I'm very proud to welcome my son Jack as the only other member of The 5:30am Club in our house

I've mentioned here more than once that I'm an early riser. Not as early as some people I know, but most days (even weekends) I'm out of bed somewhere between 5:00 and 5:30 in the morning.

This has been especially true since I started going to the gym five days a week. Getting out the door well before the sun rises means having your pick of weight machines, dumbbells and workout spaces.

I have been the first one awake in our house almost every day for the last 25+ years. Even when all five kids lived with us, my feet were consistently first to hit the floor every morning.

Now, however, I have a buddy who joins me in this ritual of early rising. It's my 18-year-old son Jack, who I can count on seeing Monday through Friday right around 5:30am.

The reason is that Jack is working his first full-time job. He is an Animal Husbandry Technician at Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University, and his hours are weekdays 6:30am to 2:30pm.

The semi-fancy title simply means that Jack cleans out cages and does related chores within the university's animal research lab. My brother Mark worked many years at Case as an IT guy, but he also pitched in and did Jack's current job a few times himself when Covid hit in 2020 and the lab folks were scrambling to cover certain roles.

As in any job with an early start time, the advantage is that Jack is home mid-afternoon and has the rest of the day to himself. Another perk (besides making more money than he ever has) is that, if he chooses, he can take classes at Case for free.

This is no small benefit. Case Western Reserve is a very prestigious – and very expensive – university. I was offered a job there in 2013 and came this close to accepting it despite a significant salary cut, simply because it could have meant free college for my kids.

I'm very proud of the way Jack has adjusted his life and his routine to accommodate this new job. He works hard at it, as evidenced by the fact that nearly every day I receive a notification on my Apple Watch that Jack has already closed his movement, exercise and standing "rings."

It's a pretty physically demanding gig.

So, whereas I used to be alone for the first 1-2 hours of each day, now Jack and I meet up early while Terry is (smartly) still sleeping. We talk a bit when he comes downstairs to make his coffee and get his stuff together.

I facilitate the coffee-making by turning on the electric kettle so the water will be boiling by the time Jack comes down. It's the least I can do for my fellow 5:30am Club member.

After all, we're a very exclusive group.

I have so many questions about this man's cribbage-based approach to attracting women

 

I have a cribbage app on my iPhone that I play from time to time.

(In referencing "cribbage," I'm assuming you're at least passingly familiar with the game, which in the "real" world is played with a deck of cards and a small board with holes around which you move colored pegs.)

One of the features of this app (Cribbage Pro) is that you can play live games against real people.

Or at least I assume they're real people. Either that or it has been a long series of matches between me and very human-like bots since I started playing the app in 2016.

I do think they're actual people, though. If I have a few minutes free, sometimes I'll take out my iPhone and see who's online and looking to play a quick round of crib.

When you make yourself available to play, you have the option of naming your game. My game is usually called "Fast please" because, as you might gather, I'm looking for opponents who play the game quickly like I do, rather than dawdle over their cards endlessly like they're trying to solve world hunger.

Occasionally I will join someone else's game, especially if it's clear they're going to be a fast player.

Recently as I've perused the list of available cribbage games on the app, I have repeatedly come across the gentleman pictured above. His game is always named "Hot ladies plz ;)"

When I fire up Cribbage Pro, I'm just looking for a few minutes of gaming enjoyment, win or lose. When this guy does it, he's apparently looking for love.

I have so many questions I almost don't know where to start, but here are a few:

• First, is he serious? That is, is he really looking for women, or does the little winky face suggest he's just being a cheeky little rapscallion with no intention of actually hitting on female cribbage players?
  
  
• If he is serious, what then does he expect to happen? As you can see above, he has enabled the chat feature on his game, so is he assuming that, instead of studying her cards, a hot lady will instead engage in some sort of dirty online chat with him?
  
  
• Taking this a step further, is it his contention that he can, simply through the force of what are undoubtedly his witty, typed-out bons mots, convince a woman to meet up with him for, say, dinner and whatever I shudder to think would come next?
  
  
• Is he convinced that his profile picture – featuring him in what appears to be a polo, sunglasses and some sort of headgear...possibly a visor – is enough to drive any straight woman wild with desire? (If this is your opinion, sir, while I cannot count myself an expert on female psychology, I respectfully submit that your profile pic alone isn't going to do the trick.)
  
  
• Is it possible I'm underestimating his chances at success? Does the world's hot lady population have a surprising penchant for cribbage, and particularly an attraction to the doughy guys who play it? Maybe there are way more hot ladies on Cribbage Pro than I realize. I certainly haven't noticed them, though, as I'm too busy squinting at the tiny cards on my phone screen and thinking how I may need a pair of bifocals.
  
  

It would make me feel so much better to find out this guy is just a fun-loving dad who names his cribbage game "Hot ladies plz ;)" with tongue planted firmly in cheek (and nowhere else). And that his wife knows he does this and just rolls her eyes at him, causing him to laugh and think to himself, "Mission accomplished."

That, at least, would be a man I could relate to.

As it is, though, I can only wonder how many hot ladies he has attracted. My rough guess is zero, but then I don't claim to understand the ways of cribbage-based romance.

Time to put away the yard stuff, which if I'm being honest is OK by me

An empty yard...my favorite kind

This is about the time of year when Terry, Jack and I gather up the summer stuff around our yard and put it into storage in (and above) our garage.

While this isn't the most fun of chores, it's also one that doesn't faze me unduly. I can take or leave all of the outdoorsy activities that many of my fellow North Coasters immediately dive into once things warm up in May or June.

It's not that I don't like being outside. It's just that, when it's 80- or 90-some degrees around here, I would rather be in my air-conditioned living room than sitting on my deck.

Speaking of that deck, I mentioned here a couple of months ago that we got a new one. It's pretty nice. When we had Chloe's PhD celebration party at our house in September, several people made a point of complimenting us on it.

Yet you very likely won't catch me sitting on the deck other than for occasional outdoor dinners and the even more occasional family movie night where we project a movie onto my father-in-law's old slide screen.

I very willingly worked to help pay for it, but the deck is more a Terry and Jack thing than it is for me.

Same for our backyard fire pit. If my housemates want to go out and have a fire in the summer, I'll do it. But I almost never initiate the idea.

You could also put a hammock in our backyard and I would seldom use it, if ever.

As a Gen Xer, I spent a lot more time outside when I was growing up than my kids did. But that experience has not translated into adulthood. I just...well, I'm not an outdoorsman in any real sense of the word.

I don't even run outside anymore. I do all of my exercising at the gym.

My kids are uniformly bitter that, when they were little, I would never consent to getting a trampoline or a pool. The truth was, I didn't want to mow around the trampoline, and I didn't want to have to take care of the pool. 

Those aren't the best reasons, admittedly, but I'm just being honest with you.

My daughter Melanie will tell you that I "hate luxury and joy." She said those words to me a couple of months ago, and she was only half-kidding.

Maybe one quarter kidding.

I would counter that I very much embrace luxury when it's offered to me. And I'm as joyful as the next guy.

It's just that I prefer the kind of luxury and joy that comes with a roof over my head and a functioning HVAC system.

Ask yourself, is that so wrong?

(I'll be in the living room if you want to come and explain your answer.)

Those three months when the kids' ages are easy to remember

Me trying to compute the exact ages of my children

I call August through October "birthday season" in our family, as three of our kids were born in this time frame.

It starts with Jared on August 5th, continues with Melanie on September 21st, and culminates today with the anniversary of Chloe's birth.

In addition to Chloe being a person worth celebrating, I also like getting to October 23rd because it means that, from now until late January, all of the kids' ages are either even or odd and thus easy to remember.

Today, for example, Chloe turns 28. That matches nicely with Elissa (30), Jared (26), Melanie (24) and Jack (18).

Until Jack's birthday arrives on January 27th, I don't need to give much thought when someone asks me how old my children are. As long as I remember Elissa's age – and I always do – I can just step down in two-year increments through Melanie, then subtract another six years for our relatively late-in-life baby Jack.

Once Jack turns 19 in a few months, though, it all goes out the window. It will take me a few extra seconds to get all of the ages in order in my head, at least until we get back around to next year's birthday season.

Your kids reach their 20s and 30s and suddenly their exact ages are not only a little blurry, but in some sense a little less important, too. There's a lot more of a difference between, say a 10- and 12-year-old daughter than there is between a 26- and 28-year-old.

I think the same way about myself. I'll be 55 in 10 days. To me, 55 is pretty much as the same as 51, 52, 53 and 54 were, and probably essentially identical to 56, 57, 58 and 59.

Of course, by the time I get to 60, I'll probably start forgetting the kids' ages entirely, no matter what time of year it is. At that point, family birthday season won't mean much.

But for now? It's a life saver.

(And happy birthday to Dr. Chloe Edmonds!)

Family parties: Fun? Yes. Bone tiring? Also yes.

Once our youngest, Jack, finished high school, I figured Terry and I had thrown our last graduation party.

Then our daughter Chloe got her PhD and we (very happily) hosted a celebration for her with 70+ guests.

That's when I was reminded how much work goes into making one of these little soirees happen.

Most of the burden falls on my hero of a wife, who plans these things, does the cooking, directs set-up and clean-up, and basically makes the whole event fun for everyone involved.

I'm usually working to pay for the whole thing in the days leading up to these parties, but on P-Day, I go hard.

There are chairs and tables to carry outside. Garbage and recyclables to collect and throw away. Party supplies to bring down from above the garage and set up.

And dishes to wash. Lots and lots of dishes to wash.

Since I don't cook, it's mostly my job to ensure every pot, pan, plate, spoon and Tupperware container is washed, dried and put away.

This is fine in the hours leading up to the party as Terry preps the food, because I have energy then.

It's exhausting when the party is over and the sink is overflowing with items that need to be handwashed.

"Just leave them until the next day," you might say.

I can't. I just can't.

I cannot go to bed with dishes sitting in the sink. I'm simply incapable.

The price to be paid for this compulsion is having to scrub sauce-encrusted slow cookers and bowls of sticky, cold noodles when all I want is to take a shower and crawl into bed.

The menu for Chloe's party featured various pastas, sauces and meatballs. Terry had bleached our kitchen sink a sparkly white a few days before, but by the time my late-night handwashing spree was over, that sink was stained tomato red.

That's not to mention all of the garbage we collected and bagged after the guests had left, and the dozens of cans and bottles destined for the recycling truck that had to be rounded up and taken out.

The next day, Terry, Jack and I finished clean-up by bringing in the folding chairs and tables and emptying out the beverage coolers...all in the middle of an unusually hot and humid mid-September afternoon.

We were beat.

The thing is, though, for all the effort we put in before and after, the party itself was so much fun. It was great connecting with family and friends and meeting some of Chloe's grad school buddies.

We built a fire and roasted marshmallows. Our cornhole set got plenty of use. People clearly enjoyed coming together and celebrating my little Dr. Chloe Edmonds.

Speaking of whom, Chloe now plans to attend medical school. Once she graduates, I might suggest we bring everyone together to celebrate at the local Chuck E. Cheese.

Chuck and his animatronic band can do the cooking and cleaning for that party, as far as I'm concerned.

BLOG RERUN: Wait, is that brain surgeon in high school?

NOTE: This is our monthly Blog Rerun in which we bring back a post from years past. This particular one originally ran on March 30, 2012. For the record, and not at all surprisingly, the feeling I describe here has only intensified over the last 12 1/2 years...

You know when it hit me? When sports announcers started describing athletes who were my age as "old men" or "crusty veterans."

That's when I realized I wasn't 25 years old anymore and never would be again.

When you're growing up, most of the people you meet are older than you. That's all you know, and therefore it becomes your default world view: "I'm a young person."

There is no definite, defined time when you cross over from "young" to "middle aged" (or, in my kids' view, just plain "old"). You can't definitely say it happens at your 30th birthday or your 35th or your 50th or whatever. It just happens gradually and at different rates for everyone.

But at some point, you inevitably become not-so-young-anymore. And that's when you start to realize that many of the people in positions of authority seem to be 12 years old. Like police officers, for example. There apparently was a worldwide effort to install adolescents as police officers and no one bothered to tell me about it.

I look at the cops driving around my city and I want to say, "That's awfully nice they let you take the big police car out, Johnny, but you better get back and do your homework."

Same thing with doctors. I was under the impression that it took a certain minimum number of years of training to become a physician. Then I underwent a very male-oriented birth control procedure and my urologist looked like he was in grade school. Seriously, I couldn't figure out why they had assigned a sixth-grade intern to perform what I considered to be a very delicate procedure.

(For the record, Dr. Schneider was very good at his job. But that doesn't change the fact that once he finished with me, he probably went home to watch reruns of the "Power Rangers.")

It's the athlete thing that really blew me away, though. When I was a kid, professional athletes seemed impossibly old and mature. Then I turned 18 and noticed that most of them weren't much older than me. Then I turned 30 and realized that, if I had had the talent to become, say, a professional baseball player, reporters would probably be describing me as "on the downside" of my career.

Then I hit 40 and couldn't help but observe that there aren't a lot of 40-year-old professional athletes. And the ones who are still around are able to maintain their jobs mostly thanks to very favorable genes that make them appear to be 25.

Now many (or most) of the coaches are younger than I am. My last refuge is that the owners and front-office people are generally my age or older, so I at least have those guys to make fun of and call old fogeys.

Of course, athletes work on a very compressed timeline in which today's 24-year-old phenom is tomorrow's 31-year-old veteran journeyman. The life cycle of an athlete is relatively short, and I suppose the goal is to make as much money as you can by the time you're 35 so you can figure out what to do with the next 50-plus years of your life.

Another interesting thing I've noticed is that certain ages no longer seem old to me. When I was 12, if you would have told me that a 60-year-old had just died, I would have thought, "Well, YEAH, of course he did. He was 60, for crying out loud!" Now I hear about 60-year-olds passing away and I think, "That's terrible! He was so young."

I've not quite reached the point where I regularly read the obituaries (the "Irish sports page," as I've heard them called), but I admit that I will sneak a glance now and then. Usually it's just to see if I recognize someone's parents or grandparents. It won't be too many decades before I'll be adding "classmates" and "contemporaries" to my search list.

Having a daughter going to college and a niece giving birth in the same year doesn't help, nor does the white hair that rings my head (though my standards have shifted such that just keeping some portion of my hair, whatever color it wants to be, is the main goal).

The funny thing is, 10 years from now I'll be saying how great it would be to be this age again. After a certain point, unless you're unusually well adjusted, you're never quite satisfied with your current age. So you complain. It's what we do, especially in this youth-crazed society.

Really, though, a urologist shouldn't look like he just came back from a school field trip.

I'm as bad as most other guys when it comes to going to the doctor, but maybe for different reasons

This is how I picture Amber, my primary care provider, when I reschedule my annual check-up for the third time in the last three months.

In two weeks, I'm scheduled for an annual physical with Amber, my nurse practitioner/primary care provider at the Cleveland Clinic.

Amber is great. I like her a lot. She's smart, friendly and takes the time to engage with me and answer my questions.

You would think, then, that I would look forward to seeing her for my check-up. And usually that's true.

But sometimes, specifically when I know I haven't been eating well and my weight is above what it should be, I avoid seeing Amber.

Take this upcoming appointment, for example. It was originally supposed to happen last spring, I think, and I have moved it back three times.

This repeated rescheduling has not happened because I've suddenly had calendar conflicts. It has happened because, other than a two-month stretch over the summer when I first started strength training, I have spent most of 2024 not eating particularly well.

And thus the number on the scale hasn't been great.

The fact is, I only want to see Amber when I know my numbers will be good. And by "numbers," I mean not just weight, but also cholesterol, blood sugar, etc. I go to the doctor not to ensure everything is working OK, but to gain validation that I'm doing great and am...I don't know, a good person?

I don't have to explain how messed up this approach is. It's like waiting until your car seems to be running well before going to a mechanic.

Making this even worse is that my weight isn't that bad, and it's not like Amber is going to yell at me or anything.

Yet I still don't want to hear that my BMI (that most useless of all health metrics) isn't in the normal/good range, or that I need to watch my carb and sugar intake.

I know all these things, and I beat myself up about them often enough without anyone else having to get on me about them.

And again, my bloodwork numbers can't be that bad. In fact, they may all be just fine, I don't even know. It's just the possibility of getting scolded over them, even mildly, that makes me go to the MyChart website and take advantage of that "Reschedule Appointment" link again and again.

Still, I don't think there's any getting out of this physical in two weeks. Like many corporate wellness programs, the one I have at work offers monetary incentives (lower health insurance premiums) just for going to the doctor and for meeting certain biometric targets.

There's hundreds of dollars at stake here. I can't ditch this one.

So I'm going to go. And I'm going to tell Amber the good news first: I'm finally lifting weights!

Then will come the not-as-good news: I'm also lifting a lot of cookies into my mouth!

She will laugh, we'll talk a bit about the mental game of portion control, and it will be fine.

That's what I keep telling myself: It will be fine.