Do you think there's anything wrong with this ad? Because I don't.

I want to talk about something I have no business talking about, and that indeed is borderline creepy for a middle-aged male to talk about.

Menstruation.

The cliche would be for me to complain about how women get cranky and irritable when they're on their cycle and be all, "Oh, those crabby ladies!"

But I'm not going that route because, I gotta tell you, I would be pretty darned cranky, too, if that happened to me every 28 days. And I'm glad it doesn't, though I'm very sorry for you ladies that it does. Seriously, that can't be fun.

I live in a house with four women, and all things considered, they're relatively cheerful when it's their time. At least more cheerful than I would be, so I'm impressed.

The reason I bring this up today is because blog reader Angela Kleckler recently posted a link to the following video:

This is a commercial for a company called Hello Flo, which produces something called a "Period Starter Kit" for girls who are newly experiencing this joyful(?) little aspect of growing up female.

I love this ad for at least two reasons:

• As someone who has spent a number of years in public relations, I think it brilliantly markets the unmarketable.
• I love the funny, snarky spin it puts on the whole thing. It takes it from "taboo" to "seriously, can't we just all grow up and talk about this?"

It's not that I'm looking to go around discussing this stuff all the time, because that's just weird and...ugh.

But look, whether or not we like it, this happens to girls of increasingly younger ages. The more we treat it as unspeakable and dirty, the more difficult and unpleasant the experience will be for them. And as a father of three daughters and the husband of, well, one wife, I don't think that's how it should work.

I realize that we, as a society, have become a little too free with the topics we discuss publicly, and I know there is a line to be drawn between the socially acceptable and unacceptable. But in this case, I think we're all a little better off if we lighten up and deal with these sorts of things in an open and more mature manner.

As always, though, I could certainly be wrong. If the ad turns you off more than it amuses you, I would love to hear from you.

Because if there's one thing that women on their periods will agree on almost universally, men are, generally speaking, idiots.

I really want to be a foodie, but I'm having a hard time with it

As part of my job, I spend a little time each week reading foodie magazines.

You know the magazines I'm talking about: Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, Chef, Pretentious and Most Likely Inedible Cooking Monthly, etc.

These are publications read mostly by people who fancy themselves to be amateur gourmets. There is a part of me that wants to be one of these people, but two things get in the way:

1. I rarely cook anything more complicated than macaroni and cheese.
2. I'm honestly not sure whether some of the suggested dishes in these magazines are meant as a joke.

Have you ever read the recipes they print in these high-end food and cooking publications? They tend to be...eclectic.

I recently read an interview with a chef who was asked to describe the best meal he had ever eaten. His answer (I'm not kidding) was, "buttermilk and pine salt chicken with pigeon sausage, and raisin and stout chutney."

I'm sorry, what?

For me, that's nothing more than a string of vaguely food-related words that may or may not mean anything.

Seriously, I'm brimming with questions about this supposedly real meal, like:

• Is the buttermilk separate? Or was the main course "buttermilk and pine salt chicken?" I'll assume the latter, but it should be mentioned that my dad used to drink whole glasses of straight-up buttermilk, so I can't be sure.
• I don't know what "pine salt" is. Or is it "salt chicken" seasoned with pine? I'm not even sure how to read that phrase.
• Pigeon sausage? Really? Pigeon sausage? I just...well, I mean...pigeon sausage? Who does that? Who, in the words of my friend Jennifer Cimperman, lives like that? Pigeons are meant to be fed in the park, not eaten. With OR without pine salt.
• And what's the deal with this raisin and stout chutney? I had heard the word "chutney" before, but I wasn't sure what it was, so of course I let Google figure it out for me. Chutney, it turns out, is "a spicy condiment made of fruits or vegetables with vinegar, spices and sugar, originating in India."
• This does not explain how "stout" ended up in there. I know stout to be a dark beer, and I assume that's the meaning intended here. It would never occur to me to mix raisins (which I like) with stout (which I also like). Just because two things are good doesn't mean you should mix them. That's the one and only culinary law to which I hold firmly.

I shouldn't say this, but sometimes I think chefs compete with each other to see who can come up with the weirdest, most stomach-churning recipe and get people to actually eat it, under the guise that only someone with a refined palette can truly appreciate the combination of, say, bananas and mayonnaise.

Yet ratings for cooking shows have never been higher. Chefs are more than just preparers of tasty food. They're celebrities. They're artists. They're cultural icons.

Not that I'm denigrating their skills. They do something I never could. It's just...I think they (and we) have taken the whole thing a little too far.

Because, you know...pigeon sausage?

Having a son when you didn't even know you wanted one

By the time my son Jared was born exactly 15 years ago today, I had already determined I was destined to have only daughters.

And I was perfectly fine with that.

Jared has two older sisters, which I guess was enough for me to assume I was biologically hardwired to produce only female offspring. I loved, loved, loved having a pair of daddy's girls to come home to every day, so a family of daughters was a nice prospect.

Which was why I was stunned when the doctor yanked Jared from the womb and announced, "It's a boy." To which I answered (this is true), "No, it's not!"

I said it the same way you would say, "Oh, come on!" or "You're kidding!" Before that moment, it honestly had never seriously occurred to me that we might have a boy.

The main reason I didn't know, of course, was that we never found out the gender of any of our babies before they were born. That surprise at the moment of birth was something I'll never forget (five times over). But just because we did it, incidentally, doesn't mean I think everyone should. Whatever you decide is cool with me.

Anyway, my attitude definitely flew in the face of conventional wisdom, which says that all fathers long for sons more than anything else. That wasn't true of me at all. I just wanted happy, healthy children. Whether they were boys or girls didn't matter all that much, truthfully.

But from the moment I became the father of a son, I loved it. More to the point, I loved him. Intensely.

My own father died when Jared was about a year old, and many times since I've looked at my boy and thought of his grandpa. When you have a child of your own gender, you start making all sorts of emotional connections between your childhood and theirs, and your dual role as both a parent and a son/daughter.

Not long after I got married and moved out of the house, my dad told me one of the things he missed was having someone around to talk to about sports. My mom roots for the Indians and Browns, but she'll never host her own sports talk show.

My dad and I would sometimes watch games together on TV, particularly baseball. He used to be a fast-pitch softball pitcher, so he had an uncanny ability to predict what a pitcher was going to throw before he threw it.

That always amazed me until he taught me how to think like a pitcher, then I could sometimes predict the pitches like him. Not as well, mind you, but pretty well.

Jared has spent some time away from home this summer at church and band camps, and it didn't take me long to miss having a boy of my own with whom to celebrate an Indians victory. He and I bond over sports. We talk about other things, of course, but sports is our common ground, as it was between me and my dad.

The circle of life, I guess. At first we're the one who's missed, then 20 years later we're the ones doing the missing.

In a few short years, my "little" (6-foot-1) boy will go away to college, and I hate that I already know I'll miss him terribly. So I guess all there is to do is to appreciate him while he's still around.

Happy birthday, big man. And, as I think we'll both agree, go Tribe.

Someone just tell me exactly how much I'm supposed to exercise and which pills I'm supposed to take

Once every month or so, I agonize over whether I'm properly taking care of my body.

This takes the form of me checking out a few library books on health and wellness, consulting several websites on those topics, and generally complaining to my wife that I don't have a lot of spare time and I'm not sure whether the physical activity I'm doing is sufficient.

There are at least four things that prompt this behavior:


(1) I think I'm neurotic. I had no idea until just recently.

(2) I'm approaching my mid-40s, which I guess is a time when you start thinking about things like this.

(3) I have very limited time in the mornings to exercise, so I want to make sure I'm doing the right thing.

(4) I have a family history of heart disease that's hard to miss.


My dad passed away at age 70 from heart failure, as did my oldest sister at age 56. As I always (morbidly) say, at least I have a good idea of how I'm going to go when my time comes. We don't get cancer in my family, but we're all pretty good genetic bets to have ticker trouble.

The two ways in which I fight this hereditary curse are to try and maintain a relatively healthy weight and to exercise regularly.

The weight thing I've told you about recently, ad nauseum. I think I've also mentioned the fact that I run regularly. Not as far as I used to, but generally 15-20 miles a week almost without exception.

And there's where the trouble starts. Depending on which author/doctor/health professional you consult, running is either the greatest exercise known to man or the worst thing you can do to your body.

You can find well-designed scientific studies that support both points of view. The pro-running crowd will tell you that man was, biologically speaking, born to run. Long-distance running is something that only humans really do, and are in fact built for.

The anti-runners point to joint problems and indicators of arterial inflammation among runners as signs that maybe lacing up the Nikes five times a week isn't the best idea.

I have no idea what to believe. I like running. I enjoy the act of getting out on the road and ambling. Because I really do "amble" nowadays, at least compared to a decade ago. I'm still faster than a lot of people I know, but various factors have combined to limit me to somewhere around 9-minutes-per-mile pace on most runs.

But I know I should probably also do some strength training, something I've never enjoyed and never gotten into. My doctor says my running is sufficient exercise and poo poos the idea of hitting the weights. And since that's what I want to hear, I believe her.

Yet a lot of authorities will tell you strength training is better for you than cardio work. And maybe they're right, I don't know.

I also take a variety of nutritional supplements every day. So many that I have one of those old-person pill cases to keep them all straight. My 17 daily pills, all of which are voluntarily ingested and not prescribed by a doctor, consist of a multi-vitamin (cut in half so I count it as two), two baby aspirin, three fish oil capsules, three calcium/magnesium/zinc pills, two Vitamin C pills, and individual Vitamin B6, B12, D, E and folic acid supplements.

I've built this regimen through my various readings and not from one authoritative source, which is probably not good. And quite likely a waste of money. But they make me feel like I'm doing something to beat the grim reaper, so I keep buying them.

The one thing I've always wanted and never found is a single book or a single website that tells me what to do: Do this much of this exact kind of exercise. Take only these particular supplements. Get this many hours of sleep. Do all of that, and you'll live a happy, healthy life to the age of 200.

This won't happen, of course, and I'm destined to drop dead someday of a heart attack, probably no matter what I do.

In the meantime, I'll drive Terry to her grave with my constant whining and self-doubt, which is the most ironic part of the whole thing.

To my children: Just pick up the blanket

I was down in the basement a few minutes ago, and I was disheartened to find that one of you has, yet again, left a blanket on the floor.

You know the blanket I'm talking about. It's the one that has a green and blue plaid design on one side and white fleece on the other. I won it in a work raffle, I think, 15 or 20 years ago.

At least three times a week, I will come downstairs and find this blanket in a heap on the floor. And I know how it happens: One of you wraps it around yourself as you sit on the couch and watch TV (which I totally understand, given that it's a perpetual 27 degrees down there).

Then, when you're finished watching TV, you simply fling the blanket onto the floor, get off the couch, and go upstairs to attend to other things.

And there sits the blanket, which you got out of the storage cabinet in the entertainment center.

My plea to you is simple: Pick up the blanket.

It's not hard. When you're finished using the blanket, just fold it up and put it back where it belongs in the cabinet.

Heck, you don't even have to fold it if you don't want to. You can just crumple it into a big ball and throw it in there. But the important thing is that you pick it up and put it away.

Got that? Just pick it up and put it away. I've asked you to do this before and you have repeatedly failed to comply. All you have to do is pick it up and put it away. That's it. That's all I ask.

If I go around and ask who left the blanket out on the floor, chances are that all five of you will say it wasn't you. And since I know it wasn't me, and I'm 99.9% sure it wasn't your mother, then one of you either has a very bad memory or is outright lying.

Speaking of your mother, you need to think about her when you leave the blanket on the basement floor. She spends her days cleaning up messes you created, and she is now at her absolute limit. If you leave the blanket on the basement floor again and fail to pick it up and put it away (which, you'll recall, are the simple instructions I gave you earlier), she may snap.

I'm not kidding. She may lose it. And by "lose it," I don't mean that she might yell at you or anything. I mean she may literally murder one of you.

Again, you think I'm joking. I'm not. If she walks down into that basement and finds the blanket on the floor one more time, just one more time, I think it will be enough to push her over the edge. It won't surprise me in the least if she grabs a screwdriver and plunges it into one of your skulls.

I'm not condoning this behavior, mind you, but I'm also extremely sympathetic to her frustration. And when she goes on trial for this crime, I promise I'll be testifying on her behalf.

Because there's not much you're required to do here. This is maybe a 12-second job. When you're finished using the blanket, you just need to put it back into the cabinet. Don't leave it on the floor. Pick it up, then put it away. The folding part, as I mentioned before, is completely optional. Just put the blanket away.

I'm not home as often as your mother, seeing as I spend my days off working so as to earn enough money to buy products for you to leave on the floor. You don't only do this with the blanket. You leave everything from cups and plates to toys and chip bags on the floor. Where did we go wrong with you?

Seriously, at what point did we convey the idea that using something, then leaving it on the floor and walking away is OK? When was that even implied? Because it's not acceptable. Not in the least. Pick up the blanket. After you use it, pick it up and put it away. OK?

The temptation, of course, is to just put the blanket away myself when I see it. But all this does is perpetuate the problem. You'll just keep doing it unless we point it out to you and make you go back downstairs to put it away. Experience suggests you'll keep on doing it even then.

Which I don't understand, because I fail to see any complicating factors here that would prevent you from performing this small task for us. I will break it down into three steps, in case that helps:

Step 1: Pick the blanket up off the floor
Step 2: Fold the blanket (AGAIN, OPTIONAL)
Step 3: Put the blanket into the cabinet in the lower left corner of the entertainment center

Aaaaaaand, you're done. Finished. Nothing more to see or do here. Just put away the blanket. Please, when you're finished with it, just put away the blanket.

Put away the blanket.

The time suck of social media

I always thought that once I bought an iPad, I would become one of those social media ninjas who tweet 75 times a day, comment on 47 friends' Facebook statuses, upload eight photos an hour to Instagram and still find time to create a community of persimmon lovers on Pinterest.

I bought an iPad about a month ago. Want to know what I do with it?

I read newspapers, mostly. Or electronic versions of newspapers. And I also browse the web and scan Twitter, but my actual contributions to the social media world have not increased a whit.

(NOTE: I love that word, "whit." It's one of those words that seems like it should stand for something more common in the English language and therefore be more widely used, but it isn't. It's of Middle English origin and means the smallest part or particle imaginable. You know what other word I like? Skosh. It's similar to "whit" in that it means, simply, "a little bit." My dad used to say it all the time: "Move over a skosh." You pronounce it with a long "O," by the way.)

Sorry. The other thing for which I often use my iPad is looking up the definitions of archaic words. That's worth the $500 price tag right there!

Anyway, these people who take full advantage of social media for business and/or personal reasons amaze me.

Like, for instance, where do they get the time? All of the social media books will tell you it doesn't take a lot of time to reap the benefits of Facebook, Twitter, etc., but this is clearly a lie. Of course it takes a lot of time. They're not fooling anybody.

And I know many of these social media gurus. They are talented professionals who are very dedicated to their actual paying jobs. So again I ask, where does the time come from?

And now that I'm thinking about it, what's the real payoff? Networking? Sure, OK. Business promotion? Uh huh, to an extent, depending on how you do it. The satisfaction of quality social interactions? Yeah, that can be achieved by, you know, actually talking to people.

Don't get me wrong. I like surfing social media channels. It's fun. But that's just it. "Fun" is pretty much the only real benefit for me. I've never earned an extra dollar nor been hired on the strength of social media.

I have an army of LinkedIn connections that I have never really mined for professional gain. All I do with LinkedIn is accept requests to connect.

I'll connect with anybody on LinkedIn. And on Facebook, too. Just send me a request and you and I can be fast friends. Even if you're one of those (this is true, I get these all the time) scantily clad young women with whom I share no mutual connections who suddenly want to befriend me on Facebook. Sure, we can be friends! Just let me make sure it's OK with my wife first.

Incidentally, I'm not so naive that I don't realize that Nicole from Ottawa, the Victoria's Secret model look-alike who reaches out to me on Facebook, is actually Boris, a hairy-backed oil rig worker from Latvia. I choose to believe that Nicole is real and is deeply interested in me.

And I don't care one whit whether it's true or not.

These, believe it or not, are your finest days

If you don't mind, I'd like for you to read a quote I've lifted from a novel called "Water for Elephants." It's a tad long, but it sets the stage for my ramblings today, and you may even find it as inspirational as I do:

Those were the salad days, the halcyon years! The sleepless nights, the wailing babies; the days the interior of the house looked like it had been hit by a hurricane; the times I had five kids, a chimpanzee, and a wife in bed with fever. Even when the fourth glass of milk got spilled in a single night, or the shrill screeching threatened to split my skull, or when I was bailing out some son or other...from a minor predicament at the police station, they were good years, grand years.

But it all zipped by. One minute Marlena and I were in it up to our eyeballs, and next thing we knew the kids were borrowing the car and fleeing the coop for college. And now, here I am. In my nineties and all alone.

You don't have to have children to appreciate the truth of those two paragraphs. You need only be someone who has been through great stress at one point or another. Which is to say, all of us.

If you read this little blog with any regularity, you've seen me wax forlorn over the chaos that is my life. I find myself running hither and yon from dawn to dusk, and I'm not even exactly sure where "yon" is, or why I'm supposed to run there. But I do.

Yet in all of my complaining, never does it escape me that I love this life. I absolutely love it. While there are many people whom I admire greatly, I would not trade my existence for anyone else's in the world.

I constantly worry about my children. I constantly complain about their inability to clean up a mess. I constantly fret over the ways in which I fall short as a husband and father.

And it's wonderful. Every minute of it.

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I think there's a certain nobility in what we as human beings do every day in support of ourselves and those we love. We sacrifice our time and energy for goals we like to believe are bigger than us, and we are better creatures for having done so.

Occasionally I find myself longing for the days when the kids are grown and things finally slow down. But I know for certain I'll miss this rat race.

So lately I've reveled in the bedlam. And so should you.

Whether you recognize it or not, my friend, these are your finest days. Embrace them. Learn from them. Grow in them.

Because when it's all said and done, these are the times that will define who you were and what you stood for. And if you're playing your cards right, you should be pretty pleased with the outcome.