You've heard all of my stories. We're scaling this blog back to one post a week.

I like to say I've been blogging since 2011, but that's not really true.

For one thing, the blog started in December of that year, so it barely made 2011. (The posts I have here from 2006 and 2007 were from a separate blog, and I just keep them to make sure they don't disappear into the ether.)

More to the point, check out the number of posts I've put up each year since then. (Note that the current 2025 number is actually somewhere north of 100, but it was at 89 when I wrote this in late July.)

Clearly, I've taken my fair share of months/years off from blogging. What was going on in 2014, 2018 and 2019 that I couldn't at least dash off a few words a week? I don't even remember. 

I am still impressed I cranked out 287 posts during the Covid year of 2021, though.

Anyway, in the past when my schedule has filled to overflowing and/or I felt like I had run out of ideas, I simply stopped blogging for extended periods.

Nowadays, while I'm definitely feeling like I've run out of ideas, I still want to keep going.

Only less frequently.

As of this Monday, September 8, 5Kids1Wife.com will go from a Monday-Wednesday-Friday posting cadence to Monday mornings only. New posts going up at 8:00 AM sharp, as always.

Terry and I have a new grandbaby, of course, and my work and PA announcing schedules are such that finding time to write has become difficult.

Not to mention the fact that I don't even know what to write about anymore.

I'll throw some thoughts up here once a week in case you're still interested, and I figure I can start building a stockpile of stories and interesting topics to cover as I learn to be a grandfather.

Maybe in a year or two we'll go back to posting multiple times a week.

In the meantime, thanks for reading. I always appreciate it. I hope you'll keep stopping by on Monday mornings.

This is the 1,000th post in the history of this blog

Except it kind of isn't.

I mean technically, yes, there are now exactly 1,000 posts on the blog covering a span of more than 17 years. In that sense, yay for a cool milestone!

It's just that the first 26 posts chronologically, from late 2006 and early 2007, weren't really written for this blog. They appeared on a separate, short-lived blog from that time in which I chronicled my experiences as a contestant on The Price Is Right.

That blog, like this one, was constructed on the Blogger.com platform, so a couple of years ago I decided to migrate those 26 posts over to this space, which is relatively easy to do on Blogger. It was a nice way to ensure that little bit of history didn't get lost in cyberspace, since the old Price Is Right blog is now long gone.

Anyway, technicalities aside, 1,000 is a nice round number, and it provides an occasion to say thank you for popping in and reading these little essays. Whether you're someone who reads all three new posts every week or are just an occasional visitor, your patronage is greatly appreciated.

Since I started this blog in late 2011, my pattern has been to post regularly for a time, then to put the whole thing on hold for extended periods while I attended to other parts of my life.

This latest stretch of regular writing has lasted almost exactly one year. I started my current three-times-a-week blogging cadence on June 23, 2023, and here we are, still plugging away with new content on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings.

It's difficult sometimes to come up with topics about which to write, but I'm able to brainstorm just enough material – and sprinkle in the occasional "Blog Rerun" – that this one year of posting is probably the longest uninterrupted stretch I've had.

Again, though, none of it matters if there's no one on the other end of the line to read it, and to engage with the posts on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. And so I say once more, thank you.

Let's see if we can get to 2,000 posts now.

I don't know what other bloggers do, but this is how I come up with topics to write about

The nose. Work on the nose, AI Blog Post Image Generator.

STEP 1: Go to blogger.com and click "+NEW POST" button. This opens up a blank white screen. Big, big mistake. The level of intimidation engendered by a blank white screen cannot be overstated.

STEP 2: Look around the room to see if anything there inspires an idea. Usually it doesn't, unless I want to write about mundane objects in my immediate vicinity like pencils or dictionaries.

STEP 3: Think about all the things that have occupied my time and attention over, say, the past week or so. This is almost always a series of boring work-related events or chores around the house, so rarely does an interesting topic spring to mind when pursuing this line of thought.

STEP 4: Mildly panic. Go get a cup of coffee to reset myself and perhaps gain some inspiration. Briefly consider writing about coffee. Realize I've done it before. Many times.

STEP 5: Return to ominous white screen. Think about the advice my wife would give me in this situation, which is always some variation of "write about me." Briefly consider this. Sometimes follow through on it. Other times realize that, like coffee, this is ground I've covered many times.

STEP 6: Try panicking again. Say a silent prayer of thanks that I write these posts 3-4 weeks in advance just in case writer's block rears its ugly head, as it so often does.

STEP 7: Stumble upon a promising idea, begin to write about it, quickly realize I've had this idea before. Delete everything. Return to blank screen.

STEP 8: Read my friend Peter Vertes' excellent blog to see what he's writing about. Quickly realize I am highly unlikely to successfully replicate his point of view or choice of topics, as I do not happen to be witty nor Jewish nor gay like him.

STEP 9: Swallow my pride and find an old post I can run again, since no one except me remembers anything I wrote in 2014. Position this post as an ultra-exclusive "Blog Rerun." Feel shame.

STEP 10: Sometimes I will mercifully end this process with Step 9. More often, though, I feel obligated to come up with something new and eventually find an idea that is probably only of interest to me. I bang out 300 words about it, make the AI Blog Post Image Generator come up with an illustration to go with it, and set it to publish on a future date. I come away feeling neither satisfied nor accomplished.

And that, my friends, is what I go through to produce these blog posts...which, as I always say, are worth about what you pay to read them.

Judging by the numbers, people only want to read about me being an idiot

I've been doing this blog thing on and off for nearly 12 years, and for a long time I couldn't figure out what made some posts more popular than others.

The headline is a key difference-maker, of course. Much like the subject line of an email, the headline is the first thing people see when I put up a new post. It goes a long way toward ultimately deciding whether someone clicks through, so I always try to be thoughtful about it.

As I looked over some blog metrics recently, it dawned on me the posts that get the highest number of page views are the ones in which I am portrayed as either:

(a) stupid

or

(b) strange

Whenever I find a way to combine "dumb Scott" and "weird Scott" into one post, I hit the reader engagement jackpot.

Actually, I also do OK with "sweet and endearing," like when I point out how awesome Terry is and how much I love her. But in the long run, the heartfelt posts – and the ones where I offer practical advice like how to get rid of bad habits – don't hold a candle, in terms of page views, to the ones in which I am the object of my own ridicule.

Speaking of Terry, I mentioned this insight to her the other day. I told her, "I guess I need to find more examples of me being dumb or ridiculous, because that's what people most want to see on the blog."

Without looking up from the book she was reading, she dryly remarked, "Well, you have a long list of stories to choose from."

I may need to revisit the part where I mentioned how much I love her.

I'm writing a book and cannot stand to read my own words anymore

I don't know what prompted it, but a couple of months ago I decided I was going to publish a compilation of my best blog posts. If all goes well, it will be released sometime this fall.

Actually, the 50 posts in the book may not necessarily be my "best." They're more like my "favorites." As I combed through the 840 posts I've written over the past 12 years, I picked out the ones that either made me laugh the hardest or the ones of which I was most proud, for whatever reason.

The book won't be intended for mass-market distribution. It's more of a pet project for friends and family, though I will gladly accept sales to random people who happen to stumble across it on Amazon.

Creatively enough, it will be titled "5 Kids, 1 Wife." At first I wasn't sure what to call it, but my longtime professional acquaintance Brian Sooy (a published author and marketing guru) suggested appropriating the name of this blog as the title. It's concise and compelling, he told me, and it gives readers a quick taste of what they'll find should they choose to buy the book.

He was right, as usual.

There will be a section on parenting, a section on family and relationships, a catch-all section labeled "Other Things on My Mind," and yes, a small section on my short-lived game show career.

The good folks at Kindle Direct Publishing make it relatively simple to create your own book. As Amazon's publishing platform, they allow you to distribute your work widely and easily in both electronic and hard-copy format. Thus, my book will be available as a paperback or as an e-book, depending on your preference.

Still, self-publishing is not something you accomplish in an afternoon.

First there's the writing. In my case you would think this part was easy, since I was choosing from among hundreds of pre-written, already-published blog posts.

I thought that, too. Then I started working through them and found my initial list had something like 120 posts I might potentially include in the book. It took a good while to whittle the list down to the 50 posts I liked best, and that I thought told some semblance of a collective story.

Then I started re-reading them and realized I needed to do some heavy-duty editing. It's not that they were poorly written. It's just that my writing style has become more economical over time, and the early posts especially needed some trimming in terms of word selection and sentence construction.

I have done five complete edits of these posts, pruning them from a bloated 41,000 words to the sleeker current total of just over 38,000.

At first it was fun to read my old stuff. By the third edit, however, it was torture. None of it seemed remotely entertaining anymore. By the fourth time through, I was thoroughly sick of reading my own material.

Let's not even talk about the fifth and final edit, which I can only characterize as a slog.

Once I got through that, there was the matter of finding photos to go with some of the posts. These had to be photos of sufficient resolution for inclusion in a printed book and to which I owned the rights or had permission to use.

Given those narrow parameters, there may be 20 images in the book once it gets to final form. Maybe.

Then I remembered I'm not a graphic designer and that even the most text-heavy books need some design to make them attractive. Enter another professional from my past, the talented Jamie Feldman, who is going to create the front and back covers.

I've also engaged an interior book designer from the UK named Catherine to work with me on typeface selection, page layout, and creating an engaging look and feel on each page.

I really should have hired someone to copy edit the book for me, as well, but I've already spent enough money on what is supposed to be an informal personal project, so I did that part myself.

I know people like Stephen King have staffers who handle most of this process for them, but now I wonder how many times he read through, say, "The Shining" before vowing never to open one of his own books again.

Believe me, brother, I can empathize.

This blog is on hiatus until I get the itch again

I never actually came out and said this, but when I resurrected 5kids1wife.com last November and started blogging every day, it was never meant to be a permanent thing.

I brought it back because I had a list of topics about which I wanted to write, and a few specific things I wanted to say.

Over the last 10 1/2 months, I've covered all of those topics and said every one of those things.

So now we're giving it a rest.

This sort of pause is well known to the maybe five people who have read the blog since its inception. It's what I do. I go on a blogging spurt for a year or two, then I stop.

I start doing it again whenever inspiration hits.

When that will be, I can't say. But as always, I plan to keep the domain name and occasionally check in with a random post or two as life events dictate.

Then, at some future time, I will pick it up again.

Much like playing the saxophone, I blog in fits and starts (I'm currently on a sax hiatus, too.) My focus right now is on my family, my health, my job and my PA announcing, probably just about in that order. There simply isn't time for much else.

I am grateful for the regular readers and frequent Facebook commenters. The blog gets, on average, around 300 page views per day. I honestly don't know if some of those are "bots" or other artificial/electronic views, but there are enough humans checking in that I get to hear all the time from friends, family and co-workers about how much they enjoy 5 Kids, 1 Wife.

That makes me profoundly happy.

So hey, while we're apart, do whatever you need to do to make sure that you and those around you are happy, healthy and fulfilled. Tell those people you love them, and don't forget to tell yourself every once in a while how awesome you are.

Because you really are.

Take care.

This will be fun if you're interested in 14-year-old, real-time blog posts about my appearance on "The Price Is Right"

 

One of the first blogs I ever had was an intentionally short-lived one about my successful attempt to attend a taping of The Price Is Right and be selected as a contestant. I started it in December 2006 and made the last post the following April.

I deleted that blog (which was called something like "My Price Is Right Grand Adventure") years ago but kept a back-up of the content on our home computer.

Recently I came across that file and figured out how to restore the posts. So now, in case you're at all interested, you can see those posts from a decade-and-a-half ago.

If you're accessing this blog on a desktop computer, just look on the right side of your screen where it says "Blog Archive." If you click the arrows to the left of "2006" and "2007," there will be links to all of the posts.

If you're reading on your phone, it's a little trickier but still pretty easy. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and you should see, under the "Home" button, a link that says "View web version." Just click on that and you'll get the desktop view, though it may be a little hard to read (enlarge as needed).

A few things to note about these ancient posts:

• Many of them originally included photos, but those photos no longer exist on the Blogger.com servers, so they won't load. You'll see placeholders for these images but, with one exception, not the pictures themselves. The posts are text-only.
  
  
• To me the really fun and interesting thing is to read the comments under each post, particularly on the actual day of the taping (January 9, 2007). You will see several comments from my sister Judi and my mother-in-law Judy, both of whom sadly have since passed away. It's wonderful to read their words.
  
  
• There are also comments from my daughter Elissa in which she refers to Terry and me as "Mommy" and "Daddy." She is now 27. This seems forever ago.
  
  
• If you are bored and read through all of the posts, you will find there was a level of uncertainty as to whether my brother-in-law Dave and I would even get into the studio, let alone have one of us picked as a contestant. It would have been a shame to go all the way out to L.A. and not even get into the taping. But spoiler alert...we did.

This was such a great find that I had to post about it, even though you could argue that I talk about my game show appearances entirely too much.

That's "appearances," plural. Because I've been on two game shows. Did I mention that? I did?

Sorry, it won't come up again (at least not in the next two weeks, I promise).

Everything is about to change. And that's a good thing.

I hope you didn't look at that headline and expect me to talk today about some sweeping trend or societal shift that's going to affect your life. I was talking about my own life. As far as I know, yours is likely to continue on its orderly (or not so orderly) way.

It's just that tomorrow is my first official day working at Goodyear, and I couldn't be happier about it. I'm going to resurrect a blog post from 2013 in which I talked about how I good I am at being the new guy in the office. I expect nothing different from this gig.

But the return of full-time employment also means a departure from the relatively leisurely schedule I've been enjoying for the past 3+ months. I get a lot done most days because I like being productive, but I've been able to do it all on my own time and at my own pace.

That changes tomorrow. Suddenly, I'm going to have meetings to attend again, some in person and some virtual. I'll have deadlines to hit and obligations to co-workers. I'm good with all of that, but when you've been away from it for a while, it takes some readjusting.

There's also the matter of a few leisure-time activities and how they're going to fit into the life of Working Scott vs. that of Unemployed Scott. Just to name three:

• The saxophone: I play my horn almost every day, and since January I've been doing online lessons with my teacher Ed every Monday at 5:30pm. Practice time will now have to be fit into a much smaller window during the evenings. And if I'm in the office on Mondays, I don't think I can get home in time for a 5:30 lesson. So something's going to have to change.
  
  
• Writing blog posts: Since April, I've been doing my blog writing every morning right after breakfast. That doesn't work on weekdays anymore, so again, we're looking at evening time for writing. My goal is to maintain an every-day blog, but I'll admit new jobs have gotten in the way of that in the past, so I don't know what's coming.
  
  
• P.A. announcing: I've made this work with full-time employment before, so it's not like this is new territory. But my office is now 44 miles from home, and there will undoubtedly be days I have to be there late. Again, like everything else, it's going to be a balancing act in which I'll occasionally be going directly from Akron to the Wickliffe High School press box without a stop at home to change or eat. I'll live.

It goes without saying that I would rather have a job than not have a job, but getting a taste of a semi-retired life when you're not yet in a position (age-wise or financially) to maintain it can be dangerous. The dose of discipline that comes with reentering the workforce is probably coming at just the right time.

An announcement, plus four random thoughts

I've very much enjoyed doing this whole blog thing over the past 3 1/2 weeks. I hadn't maintained a blog in years, and I forgot how much fun it could be interacting with readers.

But here's the thing: Time management is an issue here. In order to maintain an updated-every-24-hours sort of blog, I have to purposely carve out time in my daily schedule to write, and that's not something I think I can do long term...or maybe I'm just not willing to do it.

In any case, the effect is the same. But I want to keep the blog going. So I think the best compromise will be to post once a week. That I can handle. Is everyone cool with that? I still have it set up so that new entries will be automatically posted on Facebook and Twitter, so if you're interested in reading, the links will be there. Or, as always, you're welcome to visit www.theystillcallmedaddy.com whenever you'd like to check for new posts and/or browse old ones.

OK? OK.

Four things that may be of interest only to me:

1. I like jazz music. Love listening to Coltrane, Miles Davis, Branford Marsalis, Louis Armstrong, etc. But apparently being a jazz lover means having to adopt the jazz language. Talking to jazz devotees entails referring to other guys as "cats," and to any particular piece of music you like as "a gas." I read Downbeat magazine -- the unofficial jazz Bible for decades -- and suddenly I feel like Fred Flintstone in that episode where he became "HiFi," the hipster.
2. Toilet paper should be hung so the paper goes over the top, rather than coming out from underneath the roll. Why are we even debating this in the 21st century?
3. Why must some people with whom I grew up here in Cleveland and who later moved away to warmer climates feel so smug and self-righteous when the snow arrives in Northeast Ohio? Like they figured out some incredible secret ("Wait, what if I move to Florida? Then I don't have to deal with the cold weather. I'm a genius!")  while the rest of us are sitting here winter after winter wondering how we could possibly escape. News flash: I like living here. I choose to live here. The fact that you're a snow wuss in no way reflects on me. I should note that this only applies to a small/select group of annoying people, not to the likes of Kevin Buchheit and most of my other desert and tropical friends.
4. The other day I installed a new battery in my car AND went out and bought and installed a new fuse that was needed for it. I'm still walking around like I'm Mr. Goodwrench.