the one I wanted), I'll have no problem identifying the suspect (my wife).
4. I can devote an entire room, or even two, to whatever I want. Like having an office. I've always wanted an office.
5. You will never again hear any complaints about dinner, seeing as how everything Terry cooks is awesome and a full 100% of dinner-related objections in the house emanate from our offspring.
6. I'll be far less inclined to wear pants on a regular basis.
7. The designated electorate charged with selecting what movie we're going to watch will consist entirely of Terry and me...and not five other people with far different cinematic tastes.
8. I'll no longer feel obligated to coach or volunteer for sports and school-related activities. I will, with a clear conscience, say, "Sorry, but I can't."
9. If a toilet in the house gets clogged, I know it will be fixed right away. Because Terry and I always grab the plunger and remedy the situation immediately. Others in the house who shall remain nameless do not.
10. When it's time to go to bed, we'll go to bed. And it will be quiet. No one in the living room watching TV or playing video games. No one stomping around upstairs. No one making ungodly amounts of noise in the kitchen at 1 a.m.

Reason I Do NOT Want My Kids to Grow Up and Move Out

1. I will, without a doubt, miss every single car trip, sock left on the floor, last apple eaten, room filled to capacity, dinner complaint, forced-pants-wearing situation, movie night, youth coaching opportunity, clogged toilet, and loud middle-of-the-night snack run. I will miss each of these things, and especially the munchkins who perpetrate them, desperately. Which is why I'm trying my darnedest to appreciate it all while I still can. On balance, I think they can stick around for a little while...

Here are the new rules...please follow them

You're probably not aware of this, but I have been elected Household Living Czar of the United States. You don't need to concern yourself with how this came to pass. Suffice it to say that I have been invested with the power to dictate certain rules and regulations governing the way Americans should live their daily lives.

Henceforth, the following decrees shall be in effect for all citizens of this great nation (NOTE TO KERRI JONES: Please feel free to adopt these in Australia as you see fit):

1. Toilet paper shall be hung OVER, not under: There will be no exceptions to this rule. How this "under" nonsense even got started is beyond me. Violators will be sentenced to watching a three-day, nonstop "Jersey Shore" marathon.

2. Fathers will cast the tiebreaking vote when the family reaches an impasse in movie selection: Family Movie Nights are ruined when you can't come to some agreement on which movie to watch. Much like the Vice President in the Senate, the father now has authority to break the tie and make the final choice. End of story. If you don't like what Dad picks, your only other option is to go and clean one of the bathrooms in the house (Mom will select which bathroom).

3. If something doesn't fit into the cupboard, take the time to make it fit: We keep our cereal in a cabinet over the stove. The way we have this cabinet set up, you can comfortably store three, maybe four boxes of cereal. Oftentimes, some denizens of the house who shall remain nameless but are NOT me or my wife will try to jam in a fifth or even sixth box of cereal. They are satisfied if the extra box stays up there without falling back out, even if it means that it's protruding six inches out of the cabinet and the door won't close. This is unacceptable. It is beyond unacceptable. Either rearrange the contents of the cabinet such that your cereal will fit in there, or take the unnecessary box out and put it back into the basement. One or the other. Penalty for failure to comply is that we'll stuff YOU into the cereal cabinet.

4. Water stays in the shower or gets cleaned up: This isn't difficult. If you take a shower and water somehow gets onto the bathroom floor, clean it up. And then pick the wet towels up off the floor and dispose of them properly. That's it. That's all you have to do. I can draw you a diagram with detailed instructions, if it will help.

5. Turn the lights off. Turn the lights off! TURN THE LIGHTS OFF!: My children are quite clearly aware that light switches can be used to illuminate a room. Just flip the switch up and, presto, you have light! It's really quite the invention. But I have failed to teach them that the switch is, in fact, bidirectional. If you push it down, the lights go off. Amazing, I know! As far as my kids know, a light switch only needs to be used once, and then you should keep it on forever.

6. All family members must learn the function of coat hooks: When we added a mud room onto our house, we had these really nice cubbies and coat hooks installed to store everyone's jackets, shoes, school supplies, etc. In an attempt not to wear the coat hooks out, apparently, certain members of my family elect not to use them, opting instead for the increasingly popular Throw It On the Floor method of garment storage. No. Just, no.

7. Everyone is to gain an understanding of how refrigerators work: Two important things to remember - (a) The refrigerator does not spontaneously produce food every time you open the door. What was in there five minutes ago is what's in there now. No need to check again. (b) The refrigerator refrigerates food. That means it keeps it cold. It operates much more efficiently when the refrigerator door is in the closed position and the cold air inside is not allowed to escape. A minor and perhaps obvious point, but one that still clearly needs to be made in 95% of American households.

8. Practice the basic elements of HVAC economics: Why yes, I suppose we COULD turn on the central air since you're feeling a touch warm. OR....and I know this is crazy....you could simply open a window, which as it turns out is free. Or change into a short-sleeved shirt (also free). The air conditioning system, sadly, is not free. "Free" always trumps "not free."

9. I don't need to see your used toothpaste: You're brushing your teeth. That's good. Over the years I think we've managed to buy our kids' dentist a boat and two summer homes on Cape Cod. But when you're finished brushing, the idea is to spit the toothpaste into the sink and make sure every molecule of it goes down the drain. If you simply spit randomly into the sink and walk away, the next morning there will be a wall of disgusting dried toothpaste in the sink. And nobody wants to see that. Not even me, the guy who cleaned a variety of horrible bodily emissions off of you for the first 2-3 years of your life.

10. If you ask for it, eat it: "Mommy, can I have some pancakes?" "Sure, honey. I'll get you some." Mommy fixes the pancakes and serves them to the requesting child. "There you go, three pancakes just the way you like them!" "Oh. Uh, I don't think I really want them. I guess I'm not as hungry as I thought." Five minutes later, Mommy is flipping through the Yellow Pages looking for an attorney to represent her in her upcoming trial for assault and battery on a minor.

Family Movie Night: Popcorn and trauma

Once every month or two, we try to have a Family Movie Night. Years ago when the kids were younger, this was a relatively easy thing to pull off. Now? Not so much.

You would think that getting the family together to watch a movie would be a relatively easy process. And it should be. But there are two main obstacles to making it happen:

(1) SCHEDULES: Living in our house are seven people ranging in age from 6 to 43, each of whom needs a social secretary. I cannot begin to keep track of the kids and where they are at any given time, nor can Terry, which is scary. If she gets confused by it, there's no hope for me. I'll come home from work on a Friday evening and will ask, for example, where Chloe is. And it's not uncommon for my wife to respond with something like this: "I don't know. She's either at Miranda's, at Rachel's, at Chris Dorazio's, at track practice, at soccer practice, at play practice, at the movies, at the mall, at her piano lesson, at the zoo, at the park, or in Venezuela." All of these things are equally probable, and I'm sure that Chloe told Terry where she was going before she left the house, but poor Terry can only retain so much information. Sometimes the whereabouts of her 15-year-old daughter get pushed out of her brain.

(2) MOVIE SELECTION: Even if we manage to corral everyone into our living room for a two-hour block of time, we're still faced with the dilemma of finding a movie that will appeal to kids ages 6, 11, 13, 15, and 18, as well as their 40-something parents and whatever combination of boyfriends and/or schoolmates happen to be visiting at the time. Inevitably, a few of us end up compromising our individual tastes for the good of the group. But only after 45 minutes of intense negotiation rivaled solely by Middle East peace talks for passionate opinion and violent argument.

Eventually we settle on something, pop it into the Blu-Ray player and sit down for an enjoyable night together.

HAHAHAHAHA! You know I'm kidding. This never actually happens, or at least it doesn't happen quite that easily. Once we get everyone into the house and the movie selected, there's still the process of preparing refreshments. Forty-seven bags of microwave popcorn must be popped. Drinks must be poured into cups with lids so that they won't spill onto our sectional couch (the one nice thing we own) or onto the floor, which would actually be OK because they would blend in well with the Kool-Aid stains that have been there since a Family Movie Night from 2004.

Even more troublesome is that while the food and drink are being prepared, some of the denizens of the house take this as a sign that it's OK to start wandering away and/or engaging in various other activities. When we all finally take our places and prepare to press "play" on the remote, we do a quick count and realize that someone isn't there. Annoyed, everyone starts screaming for that person to GET IN HERE NOW, rather than actually getting up and finding them. When the person does return to the living room, they are met with icy stares. I'm telling you, this is a tough group.

And speaking of people taking their places, this is another crucial element of the Family Movie Night experience. The sectional couch is big, but it's not going to hold everyone if we have visitors. Someone is going to have to sit on the floor, and no one really wants to. So the arguments begin over who's going to sit where, and why he keeps hogging the blanket, and how come she always gets the part of the couch that reclines, and I finally lose it and tell everyone to just SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!!! SIT DOWN AND WATCH THE MOVIE! QUIT YOUR ARGUING! WE'RE HERE TO HAVE A FUN MOVIE NIGHT AND WE'RE ALL GOING TO HAVE FUN OR I SWEAR I WILL BREAK YOUR NECKS! SO SHUT UP!

Capital letters don't do justice to my fury at these moments. Daddy doesn't lose it very often, but when he does, an uneasy peace will usually settle over the room. Those left without spots on the couch resign themselves to two hours on the floor. The others munch their popcorn silently. The movie begins. And 10 minutes later, we forget there was ever any yelling and screaming, because we're all finally having fun as intended.

Except for when someone talks during the movie and the others respond with a forceful "SHHHHHH!" Those moments can be a little awkward. But again, hurt feelings heal within minutes and then we're back to enjoying ourselves.

Or at least I am. That's because I'm smart enough to stake an early claim to the nice reclining chair. No way I'm sitting for two hours on that floor.