I have zero attention span, and my smart phone is to blame

Actually, I'm to blame. But I would rather ascribe my complete inability to concentrate on anything for more than 10 seconds at a time on my Galaxy S4 device.

Smart phones are awesome, aren't they? They give us instant access to information, social connection (in a fashion) and entertainment, and we can carry all of that processing power around in our pockets.

But my Galaxy is SO awesome that I've become addicted to it. And I'm not even kidding. I am unable to just sit and do nothing. If I'm stopped at a traffic light, for example, I instinctively grab for my phone. Maybe an email has arrived in the 17 seconds since I last checked it, AND I MUST ANSWER IT RIGHT NOW.

This inability to just be, to just exist, is alarming. Must I be constantly stimulated? Must I be made aware of every news story, big and small, in the 60 seconds after it happens? Must I finish that game of online cribbage before proceeding through the intersection?

Apparently the answers are yes, yes, and most certainly yes.

That last point bears some explanation. I have a cribbage app on my phone that I play constantly. Like, all the time. According to the statistics the app maintains, I have played 2,955 games of electronic cribbage since I bought this phone in October 2013. That's an average of nearly seven games every day. Every. Day. Seven games. Of virtual cribbage.

I shouldn't even mention this, but I'll tell you that many of those games have been played while standing at the urinal at work. And suffice it to say that I'm very good at multi-tasking in these instances, if you catch my drift.

Why? Why can't I just do the one thing for which the urinal is designed, wash my hands and walk out of the bathroom without also engaging in a simultaneous game of cribbage? Or checking my email? Or crushing some poor sap in Trivia Crack? Why?

I don't know the answer. All I know is that in the past year or two, I've lost the ability to be still. I must constantly be doing something. Just sitting and thinking? That's for analog losers. I will be productive and/or entertained during all waking moments. Welcome to the 21st century, ladies and gentlemen!

This, by the way, is why so many of us panic when our phone batteries start running low. "My phone is dying! My phone is dying! Somebody get me a charger and a wall outlet, STAT! MY PHONE IS DYING!" We're addicts, plain and simple.

Did you ever see that movie "Wall-E," which portrays a future in which people no longer walk around or even stand? Instead, they sit on floating platforms and spend their days eating and staring at holographic computer screens. I'm already well on my way to that type of existence.

By the time the Galaxy S7 comes out, I'll weigh 550 pounds and will be confined to my room. But man, there's no doubt I'll also be the online cribbage champion of the world. And there's something to be said for that.

Legos, Legos everywhere...

This is the scene in our living room right now as my wife (that's her on the right) helps my youngest son, Jack, sort through approximately 8 billion Legos and build The Burrow, which you Harry Potter fans will recognize as the name of the Weasley family's home.

It's one of the things that makes her a hero. Not only that she has Lego-building skills that she has passed on to our son, but also that she has the patience to sit on a living room floor and sort through the pieces with (and for) him.

Jack has been on a Lego kick of late, but trust me, what you see here is just a portion of our vast Lego empire. These are Lego bricks assembled through the course of many years of birthdays, Christmases, etc.

I was never into Legos as a kid, and it's honestly one of my least favorite things to do with the kids now. I'll do it, if pressed, but I guarantee I won't enjoy it.

To her credit, Terry likes Legos and she'll do anything to keep Jack occupied with something other than electronics. Given his druthers – and someday I hope someone gives me a big ol' pack of druthers – he would spend entire days on the Xbox and iPad. This is generally undesirable, so if he shows any interest in something non-digital, Terry is ready to pounce.

She's a good mom that way. She's a good mom every way, really.

When your pets suffer from mental illness

We have a cat named George who is very special. And by "special" I don't mean unique and wonderful and precious so much as "should be in some sort of feline assisted living facility."

Everyone in the house agrees that George has a problem, but none of us agree on his diagnosis. One daughter thinks he has obsessive-compulsive disorder, while another believes he may be autistic. I can't say exactly where he falls on the spectrum, though I know something is not right with George.

For one thing, he's pretty slow on the uptake, at least in relation to our other three cats. This doesn't make him any less valuable or less lovable; in fact, it makes him far more entertaining to us.

I actually have a long history of pets with mental illness. Growing up, we had a dog named Bootsie (Or was it "Bootsy" like Bootsy Collins? I don't think there was ever an official ruling on the spelling of her name.) Bootsie/Bootsy had a big knot on top of her head, which my dad believed was some sort of brain growth that made her...different.

Later on, I owned a hamster whom I called Ariel who had extreme anger issues. She seemed pretty lovable in the store, but once I got her home, it was nothing but teeth and rage with that little rodent.

I made the mistake of placing Ariel's cage next to the fiberglass/nylon curtains my mom had sewn for my room. She (the hamster, not my mom) managed to reach through the bars and gather in some of the curtain material, which she proceeded to eat in great chunks. I'm guessing the resulting chemical poisoning did nothing to improve her mood swings.

Nowadays we own two chinchillas, both of whom I think are strange, but I'm coming to believe that's just how chinchillas are and that our two are pretty average, as chinchillas go.

Sometimes, your pets' mental issues can work to your advantage. Our cat Fred is a great example. Fred's problem is that he is obsessed. Specifically, he is obsessed with me. Fred loves me. He sleeps virtually on top of me every night, which keeps me warm. I love having Fred in bed with me. He's like a big, fat, loudly purring electric blanket. When he dies, I'll be sad.

And cold.

Sometimes crazy/obsessive is good.

Jobs I do around the house because I'm the man

My inability to fix things and/or do anything remotely mechanical is well documented. And I freely own up to it. But there are still certain jobs I do within our household simply because I have testicles.

I don't know why these are Man Jobs, but they are. My list includes the following:

(1) KILLING BUGS
This is pretty stereotypical, and it's also true. My wife and daughters - strong, confident women all - will force me to fly in from the other side of the continent, if necessary, if a spider is found in our kitchen. They could easily squash it themselves, but for whatever reason, insect and arachnid killing falls to me or my son Jared.

(2) CLEANING THE CAT LITTER BOXES
As I've mentioned  before, I got roped into this one years ago when Terry was pregnant with Elissa. Terry and her doctor conspired to make up a fake disease called toxoplasmosis, which they claimed pregnant women could contract if they come into contact with cat waste. I stupidly believed them, and 20 years later the first thing I do every single day is still cleaning the litter boxes. I can't believe I fell for it.

(3) MAINTAINING THE CARS
This may seem surprising, given my aforementioned lack of mechanical aptitude, but all it really means is that every few weeks I pop the hoods on our cars to check that they have the proper levels of windshield washer, transmission and power steering fluids, coolant, oil, etc. I also make sure the tires are inflated to the correct pressure. This not only extends the life of our vehicles, it also makes me feel semi-manly. Everybody wins.

(4) CLEANING UP PEE, BOTH ANIMAL AND HUMAN
If one of our cats pees on the carpet and I'm home, I clean it up. I'm not sure why this is, but I'm fine with it. The problem is that, from time to time when the kids were little, they would also pee on the carpet, and again...the clean-up was assigned to me. Like this one time, one of my daughters who shall remain nameless was sleepwalking at our old house. Wearing her little Barbie nightgown, she stood at the top of the stairs and announced, "I can't take it anymore." And then she just started peeing. Terry cleaned her up and got her back to bed, while I soaked up the pee and broke out the stain remover. The unwritten rule is that Scott is to clean up any and all urine-related incidents within the confines of the house.

(5) MAKING SURE THE KEURIG RESERVOIR IS FULL
Our Keurig coffee maker gets used a lot. Which means the water level in the little plastic reservoir attached to the machine tends to drop quickly. In almost all cases, I'm the one who fills it back up. Again, I don't know why, but it bothers me to see that "Add Water" indicator on the little Keurig screen, so I'm quick to take it over to the sink and fill it up. It's my job. It's what I do.

I'm The Man.

I know I'm old because I willingly eat lawn clippings now

You know what my favorite thing for lunch is these days? I call it a Green Leafy Salad. Others consider it to be Rabbit Food. And my dad would have called it Weeds in a Bowl.

I combine a cup or so of kale, a cup of Swiss chard, and a cup of spinach. Then over top of it all I pour a teaspoon of olive oil and a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar. Mix well. Enjoy. And rest easy in the perhaps-false notion that this Grass Souffle will prevent you from ever having a heart attack.

Because that's why I eat it, of course. Not because it seems attractive to me (though it does taste really good...honest), but because I'm supposed to eat it. Leafy greens and olive oil are apparently good for you.

That's how I know I'm firmly in the grips of middle age: When food becomes less about pleasure and more about disease prevention.

Mind you, not all of the good-for-you stuff is repellent. I eat a lot of fruit, for example. And I also try and eat a square of dark chocolate every day. Something about flavonoids and heart health. I just really like dark chocolate, though.

Still, the point is that my menu choices now are driven less by flavor than by grams of saturated fat.

My goal is not necessarily to live as long as I can, but to live well as long as I can. I'll take 80 years of active life over 95 years of total life with 15 spent in a nursing home any day.

Of course, none of this will prevent me from getting hit by a bus or dying in a plane crash. There's an old Yiddish proverb that says "man plans, God laughs," and I firmly believe that.

So when I'm killed by a lion that has escaped from the zoo, I at least want the guys at the morgue to look at my mangled body and say, "You know, he really does look good, doesn't he? Like someone who used to eat mulch."

My poor mom

I should start by saying that my mother is a wonderful woman. A real saint. Salt of the earth. All of that stuff.

But I reserve the right to make fun of her, and will do so now.

I can do this safely, you see, because my mother doesn't own a computer and therefore there is no chance she will ever see this post. Unless one of you snitches shows it to her or tells her about it, in which case we'll need to meet on the playground after school and settle our differences through old-fashioned, bare-knuckle fisticuffs. You're totally going down.

Anyway, my mom is not what you would call technologically savvy. The last semi-electronic appliance she learned to operate was the microwave, and that was back in the early 80s when (true story) she was afraid she would somehow incinerate the planet and therefore didn't use it for the first several weeks it was in her kitchen.

NOTE TO MOM: It's not a thermonuclear device. It's a microwave. It's deadly only to the Stouffer's frozen pizzas you stick in there.

It's not that Mom is anti-technology or anything. She just isn't interested in having a computer or a smart phone. Many of her friends and relatives are on Facebook and the like, but it's not something she particularly wants. Which is fine.

The problem is that when she does interact with modern technology and finds herself stuck – which I will say here happens on a fairly regular basis – my sister, brother or I are the ones called upon to bail her out.

And given all that Mom has done for us throughout our lives, this is in no way a problem or an inconvenience.

But you would think that once we show her how to solve a particular technological dilemma, she would write down the solution or otherwise memorize it so that it doesn't become a problem again.

And again. And again. And again.

This happens most often with her TV. It's a simple flat screen for which she has digital cable service. Time-Warner, in their infinite wisdom, has given her a remote that only a trained fighter pilot could confidently operate. It has (and I'm estimating here because I haven't actually counted) 4,718 buttons, all but three of which do things for which she has no use.

So what often happens is that Mom wants to watch TV, but she can't figure out how to turn the darn thing on. Or, if she does manage to turn it on, how to get to the channel she wants.

Or – and let me assure you, this has happened – how to make sure the TV is operating in English and not in Spanish. This is my absolute favorite Mom TV Conundrum, because listening to her try to pronounce the onscreen Spanish words as they appear makes me laugh so hard I cry.

I know I'm a terrible person. You don't have to tell me.

So every couple of weeks, I am summoned to her house to get her TV back in working order so she can watch Oprah or the Indians game or whatever (and in English). And every time I forget to write down what I did so that she can fix the problem herself next time.

In the meantime, I think I've figured out what we need to do to the remote control to help her:

So I'm back...

Hi, it's me again.

Well, "it's me again" depending on who you are. If you were formerly a reader of the blog known as "They Still Call Me Daddy," then yes, it's me again.

If you're not someone who ever had the fortune/misfortune (I leave that determination to the reader) to stumble across my cyber-missives, then welcome, I suppose.

In any case, I'm going to try blogging again. This is, I believe, my third attempt. Or maybe fourth. It has been at least three.

Whatever the number, each time I've tried blogging, it has always ended with me whimpering about having to stop because I have no time to blog. And by all accounts, that's true.

But it's true only because I used to insist on blogging every single day. And even if you're only writing a few sentences, coming up with blog material every day is a drag. Both for you and for me.

So my wife (her name is Terry...she's very smart and pretty) made the sensible suggestion that maybe I could just blog occasionally. At first I resisted because I have a mental defect known as "All or Nothing Syndrome." Either I do something all-out, full-force, gonads-to-the-wall, so to speak...or I don't do it at all.

For reasons that escape even me, since October 2013 I've opted for "don't do it at all."

Which is silly, of course. In the 14 months since I shut down They Still Call Me Daddy, I've often had the itch to get back online and write. But my life is such that I can't do it every day, so I didn't do it at all.

Yet somehow I've finally managed to convince myself of two things: I don't have to write every day, and when I do write, it doesn't have to be 5,000 words.

This, you understand, is a revelation for me.

So the blog is back. If you were with us in The Old Days, you'll notice three important differences in this latest incarnation:

1. The name of the blog. I want to say that I've dropped TheyStillCallMeDaddy.com for philosophical and emotional reasons. Making a clean break and all. But the reality is that some Japanese person snatched up the original domain name after I abandoned it, and I can't seem to get it back. And while TheyStillCallMeDaddy.net or TheyStillCallMeDaddy.us may be viable alternatives, I like the .com thing and decided to switch to something else.
   
2. As you may have gathered, I'm not going to write every 24 hours liked I used to. Days will likely go by between posts. Maybe even weeks. I can't say for sure, but I'll write when I can and, to be honest, when I feel like it. If you're crazy enough to want to know when a new post is up, I think you'll find somewhere on this screen a place where you can enter your email address and ask to be notified. But be warned: Given my obsessive personality, there will be times when I post 14 times in 48 hours or something crazy like that. It's just how I am. I make no apologies.
   
3. This may be as long a post as you're going to see around here. I no longer feel the need to hit some magical word mark with every post. Sometimes it's just going to be a few sentences. Or maybe a photo. Or maybe a photo with a few sentences. That's so much more enjoyable for you and obviously easier for me. And at this point, I'm not sure whose convenience I'm more worried about. Probably my own.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by and/or coming back. I really do appreciate it. Let's see if we can make it last this time around...