This is video of me jumping out of an airplane and being scared

 

I have skydived (skydove?) exactly one time.

There isn't likely to be a second time.

I wrote about the experience some years ago. If you're interested in the details, you can read that post from 2012.

The value-add here is that I'm providing video of the experience.

A few quick notes on what you'll see in that clip:

• I am jumping by myself. None of this pansy tandem skydiving stuff many of you have done. I went alone. This was 1991. BACK WHEN MEN WERE MEN. (Note that Canton Air Sports did not actually offer a tandem skydiving experience then, or else you can bet your bottom dollar I would have gone that route.)
• I didn't jump out of the plane or anything like that. I had to very gingerly crawl out, hang from the wing strut, and then wait for the instructor to tell me it was OK to let go. This is perhaps not the ideal introduction to an activity such as skydiving.
• Actually, for me, it wasn't "skydiving" so much as "falling terrified from 3500 feet in the sky."

I made it safely to the ground, where my dad tried to capture footage of me touching down just short of the gravel circle that was our landing target and then dropping and rolling as I was taught. But his clunky old Curtis Mathis camcorder was a little too unwieldly for him to get me in frame, so what resulted is just a confused sweeping of the sky, followed by a 2-second shot of me gathering up my parachute. He tried.

Anyway, in sum when it comes to skydiving: Did it, glad I did it, won't plan on doing it again.

It must be winter time - my fingertips are splitting open

I have a problem that is eminently solvable, yet I choose not to solve it.

It is this: Every year, as the weather turns colder here in Northeast Ohio, the skin on and around my fingertips gets very dry.

So dry, in fact, that it often just splits right open and leaves me a little cut. These cuts are located in an area with many nerve endings, so they're always a little painful and a lot annoying.

Depending on their exact coordinates, these cuts sometimes also make typing difficult, as each keystroke causes a small stab of pain. I type a lot in the course of a given day. A lot.

You will nod approvingly when I tell you that I apply lotion to my hands (concentrating on the fingertips) every morning from October through March after I shower. This helps.

But it's not enough.

In order to remain effective, the lotion probably needs to be refreshed at least 2-3 times every day.

Rarely, however, do I go beyond that morning application.

Thus the dry skin, thus the cuts, thus the painful typing.

Don't bother asking why I don't just put on more lotion as the day goes by. I simply forget to do it, effectively choosing to have a red, nasty cut on at least one fingertip all winter long.

There is, in fact, one of these cuts on my right index figure as I type this sentence...as I painfully, painfully type this sentence and try desperately to remember to pump out another dollop of CVS Complete Moisture Lotion sometime around lunch today.

Bananas are probably the biggest source of stress in my life

I eat a lot of fruit. We have covered this subject before.

In particular, not a day goes by when I don't eat multiple apples and bananas.

The apples are relatively easy to keep on hand. They last a long time, and you can buy large quantities of them.

Bananas, on the other hand, are a tricky business.

Bananas can go from green and inedible to brown and mushy in, like, hours. You have to constantly monitor them.

When you're at the grocery store and want to buy bananas, there are three important questions you must ask yourself:

(1) How many bananas do we have at home right now?

(2) How many bananas can we have and still be relatively sure they'll all get eaten before they go bad?

(3) What is the overall ripeness of this store's bananas, and in what stages of development should the bananas I buy be?

That last one is the toughest to navigate. If you're fortunate enough to live near a store that stocks bananas in a range of different ripenesses (as opposed to all very yellow and ready to eat or all green and days away from consumption), you have to work out a plan.

Ideally, you'll come home with, say, one very green bunch, one semi-green bunch, and one virtually-ready-to-eat bunch.

At least that's what I do. We are down to just five people living in our house these days, but they eat a lot of bananas. Much of my daily mental energy is spent reviewing the state of our banana cache, plotting from where and when I'll buy new bananas, and trying to decide whether the current bananas are OK to eat.

It's all enough to drive you...well, I'll let you say it.

No regrets (except for 8th-grade algebra)

People talk all the time about wanting to go back and relive certain parts of their lives.

Not me. I'm good where I am, thanks.

I've had very few real challenges in my 51 years on this planet. I'm blessed beyond measure and certainly beyond anything I deserve.

You would think, then, that I would have a whole menu of wonderful memories I want to experience again. And I guess I do. The first time I kissed Terry was pretty cool. Watching my kids be born was mind-blowing. Even the first song I managed to play on a saxophone ("Hot Cross Buns," for the record) was a thrill.

But I don't look backward much, other than all of those World War 1 podcasts I listen to. I'm much more about the now and the what's-to-come.

With one exception: Mr. Mazer's algebra class at Wickliffe Middle School. It's the only class I ever failed in my life. To this day, I can't explain what happened. I had something like six A's, one B, and an F on my report card. Who does that?

The fault, by the way, was entirely my own. I was too immature to ask for help when I needed it, and too irresponsible to do anything once I had fallen hopelessly behind.

The next year I re-took algebra as a freshman with a different teacher and got A's across the board. Mr. Mazer had done everything right, I had done everything wrong. I wish I could go back and retake the class as an eighth-grader and pass it like I should have.

But that's it. Everything else can stay as it is...or was.

If it helps, I hate myself for liking "Wonderful Christmastime"

December 1st is traditionally the first day I allow myself to listen to Christmas music. I know a lot of people start earlier, and that's OK. I just like to wait until the first of December.

Nearly every year, the first holiday tune that comes up on my phone is Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime." This is purposeful, because I put it there.

I am in a hated minority, I realize.

Which do you think is more highly despised: "Wonderful Christmastime" or Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You?" It's close.

In the case of the latter, I think it has more to do with people disliking Mariah herself. But who hates Paul McCartney? No one. No one hates Paul McCartney.

The loathing for "Wonderful Christmastime" actually stems from the fact people love Sir Paul so much. How, they wonder, could a musical legend produce something so annoying, so sappy, so grating?

I get it...I think. But I really like that song. It makes me happy. It's at the top of my most-listened-to Christmas playlist.

You are probably appalled at me.

Which is fine, because I'm appalled at me, too. I can't help it.

"Ding dong, ding dong, ding dong, ding!"

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.)