I'm going to start blogging again. You may not care (and that's OK).

On September 14, 2020, I received in the mail a diploma from West Virginia University that officially conferred upon me the degree of Master of Science in Integrated Marketing Communications.

Five minutes later, I started thinking about resurrecting this blog. I resisted the temptation for a couple of months.

Until now.

Starting today, I'm going to give this another shot. I have no idea who's going to read it, but then again, YOU'RE here. So there's that.

I began blogging nine years ago in late 2011. I wrote 114 posts between then and the end of 2012. Then 117 more in 2013.

Then just three in all of 2014.

Followed by 160 posts in 2015.

Then a combined 80 posts over the next two years. And a grand total of eight posts over the subsequent three years, most of which were taken up by grad school.

The point being, I've been inconsistent with this thing.

This is something like the fourth official incarnation of what used to be TheyCallMeDaddy.com, then became TheyStillCallMeDaddy.com, and ultimately morphed into 5Kids1Wife.com because some Japanese guy bought the theystillcallmedaddy.com domain (that's true).

Two things to expect:

• I will try and keep these posts as short possible. No one has the time or desire anymore to read something that takes longer than about 1 minute to get through. This post is already too long.
• I will try and post something every day at around 8am Eastern. I will not succeed in this. There will be many days I do not post, and I am going to be OK with that. Really I will.

The link to each day's post will be shared on both Facebook and Twitter, though you can just visit the blog directly at www.5kids1wife.com and skip the middle man.

If you like what you see, you're always encouraged to share this content on your social media channels.

If you don't like it, we can still be friends. Not good friends, but still friends.

Love and peanut butter in the time of corona

It is, by all accounts, early days yet in the Great Pandemic of 2020, and all I want is to know how it's going to turn out.

Don't we all.

The way I see it, there are three ways it could go, each with drawbacks:

(1) We could successfully flatten the curve and minimize the overall impact of the outbreak. The Internet nut jobs who claim it's all media-driven hype will still have been wrong, but they won't know they were wrong. They'll think they were right all along ("What did I tell you? It was no big deal!") This is the best possible outcome for society, of course, but the people who still, this far into it, insist it's some sort of hoax admittedly irritate me. There's a part of me that needs them to understand how dangerously crazy their thinking is.

(2) We could find that we were too late in acting and the hospitals become overwhelmed and thousands of people die. The nut jobs knowing they were insanely wrong is of little consolation in this scenario.

(3) I myself could be one of the people who die, which as far as you're concerned, assuming you survive, is the same as either outcome #1 or #2, but obviously a very different circumstance for me.

Understand, I don't think I'm going to die from this. I probably won't even get infected.

Probably.

That's the morbidly fascinating part of this whole coronavirus ("COVID-19," the cool kids call it) brouhaha. Few people think they're going to get it, even fewer truly believe it's going to be fatal for them. Many of us will be wrong in those assumptions. At this point, we all just want to know what lies ahead in the days and weeks—and months—to come.

Is this the apocalypse? Or have Mike DeWine and his sign language interpreter already saved our lives?

I don't know. What I do know is that the associated working-from-home gig has been the mother of all mixed blessings for me.

PROS: No 70-mile round-trip drive to work every weekday. Also, the dress code is decidedly relaxed.

CON: I am gaining 6 pounds every 24 hours.

That's a big, big con. I am not eating well. I am not exercising. In my defense, I had a nasty cold for a couple of days earlier this week. And my ankle is still slightly swollen four weeks after I twisted it on a run, so exercise has been difficult. But I can at least exercise some discipline in the things I shove down my gullet, because so far that has been nothing but a wild free-for-all.

I start each day with good intentions, but then somewhere round about mid-morning I start feeling a little peckish and walk over to the kitchen cupboard, only to find the jar of Cinnamon Raisin Swirl still there. This concoction, which we swiped from my mom's house, is described on the label as "peanut butter blended with cinnamon and raisins." And It. Is. Delicious. I sneak spoonfuls all the time, racking up the calories without any corresponding physical activity.

So, we wait. We wash our hands. We practice social distancing. And in some cases, we get fat.

This far into Corona-mania, I dearly hope that's the worst thing that comes out of this.

(NOTE TO INTERNET NUT JOBS: In case you turn out to be right, my apologies in advance.)

I am the PA guy, hear me roar

If you have a Twitter account, you know you don't have much space to describe yourself in that little bio box. We're allotted 160 characters to tell our life stories to the world, so generally speaking, whatever someone puts there is probably pretty important to them.

Nearly half the characters in my Twitter bio are taken up by this phrase: "PA announcer for
@WickliffeHS band, soccer, volleyball and hoops."

For the last few years, I've had the golden opportunity to be on the microphone for all of those activities at my alma mater, Wickliffe High School. This past fall was my sixth as the Wickliffe Swing Band announcer, while I'm in the midst of my third season as the PA voice for the four sports (girl basketball, boys basketball, girls soccer, and volleyball).

Much like offensive linemen and U.S. vice presidents, public address announcers are doing their job when you forget they're there. The less we're noticed, the better.

I've been doing it just long enough to know the most important thing about sports PA announcing, and that is this: You are not the show. You are not the reason people came to the field/gym that day. You are merely there to amplify the efforts of those young athletes and ensure that those in the stands understand what is happening. Anything else is showboating.

I'm increasingly coming to understand that the less I say, the better.

Because, you know, the temptation once someone puts a live mic in your hand is to over-talk. When you do that, it's just a constant stream of words the crowd will soon tune out.

Remember: Amplify and clarify. If you're thinking of saying something that doesn't accomplish one or both of those things, you probably shouldn't say it. Silence really is sometimes golden.

I love PA announcing. I absolutely love it. And I'm still learning how to do it. Cadence, inflection, flow, volume, distance from the mic. Those are all things at which I want to improve, and all things the best announcers do well almost instinctively.

The best PA announcer I've ever come across was Ray Milavec. Mr. Milavec was not only one of my 10th grade English teachers, but also a coach, athletic director, and PA guy at Wickliffe. He was at one time the PA voice of the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers, and after retirement served a number of seasons in the same capacity with the minor-league baseball Lake County Captains.

One time, during the first football game of my senior year, Mr. Milavec made sure the announcers from the local cable access TV station said my name correctly on air, and even told them that I also ran track. He didn't have to do that, but he did, because he believed in making sure student-athletes got the credit he thought they deserved.

Not that you have to do this, but if you fast-forward to the 2:03:39 mark of this video, you can hear the results of Mr. Milavec's efforts on my behalf:

Mr. Milavec was a legend. This is off-topic, but I'm starting a scholarship for Wickliffe High School students in his memory (he died of stomach cancer a few years ago). More details on that in early 2020.

Anyway, my point is, while I love PA announcing, and while I believe I have a certain natural ability to do it, I am far from expert. It is a craft like anything else, and every game I try and get a little better at it.

One of the challenges for me comes when I announce basketball. I don't like to announce a foul until I see the ref confirm the player on whom the foul is called, even when it's obvious to me and everyone else who committed the infraction.

But by waiting for it to be official, I also lose valuable seconds during which I'm supposed to announce who committed the foul, how many fouls that person has in the game, what number team foul it is, who's shooting free throws, and how many shots they're taking.

All of that is supposed to happen before the ref hands the shooter the ball, because once the ball is in the shooter's grasp, my instructions are to be quiet. You don't want to distract someone trying sink a free throw in front of hundreds of people in a hot gym.

Sometimes I do it all on time, sometimes I have to cut myself off before relaying all the details, and sometimes I have to wait until after the shot to finish announcing the particulars. (And sometimes, admittedly, I am still talking when the shooter has the ball.)

It's an art as much as it is a science.

There's also the matter of how enthusiastically you announce the accomplishments of the home team vs. how enthusiastically you do it for the visitors.

Many announcers will scream about their own school and sound like they're announcing the death of a family member when a visiting athlete scores.

At the professional level, I get it. That's OK. But in scholastic sports? I don't agree with it. Yes, I will announce a Wickliffe kid louder than a visiting kid, but the difference is relatively slight. When it comes to 15-, 16-, and 17-year-old athletes, I think they all deserve recognition, no matter what color jersey they're wearing.

Like I said, it's an art. Few hard-and-fast rules, but plenty of ways to screw it up.

Right now, the only Wickliffe sports I don't announce are football and boys soccer. Those are handled by Gary Willis, a veteran announcer from whom I've learned quite a bit in terms of preparation and other small tricks of the trade. Gary is a great guy and longtime Wickliffe sports booster, so as far as I'm concerned, he can keep doing those two sports as long as he wants. I'll sub for him whenever he's unavailable, but he has the right to keep doing it for many more years. He has earned that.

Still, I won't lie: Someday I want to add football and boys soccer to my resume, at which point, yes, I'll have the Wickliffe PA announcing monopoly. I met a guy from Beachwood who does that (all sports AND the band), and he is quite frankly my hero.

But I think my three-point shot call is a little better than his. Just saying.

I just noticed that I am now 50

Last month I turned 50 years old. A lot of people turn 50. More now than ever in human history, as a matter of fact.

It's interesting to think that life expectancy for American men in 1900 was about 46 years. It is now pushing 79.

As my favorite author Bill Bryson puts it in his (excellent) new book "The Body: A Guide for Occupants," that's not because men in 1900 were turning 46 and immediately keeling over. It's because so many children died in infancy, pulling down the overall average.

Still, at the turn of the 20th century, once you hit 50, you started living on borrowed time to a very real extent. Chances were good that an infectious disease of some sort would eventually get you.

Nowadays we've conquered most of those infectious diseases. We just die of heart disease and cancer instead.

All of which is to say, while I feel blessed to live in an age when men are living to nearly 80 on average (and woman beyond that), you can't help but notice once you turn 50 that, mathematically speaking, you are very likely on the downhill side of your personal roller coaster ride through life.

How far you actually make it is largely influenced by your lifestyle choices, of course, but also by genetics. People who live to 100 and beyond usually have relatives who also lived to 100, or at least close to it.

As the saying goes, if you would live long, choose your parents well.

I should mention here that it's not like I think about dying all the time. I rarely do, actually. But the thought does cross my mind with at least a bit more frequency now than, say, when I was 30.

When you're 30, you can reasonably expect that another half century will pass and you'll still be here.

When you're 50, it feels like you're asking for a lot if you expect another 50 years. It happens, of course, and medical science is getting better all the time at extending your stay on this planet. But living to 100 often takes a very deliberate effort to live to 100.

For those who get there, it's usually because they lived in a way that was conducive to longevity.

I do some things well when it comes to personal health, while I slack on others. That's probably how most of us are.

The most powerful anti-aging factor I likely have in my corner is simply that I have a good time. I mean in general. I just really like life, and specifically the life I happen to lead.

Yeah, I complain regularly about this or that. But all things considered, I kind of hit the jackpot when it comes to personal circumstances and overall contentment.

I have it good. I'm very blessed. I enjoy myself day in and day out.

I don't yet have the kind of health issues that become common as you age. I have no chronic pain, I have no diabetes, I have no cancers of which I'm aware, my organs all function more or less pretty well, and I feel good when I get up in the morning.

That changes with time, I understand, but I run regularly, which I know helps a lot. I've let my weight creep back up lately so I have to address that, and I have a genetic predisposition toward high blood pressure that has me on a very low-dose prescription medication (at least until I get those BP numbers back down naturally, at which point I would like to ditch the lisinopril).

But taken as a whole, I'm in a pretty good physical state. I don't even (yet) need reading glasses, though like I always say, that's coming.

It is, like all things, a matter of perspective. People older than 50 would love to be 50 again, and people younger than 50 dread it. I get it, especially now that I'm transitioning from one of those groups to the other.

50 may be the new 40, but I'm not even sure what that means.

All I know is, I'm starting to have to pee a lot more than I used to. And if I have to complain about anything associated with advancing middle age, I'm going with that.

My daughter is graduating, and I'm (mostly) OK with that

My daughter Melanie graduates from high school tomorrow, and several times recently I've had people ask whether the whole graduation thing eventually becomes routine when you have a larger family.

Melanie is, after all, the fourth of our kids to graduate from Wickliffe High School. I suppose you might excuse Terry and me if, at this point, we become a little jaded by the whole thing.

But we're not. Or at least I'm not (and I think I can say with a degree of certainty that my wife isn't, either).

I've mentioned this before, but for many years I thought of Melanie as the baby of the family. That was because...well, because she WAS the baby of the family. At least until Jack came along. And even then she was still "Little Mel" to me.

Then what happens is that you go about your daily routine for days, months, and years on end. You work, you go on vacations with the family, you cut the grass, you wash the dishes, you clean the littler boxes every morning, etc. In short, you live your life.

And the next thing you know, your Little Mel is 18 and graduating. You're helping her with college applications and housing contracts and scholarship essays. And then she walks across that stage in an overpriced cap and gown, gets her diploma, spends a summer working and hanging out with friends, and she's back to being a freshman again.

Only this time it's as a college freshman. And nothing is ever quite the same again.

We have two college kids in our family right now. In a few months, Melanie will be the third. Elissa is out of college, but the effect is the same: They may technically live with you, but they're never really part of your household after that.

Or not in the same way, at least. At best, they're caught somewhere between being the little kid who lives upstairs and the young adult who splits time between your house and a dorm or apartment.

This isn't a bad thing, mind you. It's part of growing up and it has to happen. I WANT it to happen. It's the only way they become independent, functioning grown-ups.

It's just that I'm never ready for it when it actually occurs. I'll tell you that living on her own in a dorm – even if it's just 20 minutes away in downtown Cleveland – is going to be good for Mel. She needs that experience in order to grow and mature.

But the thought of our house without her there on a full-time basis is so sad to me. I love seeing her. I love talking to her. I love helping her when I can. I even love getting her glasses of water when she's laying on the couch and is entirely too lazy to get up and go to the kitchen herself (the family hates when I do that for her).

More to the point, what I love is not those individual experiences, but Melanie herself. She is smart, she is funny, she is hard-working (when properly motivated), and yes, she is beautiful. I mention that last because it's the least important thing on the list, but you won't find a dad in the world who wouldn't say it about his daughter.

Anyway, I guess the point is that, even though this is the fourth time we've done this, it is no less emotional than the first time. I'm so happy for Melanie and so proud of everything she has accomplished, and I know my heart will swell with pride when they announce her name tomorrow.

This is a great thing for her. A wonderful accomplishment. What experience has taught me, though, is that it's also bittersweet for Mom and Dad. Your child is growing up, which is what you want, but she's also starting the process of separating from you and beginning her own life.

And I don't know that any of us is ever 100% ready for that.

Not that you asked, but here's an update on graduate school

I am to the point in my master's degree program that I marvel at those who have made it through this. Here's what I'm finding, as I enter the final two weeks of class #2 (of 11 classes in a program that will take me two more full years to complete at a minimum):

• There are certain problems raised by opting into a master's program that you simply cannot solve. For example, I am chronically sleep deprived, and I see no way whatsoever of getting around this. I work, I come home, I briefly see my family, I do homework. Then I go to bed and do it again. And again. And again. There is no wiggle room there simply to go to bed earlier. There IS no "earlier."

• Related to that, I am not running nearly as much as I used to nor nearly as much as I should. Again, I see no way around this. It just is.

• I am eating terribly, and my weight is creeping up. I could improve this with some self-discipline, but I'll be honest: I am tapped out when it comes to self-discipline. What self-discipline I have serves merely to get me out of bed in the morning and doing everything I have to do.

• Weekends are spent either studying/writing or worrying whether I'm studying/writing enough. There is probably a better mental approach to this, but I haven't yet found my groove there.

I hate how whiny this all sounds. It's my decision to do this, no one else's. And it is a first-world problem of the absolute highest order.

But it's the dominant reality in my life these days, and I now have even greater respect for those who have earned graduate (or post-graduate) degrees, or who are currently in the midst of doing so. You amaze and inspire me.

Every day I think about hanging it up after I get through this particular class. I did that once before, about two years ago when I started a master's program in public relations through Kent State University (this current program is in integrated marketing communications through West Virginia University...go Mountaineers!) I learned a lot at Kent, but I came to a realization that, given my life circumstances, it was insane to try and push through, so I quit.

I think about doing that now, too. I have good reasons for pursuing a master's degree, but it would be SO much easier to just chalk this up to bad judgment and move on. There are two reasons why I don't:

(1) I hate the example it sets for my kids and for anyone else in my life. I feel like I used to do/accomplish big things in my life ("big" by my standards, anyway), and now all I do is shy away from them. I enjoy this material and many things about the academic experience, and I want to keep going, so I do.

(2) My support system. And by "support system," I mean my wife.

Terry has stepped up to the plate with this far better than I have. She does an amazing job trying to arrange things at home so that I can study and do what I have to do every day. And more importantly, she will hear no suggestion of quitting. There is no "let's talk about it" or "oh, honey, I understand." There is simply, "no, that's not happening."

Which frankly is what I need to hear.

She is, as always, the most impressive person I know and the saving grace in my life.

Of course, the decision to walk away yet again from master's-level work (I actually did it in 1997, as well, when I VERY briefly tried an English program at Cleveland State University and realized I was too busy...and that was with only two kids!) is ultimately all mine. She can push and goad all she wants, but in the end, it's my call. She just helps keep me on track.

Here's the thing: I'm pretty certain I'm going to see this through to the end..."The End" being December 2020. I just don't know how, exactly. When you're not taking care of yourself properly, and you're sitting at your computer struggling to understand Chi-squared tests and non-probability samples and statistical significance formulas, you see no clear path to the end.

Do you know what I mean? With most things in life, you can pretty well chart out how it's going to go. God, of course, throws things at you that force you to change course, but for the most part, you can actually see the ultimate goal of whatever it is you're doing. You can envision how you're going to get there.

I cannot do that. I'm about to have the luxury of a six-week break from class that I desperately need and that will easily be one of the top five greatest things that has happened in the history of the universe. So in the short term I'll be fine. And I'm even taking the late spring term off so that Terry and I can indulge ourselves with a once-in-a-lifetime Australian cruise in late March/early April. That means, after Nov. 28, only one class to worry about in the space of 5 1/2 months. Easy enough.

But what happens when I dive back in this coming May? From there the breaks will be fewer and further between. It will mostly be go, go, go, go through the nine remaining classes and 18 months, the last of which is a capstone experience that, I'm finding online, regularly makes people cry and curse their decision to build on their bachelor's degrees.

How do you get through the day-to-day of THAT? I have no idea. There will likely be coffee and an ever-pressing Terry involved. I just can't envision what that daily reality looks like.

Yet I'm going to keep on keeping on. Not sure I have a choice. And occasionally I'll write a melodramatic blog post like this one to make myself feel better.

I appreciate you reading. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go write a discussion board post on a topic I vaguely remember reading about. It could have been last night. Or was it last week? I have no clue...

The middle-aged man with the graying hair and the wonderful life

I get sentimental in October.

I have no idea why this is. It's not like October should be any more likely than another month to make me intensely grateful for the things in my life. And there seems little reason for me to become more appreciative of friends and family now vs. other times, though I suppose next week is the 19th anniversary of my father's passing, and later this month is my daughter Chloe's birthday.

It probably has something to do with the coming of fall, the closing of another summer, the change in the weather, and the way all of that makes you take stock of where you stand.

A month from tomorrow I turn 49. Nothing really special about that, other than the fact that it officially begins the countdown to 50. Turning 40 didn't really bother me. We'll see if 50 is another story.

Fifty is a half-century. That's a milestone by any measure, and it's also the point when they start insisting you undergo various invasive and potentially unpleasant medical tests. The underlying message is, "Hey buddy, the bloom is off the rose now. We're going to have to start performing more routine maintenance on you so that we can delay the inevitable as you start to fall apart."

Which is cool. I can deal with that.

I'm also probably more in big-picture mode these days because of my mom. She is 86 years old, and she is enduring all of the physical and mental challenges we associate with that age. She recently spent a few weeks in a long-term care facility after surgery and a hospital stay led to some health complications.

She is back home now, but she isn't alone for long periods of time. My sister Debbie, saint that she is, arranges a schedule for someone to visit her every morning and every evening. Debbie herself pops in more often and calls Mom throughout the day. Meals on Wheels visits, as well.

Mom is almost always cheerful and happy when we visit her, but the reason we all have to visit in the first place is to make sure Mom is OK. Just like she always made sure each of us was OK. She gets confused over which pills to take. She has lapses in memory of which she is aware, and which frustrate her at times. She shows early signs of dementia.

Mom has another surgery scheduled in two weeks to address a cancer-related issue, and none of us knows what the outcome of that will be.

I love her, I love what she has meant to me, and I love her attitude toward just about everything. I want her to be around for a long, long time, and so does she.

We just don't know how long that will be.

So it goes.

There is also my wife, who – if you have visited here with any frequency over the past seven years – you will recognize as the central theme of my writing. It always comes back to Terry, and that is only fitting, because my life always comes back to her.

Terry recently quit her job at the library after nearly two years of working there. She enjoyed it, but too often it got in the way of the things that are most important to her. She missed too many track and cross country meets, too many soccer games, too much of everything for her taste. So she decided it was time to hang it up at the library and go back to being Full Time Mom.

She is awesome at this job, you understand. My goal is always to make sure I have my own life in order so that she can focus on the kids and the house and the day-to-day craziness of our family instead of me.

Yet she still worries about me sometimes, God bless her.

It's what she does. It's what all truly selfless people do. She remains the most generous, most honest, most beautiful, most giving person I know. It's impressive to watch her work.

Part of her caregiving efforts in the near term will focus on Jack, our 12-year-old youngest/fifth child who, I've said many times, has essentially been raising himself.

Jack, like his brother Jared before him, is tall for his age. He's pushing 5-9, which is tall-ish but certainly not freakish for an eighth grader. Except he's not supposed to be an eighth grader yet. He accelerated midway through his second-grade year, so technically he should be in seventh grade right now.

Combine that with the fact that he's a 12-year-old boy and beginning what is likely to be the most hormonal, most chaotic, most confusing time of his life, and you can understand why he might need a little guidance these days.

But he'll be fine. I know that. Terry will see to it.

And I'll be fine, too, though I whine a lot about the fact that my days are so busy. My job is part of that, of course, but there's also the self-imposed burden of school.

I started a master's degree program seven weeks ago. If all goes well, it will take me until the end of 2020 to complete it.

Graduate school – even when it's just online – is tough, as it should be. I'm working toward a Master of Science in Integrated Marketing Communications through West Virginia University, the ancestral home of my people. Go Mountaineers!

It takes a lot of time, and I knew that going in. But I reserve the right to complain about it, even if I have no one to blame but myself.

In the meantime, the other kids are thriving. Elissa, my whirlwind of a 24-year-old oldest daughter, works for a marketing/branding agency and maintains the kind of schedule that makes me tired just looking at it. She's smart, she's organized, and as my mom likes to say repeatedly, is "just so different from what she was when she was little!" I love her.

Chloe, who will turn 22 in a few weeks, is engaged to be married in a couple of years. She is working toward a double major in biomedical engineering and chemistry at the University of Akron, and is back interning at a medical device company. She has a lot going on. She is all-around impressive. I love her.

Jared, my 20-year-old firstborn son, is a sports management major at Cleveland State University. He lives downtown in a nice apartment with a friend, works when he can at the Cleveland Indians Team Shop, and has a sweet internship with the Mentor Ice Breakers, a new professional hockey team not far from our home. He works hard and I don't see much of him these days, but I'm so proud of him. I love him.

And then there's Melanie, my recently-turned-18 high school senior. She drives out to Mentor High School every day for a marketing course that is preparing her for a career in business. Maybe HR. Good choice. She's also an intern like Chloe, working for a metal products company. Melanie is finishing up a 12-year soccer career over the next couple of weeks. I'm going to miss watching her play. She always goes hard. Always. I love her.

I already told you about Jack, but I should have added that I love him.

I love almost everything about my life. I am insanely, wonderfully, absolutely undeservedly blessed.

And as the leaves start to turn and the air gets a little colder, I'm reminded of that again and again.