Shutting the Shuttle Down

Twenty years. That's how long My Lovely Wife and I have run the shuttle. This September will mark twenty years of transporting the transportationally-disadvantaged to any number of locations within a 20-mile radius of our home for any number of reasons.

• Doctor appointments
• Daycare
• Day camps
• Pre-school
• Gymnastics
• Dance classes
• Elementary school
• Sunday school
• Girl Scouts
• Boy Scouts
• Birthday parties
• Middle school
• Dance recitals
• Sleepovers
• Summer camps
• Church youth groups
• Band camps
• High School
• Band competitions
• Concerts
• Robotics competitions
• Track meets
• College tours

Logging sufficient hours each month to earn a chauffeur's license isn't the half of it. Child safety seats required for small children come equipped with a complexity of straps and harnesses worthy of the greatest puzzle masters. When strapping your first born into a car seat outside the hospital, they ought to warn you to prepare yourself for a buckling system so ridiculously intricate it should come equipped with a flight attendant to guide you through the procedure every time you leave the house.

"Take the right shoulder strap, feed it through the plastic chest thingy and down between your child's legs. Take the left shoulder strap, feed it through the other side of the plastic chest thingy until you realize you have the chest thingy backwards. Undo the right shoulder strap, reverse the chest thingy, feed the right shoulder strap back through the chest thingy, then the left shoulder strap, and place the two metal tabs at the ends of the straps together. They should fit like puzzle pieces, but they won't snap together because that would be cheating. Holding the two metal tabs together with one hand and picking up your child's fallen binky with the other, press the conjoined tabs into a narrow, invisible groove that lies directly beneath your child's heavily diapered buttocks. Spend the next three minutes struggling to fit the conjoined tabs into the invisible slot while cursing. Once you find the narrow slot and have inserted the metal tabs, press with a force much greater than you believe is safe for your child. If your child is not crying when you have finished, then he or she is probably not securely buckled. Return to step one and repeat the entire process."

It isn't just infants who need car seats. As your children grow, car seats morph like Transformers from back-facing infant seats, to forward facing infant seats, to half-infant/half-toddler seats, to small toddler booster seats, to large toddler booster seats, to the my-child-is-way-too-freaking-big-to-need-a-booster-seat booster seats. If there weren't a cut-off for age, most people I know would be riding with booster seats because the cut-off for height is six-foot-three.

If you're silly enough to have more than two children -- in fairness to us, effective family planning is impossible when they choose to arrive in pairs -- you'll need a vehicle of size, if not two. When our first child arrived, half our fleet was instantly hobbled because the Mazda Miata was not designed to serve as a baby-transporting device. The Miata, itself, is barely bigger than a pram, with almost enough leg room for a tall dwarf and head clearance adequate for a medium-height badger. With the invention of twins, it didn't take long for us to embrace the minivan, and later the minivan with automatic doors. Scoff if you must at the unsexy middle-aging of my family unit, but few things liberate the middle-class American more than pressing a button to eject children into the school drop off line. It's like all the convenience of tossing them out the window, only with a brief stop and the assurance of a soft landing.

Don't think older children are any easier to shuttle. Sure, you can celebrate ditching the diaper bag, bottles and spare onesies, but they are quickly replaced by school bags, instruments, dance bags, and after school club supplies. If children aged without taking on extracurricular activities, which I believe is a perfectly reasonable expectation, then life might get easier, but they don't. Before you know it, you're running each of them in a different direction for a variety of reasons that all begin at the exact same time at locations miles apart, and finish in 30 minute intervals conveniently spread over the dinner hours. Artistic programs such as band and dance are the best, by which I mean the most obnoxious, because there's something about artistic people that instills in them the belief that their programs represent the most important commitments your child will ever make. Every rehearsal and performance is mandatory. Absence or tardiness -- regardless of how many of your relatives just tragically died from powdered sugar inhalation at the donut factory explosion -- results in the stripping of privileges or public shaming. As if you weren't already stressed about managing a multi-stop municipal bus route, now your child is fussing at you to drive faster so she won't have to do push-ups in front of the rest of the kids in marching band.

With one child halfway through college (how the fu-hell did I get that old?) and the twins mere months away from being granted their driver's licenses, it might be possible that M&D Taxi is coming to the end of its days. I say "might be" because we so far have been colossally wrong about each coming stage being easier than the present one. I can not, however, in my wildest imaginings foresee the need for continued shuttle service, at least not on a daily basis, even with the twins sharing a vehicle.

Should the end of the shuttle era truly be at hand, the ramifications will ripple through our personal and professional lives with immeasurable results. My Lovely Wife and I will be able to spend the kind of time together we haven't enjoyed since September 1997. If we're smart, we won't leave the house for a month.



© 2017 Mark Feggeler

The Falafel Fail

Being volunteered for random tasks is an occupational hazard of parenthood. The ability to say "no" is a critically important skill to possess, particularly when you've been granted the luxury of deciding whether or not to accept the gift of having been involuntarily volunteered. Unfortunately, it is not a word of which My Lovely Wife and I avail ourselves frequently enough.

We have served on numerous church committees, band committees, school booster and PTA committees. We have volunteered in school classrooms, Sunday school classrooms, chaperoned field trips, overseen finances, orchestrated parental support, planned and implemented fundraisers, and provided more meals than we care to recall. In almost all these situations, we had the chance to say "no." However, faced with the knowledge no other parents were stepping forward, we stepped up to take part or take charge.

The positive take aways from these experiences are immeasurable. The most significant is a rewarding sense of fulfillment knowing we helped enhance the lives of our children, and hundreds of other children, throughout the last two decades. The only negative is having seen the wizards behind the curtains at many different institutions and events that have lost their magical luster as a result. People are flawed, I get that, but sometimes flawed people are so content to remain flawed that they've no interest in receiving constructive criticism and no ability to learn from it when it's offered. It can be disheartening, causing you to back away from volunteering to regain your naive faith in humanity. It's at times like these -- when you start thinking you're doing too much in too many places and alienating too many people by offering your opinion too often -- your children volunteer you for a simple task you simply can't refuse. 

It's been years since I've been able to help with math or science homework. I've forgotten all formal education back to kindergarten, it seems, so when the twins told us they volunteered to bring homemade falafel to school as part of a Human Geography project, I was excited. Cooking might not be my calling, but I love it, and I had never before made falafel. Here was a challenge I could face with a smile, my boys by my side, as we mastered making this Middle Eastern meal. 

Perhaps mastered isn't the correct word...

We started off on the wrong foot by using canned chick peas instead of dried chick peas and soaking them for twenty-four hours like the recipe instructed. When you have only 48 hours notice, you can't sit around waiting for a garbanzo bean to rehydrate. You take the ones packed in water and chuck them in the food processor.

Next we added the brief list of spices that, despite the brevity of the list, infused such a toxic pungency of Mediterranean aromatics that tasting the raw batter was an exercise in self abuse. It's nearly impossible to determine the proper quantities of cumin and cayenne when your tastebuds have been carpet-bombed into oblivion.

The canola oil I found to deep fry our fiendishly fiercesome falafel batter wasn't much help. The only canola oil in the house had been used once already for frying donuts. Our falafel would set your mouth ablaze and scorch your throat like a barbed jet-fueled ghost pepper, but at least you'll enjoy the subtle hint of cinnamon apple while rolling on the ground scraping your tongue with a cheese grater. 

Fortunately, we never found out. Possibly because our batter was too wet from having used mushy canned chick peas, or possibly because the donut oil wasn't quite hot enough -- or most likely because we're from the Mid-Atlantic and not the Middle East -- our batter entered the oil in tablespoon-size dollops and rapidly dissolved amidst greasy cinnamon apple splatters into thousands of quickly burned falafel particles. We tried a few to similar effect, only to discard the remaining batter and reach the conclusion that hummus and pita chips are a reasonable substitute for a school project, especially since someone else would be making the hummus. 

2017 Mark Feggeler

An Extra Plate

The work day is done and dinner is heating on the stove top when I reach inside the cabinet for plates. Five square ceramic plates clatter on the granite countertop and I head for the silverware drawer. 

Five forks, five knives and five spoons, counted out and placed on the stack of plates in a jumble of clinks and clunks. Five paper napkins follow, each to be folded in half and set on the dining room table to the left of each plate and under each fork. 

I realize something is wrong while folding the first napkin. I don't need it. Four will be enough. Four napkins, four forks, knives and spoons. Four plates. Only four. There is an extra plate.

For the last month, there were five mouths to feed. Five is too many to seat at the small table in the breakfast nook, which is why the dining room table is still set for service. Table pads and black tablecloth ready for five plates and accompanying silverware, along with bowls and trays and serving utensils, glasses and drinks and a game of cards afterward. 

Four fit in the breakfast nook. It's cozier for four and easier than carrying things out to the dining room. Four is an easier number, in general. Easier for setting the table, easier for meal planning, easier for clean up. Four is simpler. Four is quieter and quicker. 

Four still means conversation and games, laughter and delicious meals. Four can be tremendously infuriating or joyously enlightening. There is absolutely nothing wrong with four, with the single exception that it isn't five.

The days of five are numbered. Holiday breaks and summers off from college are now on the endangered species list. At least we have four, for now. 

I Don't Get It

Some things make no sense to me, like thong underwear or Donald Trump. Isn't it the purpose of underwear to serve as a barrier between your butt and your pants and not as crack floss every time you take a step? Doesn't seem to me like a very comfortable way to make it through your day. As for Donald Trump, the only difference between him and Charlie Sheen is it took decades of alcohol and drug abuse to make Charlie Sheen incoherently delusional. Trump comes by it naturally.

I don't understand my son walking across the house flashing cash like a pimp and telling us he's paying us back for games he ordered on his Nintendo DS. He's fourteen. When I was fourteen I was scraping together quarters so I could ride my bike a mile to the local video arcade next to Pathmark to play a few rounds of Centipede or MACH3. Maybe there'd be enough left for a slice of pizza from the storefront around the corner before heading home for dinner.

I'm confused by what's happened to cable television. Fifteen years ago, back when TLC still considered itself The Learning Channel and the Discovery Channel actually cared about science, it was possible to find a fair amount of proper programming to balance out the crap. These days we're accosted twenty-four-seven by inbred rejects and talentless celebutants presenting poorly scripted scenarios so cartoonishly ridiculous they make Gilligan's Island appear Shakespearean by comparison. Somewhere along the way society stopped laughing at these implausible idiots and started celebrating them. No offense, but if your vote in the upcoming presidential election will in any way be swayed by Duck Dynasty or the Duggars, then I'm not sure we're swimming in the same gene pool.

I don't understand why Chick-Fil-A -- probably the most uber-religiously homophobic restaurant chain in the United States -- installed outrageously phallic door handles in its public bathrooms. I can only imagine what Freud would have to say about that. It's as though a set designer from "Will & Grace" went through conversion therapy and found employment in Chick-Fil-A's design & construction department where he unsuccessfully tries to quell his latent-homosexually-inspired design sense. (That actually sounds like a pretty good premise for a television show.) No matter how thoroughly I wash my hands, or how clean the handle appears to be, I can't help feeling dirty every time I open the door. If only their sandwiches weren't so sanctimoniously delicious. 

I'm frequently bewildered by ear and nostril hair. When I was a young man, I had a considerably thick mane of blonde hair atop my head and practically no visible hair in either my ears or nostrils. These days I could braid my nose hair and mousse back the stuff growing out of my ears to cover the ever-thinning areas above my eyebrows. Speaking of which, the eyebrows are getting out of control, as well. Apparently, as traditional top-of-the-head hair abandons us, the ancillary hair areas kick into high gear. I can't wait to see what my armpits and lower back produce as I enter my fifties. 

I don't understand German. Nothing more to say there, really.

I'm bewildered by what's happened to the Republican Party. It sold its soul to the ultra-right-wing lunatic fringe back when the Tea Party movement rose to prominence and has never been able to buy it back. Rather than saying, "Thank you, Tea Partiers, but you'll need to run along and do your own thing somewhere else," Republican Party establishment embraced the upstarts and allowed them to corrupt what it means to be Republican. They even misrepresent the party's patron saint Ronald Reagan, misquoting him at every turn. In 1981 Regan wrote: "Illegal immigrants in considerable numbers have become productive members of our society and are a basic part of our work force. Those who have established equities in the United States should be recognized and accorded legal status." That sure doesn't sound the Republican message I've been hearing lately. I wasn't sure I would live long enough to witness a major political party being torn to tatters, but now I feel certain the Republican Party has only an ugly, lingering death in store. That's okay, though. Our country wasn't always divided into Republicans and Democrats. Some of our past Presidents belonged to the Whig Party, some to the Democrat-Republican Party, one to the Federalist Party, and George Washington didn't belong to any party.

I don't understand why, when only four people presently live in our house, there always are at least seventeen filled water sippers chilling in the refrigerator. I'm all for hydration, but it's gotten a little out of hand. To drink that much water on a daily basis would require mandatory catheterization. And, they leave precious little room for leftovers and other food items, which are the reasons we own the refrigerator in the first place.

Mostly, I don't understand where the years have gone. With one child in college and two preparing to take driver's ed this spring break, I'm having to come to terms with the fact that fart jokes and cartoon voices no longer make me a cool Dad. Our kids are turning into adults before our eyes and they're doing it without my permission. As their father, shouldn't I have some say in this matter?

© 2016 Mark Feggeler

Little Puppy Is Lonely

Little Puppy has been lonely lately. So has his friend, Hoot, and his cousins, Giraffy and Brownie.

Not too long ago, this gang of plush playthings were as essential to a good night's sleep as the bed itself, or pajamas. The world simply was not spinning in proper rotation unless the Italian had Little Puppy and Hoot tucked up under the covers with him, and likewise for the German with Giraffy and Brownie.

When you're a parent of three young children, the fact each child has his or her essential nighttime toys can be both endearing and infuriating. A forgotten or lost toy can be the difference between harmony and hell when you're ready to call it a day. Like the time we were cruising and couldn't find Squirrelly. Squirrelly wasn't even a first string player; he was back up. Squirrelly was one of those substitute toys you brought on trips because, should something untoward happen to Squirrelly, life would go on. He eventually was found under a mattress, but bedtime suffered a delay and his temporary misplacement caused some small measure of emotional duress for the German.

In Our Daughter's time, there were dolls Shu-Shu and Miranda, in addition to dogs Dottie and Bernie. It became second nature to grab one or all them on the way out the door the way you grab your wallet and keys. She has long since outgrown them.

When she was just four or five years old, Our Daughter heard about college. The concept of leaving home to live and study in a strange city panicked her to tears. I assured her she wouldn't be going anywhere for a very long time. That very long time has now come and gone like the flickering of a candle.

The same will hold true for the twins. Before we know it, thirteen will have turned to eighteen and it'll be their time to tour college campuses and complete scholarship applications. Just around the corner are the dissolution of bedtime rituals and the packing away of the silly toys of early childhood. Our recent housecleaning over the holidays offered proof these days are coming. The ease with which they let go of things that were, only last year, must-keep essentials was equal parts freeing and frightening.

So, what will become of Little Puppy?

For now, he sits atop the dresser overlooking the bed he once occupied. He might end up in a bin under the bed, or a drawer in the closet. Rest assured, there will be an intervention before his well-being is ever in jeopardy. Maybe Little Puppy will end up on the shelf in my office. Whenever I look up to give my bleary eyes a break from staring at the computer screen, I'll see Little Puppy and be reminded of the words from the Paul McCartney song "Little Willow."

"Bend little willow,
Wind's gonna blow you
Hard and cold tonight.
Life as it happens,
Nobody warns you.
Willow, hold on tight."

It's a song I sang hundreds of times to the children when they were babies and toddlers. I wonder, sometimes, if I was singing it to them or to myself.


© 2015 Mark Feggeler

Merry Eating Day!

The holidays are here, which means it's time to bloat the twenty extra pounds I normally carry around with me to a seasonally appropriate thirty. It also means massive quantities of food must be prepared in order to provide at least five pounds per plateload, regardless of whether we're talking about a salad plate, a dinner plate, or a dessert plate.

Yesterday (Christmas Eve-Eve) was primary cooking day for our Christmas day celebrations. In two days, we will feed a total of eight people -- the five who live under our roof, plus my parents and Brother Tom. Naturally, then, we browned three pounds of sausage, rolled eight pounds of beef and pork into meatballs and browned them, then tossed all of that browned meaty goodness into a vat of homemade sauce.

Next came cookies. Simplicity was the motto of the day, so we kept it to one kind of cookie -- the ubiquitous peanut butter Kiss cookie -- that could be easily thrown together and baked without distracting too much from the browning of the meatballs and sausage. Fresh from their morning meat-rolling calisthenics, the kids helped roll out four trays of peanut buttery deliciousness, in addition to shucking several dozen Hershey's Kisses.

After a brief break to clean a pan, or seven, it was time to experiment with something new -- cinnamon pumpkin roll with chocolate mascarpone ganache.

I've baked many things, but never a finished cake that had to be rolled. It seemed like an awful lot of work to go through just to create a delivery method for getting pumpkin cake and chocolate ganache to my mouth, but I was game. Besides, Giada de Laurentis and the Food Network wouldn't steer me wrong.

To Giada's credit, both the cake and the ganache are amazingly delectable, however rolling the pumpkin spice cake might not have been my finest culinary hour. I passed the first test, flipping the pan and dropping the cake onto a towel dusted with powdered sugar. Trouble is, my definition of dusting is slightly more aggressive than Giada's. The cake landed with a satisfying plop and shot powdered sugar up and out like a Christmas-tinged mushroom cloud full of elf fairies and pumpkiny aromas. The next bit, actually rolling the cake without breaking, mangling, tearing, shearing, or otherwise causing traumatic damage to said cake, was less messy but much more sketchy. In the end, I manhandled it into something that roughly resembles a rolled cake.

Today continued with more baking. After all, you can't serve seventeen pounds of meat and sauce without homemade Italian bread, and where one loaf might suffice, two certainly will provide that measure of overkill necessary for a proper holiday feast.

Oh, did I mention the cannoli? Yeah, I bought twenty pre-made cannoli shells (half of them covered in chocolate, because they were there) and prepped two pounds of filling so we can stuff them on Christmas day short before we sit down to eat our six-and-a-half pounds of meat, sauce, pasta and bread each. That way, the cannoli can set up in the fridge without getting the shells all soggy. You have to plan ahead for these things, you know.

The end result is that, by the time we tuck the kids into bed tomorrow night, I should have gained almost the entire extra ten pounds. I'll leave a tiny bit of space for that last cookie before bed.



© 2014 Mark Feggeler

Progeny Perfected

You might think your children are special, but mine really are.

I know all parents believe their kids are beautiful, handsome, smart, talented, witty, mature and precocious. Problem is, only one pair of parents can believe that and actually be correct. My intent here isn't to tramp muddy footprints all over your dreams of being the perfect parent. You've tried exceptionally hard to raise perfect children and your kids genuinely appreciate your efforts. I'm here to point out the simple fact that our kids make yours look like they came from the reject bin at Big Lots. No offense.

Take the Italian, for example. The Italian has read more books this year than I have in my entire life, which really isn’t much of a comparison, because my reading skills loosely match those of an underdeveloped Gibbon monkey.

He's also a blossoming computer whiz. The Italian's idea of light entertainment is to prepare point-by-point comparisons of this year’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference to last year’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. He’s thirteen. When I was thirteen, I was more concerned with which episode of Gilligan’s Island would be on after school than I was in getting the inside scoop on the latest advancements in world technology. When I was thirteen my brothers and I were content with playing Dig Dug off five-inch floppy discs on our Commodore 64. The Italian has been breaking out the laptop each morning to teach himself HTML coding over breakfast. And, well, why wouldn't he?

Then there’s the German. The German is sweet natured to a fault, he's an ace hockey goalie, and he plays saxophone as soulfully as a sixty-year-old in a smoke-filled night club. And he enjoys practicing. When I was his age, I recorded myself playing the trumpet for ten minutes and hit play twice to fill out the rest of the half hour I was supposed to be practicing.

The German also is our Lego master. I’m not talking about the 30-piece police car Lego set we got for Christmas forty years ago that I'm still trying to figure out how to put together. I’m talking about 2,000-piece movie prop replicas that are half assembled before the wrapping hits the floor. I’m talking about sitting at a laptop to program code for a WiFi Lego robot that recognizes different colors, utilizes touch sensors, and performs complex tasks.

Between the two of them, the twins have the necessary knowledge and access to technology to hack our online banking and transfer our assets to offshore accounts, all while holding us captive in our own basement with a robotic Lego army.

The ring leader of our perfected progeny is Our Daughter. If I even attempted to maintain half the busy schedule Our Daughter keeps on a daily basis, I would have been dead three-and-a-half years ago. I can count on one hand the number of clubs I joined during my K-12 years, yet this girl's resume reads like an alphabetical listing of every possible extra-curricular activity available.

She's also taken more AP classes than I have clean pairs of underwear. I'm lucky I know how spell AP. She wants to graduate with honors, get a bachelor's degree in biology, a master's degree in dentistry, and ultimately become an orthodontist. At her age, my only goal was to pass the next test and avoid anyone at school who might be interested in giving me a wedgie. Our Daughter has the next ten years of her life planned out whereas my long-term goals include gassing up the car and making sure I leave enough time after getting out of bed each morning to reach the toilet before I wet myself.

I'm certain many of you reading this are making all kinds of mental notes in preparation of a rebuttal of my assertion that my children are better than yours. You're wasting your time listing out your childrens' grade point averages, academic accomplishments, personal triumphs, and tallying the number of times they've been Snapchatted or re-Tweeted. Please, if it makes you feel better, go ahead and launch a well-prepared defense of your children. So long as you're prepared to eventually acknowledge the unquestionable superiority of my kids, we won't have any trouble.



© 2014 Mark Feggeler

Red Sock, Blue Sock

A tribute to Dr. Seuss, or a glimpse of a day in the life of a busy family? You decide. All I know is we had two mismatched socks and my daughter was cranky (really!), so I wrote a poem. I'm warning you now that this isn't a very good poem, but then I never have liked poetry. You can blame Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" for that. Anyway, here it is:

Red sock, blue sock, one, two, three.

What's up with the day’s laundry?

There’s one sock here where two should be.

Red sock, blue sock, one, two, three.

Sleepy, sleepy, one, two, three.

My daughter’s cranky as can be.

She threw a banana muffin at me.

Sleepy, sleepy, one, two, three.

Inside, outside, one, two, three.

The dog won’t make a poop or pee.

I walked her 'round the block with me.

Inside, outside, one, two, three.

Nagging, nitpick, one, two, three.

The twins are passive aggressively

Sniping at each other incessantly.

Nagging, nitpick, one, two, three.

Red sock, blue sock, one, two, three.

Really  laundry – seriously?

The machine is eating my BVDs!

Red sock, blue sock, one, two, three.

Turn the clock back, one, two, three.

Our daughter looks like a young lady.

She’ll always be a little girl to me.

Turn the clock back, one, two, three.

Check my heart rate, one, two, three.

The dog just scared the heck out of me

By barking at something I cannot see.

Check my heart rate, one, two, three.

Open the window, one, two, three.

The twins’ room smells adolescently,

And now they’re starting to play hockey.

Open the window, one, two, three.

Growing older, one, two, three.

Spend a few moments leisurely

To enjoy the kids before they flee.

Growing older, one, two, three.

© 2014 Mark Feggeler

The Vominator

There's no way to ease in to this topic, so I'm going to leap in with both feet -- VOMIT!

Actually, leaping in with both feet is more than just the cliched use of a literary device, it's a literal fact. In order to deal with the Italian's vomit situation early Sunday morning, I truly had to walk through approximately twenty square feet of vomit-covered hardwoods and carpeting. And why? Because the Italian was in the living room and needed a clean shirt and a blanket from his bedroom. When your kid is sick and shivering, you walk through vomit to help him.

I was in bed when it started, having finally fallen asleep around midnight. The Italian woke me up at one-thirty by poking me in the back.

"Dad?" Poke, poke. "Dad?" Poke, poke, poke. "Dad, I threw up."

It doesn't matter how soundly asleep you are, those words wake you up in a hurry. For starters, your son is sick and needs to be cared for. Secondly, somewhere in the house is a mess that needs to be cleaned, and the sooner the better.

We've enjoyed our share of award-winning vomits during our parenting years. There was the time the German puked up Cheetos all over the back of the driver's seat in the van. There was the time Our Daughter projectile-vomited goldfish crackers four feet across the room, smack into the middle of her Mother's chest and deep into the piles of a shag carpet. There was the time Our Daughter, having finally had the chance to try RavioliOs after years of resistance from My Lovely Wife and I, permanently stained the carpet around her bed. The Italian's Sunday morning vomit easily qualifies for nomination in several categories.

Let's begin with coverage. I walked over to the kids' bathroom to survey the damage only to find myself caught in that fragile mental state between uncontrollable weeping and giddy laughter. There are days when the horizon doesn't stretch out as far ahead of me as that field of vomit did on Sunday morning.

God bless him, the boy tried to make it to the bathroom once he realized what was coming. He jumped out of bed and ran to the door, but never got it open before Vesuvius erupted. It hit the carpet with such force that the door and nearby wall were splattered more than a foot high. Knowing there was more to come, he pulled open the door, stepped into the small hallway, and let loose with another ricochet trick shot on the hardwood floor. It took me fifteen minutes just to make a safe path -- not clean, mind you -- to his bedroom closet.

For more than three hours, I wiped up the hardwoods, wiped down the walls and baseboards, depukified the doors, and scrubbed the carpet. Amazingly, the only other person awake in the house was the Italian, and only because he threw up five or six more times, albeit under controlled conditions. Even the German remained unconscious, despite the fact I was scrubbing for over an hour just feet from his bed. After the sun came up and all eyes were open, we broke out the carpet cleaner and attempted a proper deep clean.

The end result is yet another permanent stain, although perhaps not as noticeable as some others. Years from now, if we try selling the house, I might have to come up with a new name for the carpet color. How about "Nutty Brown," or "Dark Chocolate?"

Would you believe they have a carpet color called "Outback Rib Sauce and Chunky Mashed Potatoe?"




© 2014 Mark Feggeler

A Pool of Tears

We are quickly approaching a milestone. Our Daughter will graduate from high school in 2015 and head off to college.

That sounds like we still have plenty of time, and from her perspective 16 months might seem like an eternity, but to her parents it will seem like the blink of an eye. I know this because the past 16 years seem to have gone by just as quickly.

Ever the advance planner, earlier this week My Lovely Wife took Our Daughter with our twin sons in tow on her second official college tour. The four of them spent the better part of the afternoon roaming the grounds of UNC Greensboro in an effort to determine whether the campus is suitable for a determined student who wants to accomplish a concentration in pre-dental studies. The tour went well and UNCG now ranks high on the list of possibilities.

As we discuss different schools, comparing and contrasting their highs and lows, I think I am spotting a peculiar trend beginning to take root.

For those who believe they know My Lovely Wife well, they might be surprised to find she is much more emotional than she appears on the surface. More often than not she is a model of obsessive-compulsive efficiency. Yet beneath that uber-organized exterior is a mushy, squishy core that melts easily under the right circumstances. Turns out that preparing to send your first-born to college is one of those circumstances.

Her lower lip trembled several times during the recap of their tour of UNCG. This morning at the breakfast table the lip started again and conversation paused twice while she fought back the urge to weep openly in her Cheerios. Even a passing conversation during a laundry-folding session about the benefits of the college's study abroad program culminated in the need for a reassuring hug.

Need I remind you the child is only halfway through her junior year of high school? What this means is that I am looking ahead to more than a year of separation anxiety bubbling to the surface without notice during the most mundane activities.

Gassing up her car?
We're going to gas up her car only fifty-seven more times before she leaves for college... (Sniffle, sniffle.)

Setting out breakfast?
We're going to set out breakfast only five-hundred-and-forty more times before she leaves for college... (Whimper, snort.)

Folding socks?
We're going to fold her socks only one-thousand-two-hundred-and-twenty-seven more times before she leaves for college... (Uncontrolled sobbing.)

Not that I'm immune to this condition. I'm just as mushy and squishy, if not more so. Besides, all it takes to make me cry is to place me in close proximity to someone else who's already crying.

Between the two of us, My Lovely Wife and I better stock up on discount tissues at Aldi.



© 2014 Mark Feggeler

Fast Poop, Slow Poop; New Poop, Old Poop

Gravity. That's the entire basis of modern plumbing as it has existed since the time of Christ.

Water from a higher level runs down through a series of ever narrowing channels and pipes, increasing the force of the flow as it goes, until it bursts from your faucet, or your hose, or your toilet. The toilet even gives it a bit of a boost by providing a reservoir meant to deliver a rushing flush of water to carry your unmentionables along to the sewage treatment plant. Plumbing is a simple, yet somehow perplexingly complex, field to which only the truly talented should apply themselves.

For example, the plumbing in our house is okay. It is plumb enough to carry waste materials to the waste material netherworld approximately ninety-seven percent of the time. Flushing the toilet is mostly a thought-free, worry-free practice that results in the removal from our house of all the things we would not want to have hanging around our house for several days, or even several more minutes than is truly necessary.

But mostly isn't the same as all the time. And ninety-seven percent, while a considerable portion, is not the same as one-hundred percent.

There are those times when -- dare I hazard to guess caused by the attempted flushing of an inordinate quantity of Angel Soft by a member of our household under the legal voting age -- our plumbing proves itself to perhaps not be quite as plumbed as it should be. The water simply cannot manage to force the biodegradable barge downstream to the municipal sewer pipes. A second flush, while tempting, yields no benefit. In fact, you'll likely discover how quickly you can pirouette over the poodle, shove aside the magazine rack, and turn off the water to the tank without killing yourself or permanently damaging the poodle.

A plunger in these circumstances is the second tool you need to resolve the clog. The first tool you need is a detective's keen sense of observation.

Is the clog at the farthest end of the house from the sewer lines? Is it at the nearest end of the house to the sewer lines? Is it between the house and the street? Are all the pipes in the house clogged with Angel Soft and poop to breaking point and the slightest plunge of a plunger will cause them to rupture?

Where does the gurgling of a trickle of escaping water sound loudest? In the kids' bathroom toilet? In their shower? At the kitchen sink? In the master bathroom?

Which appliance has the greatest potential to cause every toilet and sink and shower and bathtub in the house to gurgle and bubble like a witches' brew? The dishwasher? The washing machine? The pump in the basement?

Still and all, for every three challenging flushes there are ninety-seven that go off without a hitch. Considering how many people in this world poop al fresco and wipe with the nearest squirrel, the occasional clogged pipe really isn't so much a thing to complain about. Is it?

Perhaps some day, when the kids understand they don't need to flush an entire roll of toilet paper in a single go, we will be able to properly gauge the faculties of our facilities. Until then, if you see me stalking through the house clutching a plunger and listening intently for the sounds of gurgling water, give me a wide berth. The plunger might be dirty.


© 2013 Mark Feggeler

Forever Young

Today, my little girl broke my heart. Multiple times. Intentionally.

To start with, somebody told her it was acceptable for her to turn sixteen. I don't care what anyone says. I don't care what year it is versus what year she was born. I really don't care how many birthday cards she received, nor do I care how many people came to her Sweet 16 party, she is not sixteen.

She looks like this:

Or, like this:

But that's as far as I'm willing to take it. Just barely out of diapers, but not in high school, not studying a level of calculus that makes me dizzy, and not, most definitely not, driving.

Nope! Stop it! Not even looking. (Fingers in ears, chanting "La, la, la, la, la, la, la...) Who gave this rotten kid permission to grow up?

Okay, so maybe she isn't a full-fledged adult, yet, but she has her driver's license and we were stupid enough to buy her her own car. You know what she did today after dinner? She drove herself to dance. By herself. Without so much as an apology for not needing us to bring her anymore. How am I supposed to accept the reality of her being allowed to roam the roads unsupervised when it seems like only yesterday I was bathing her in the kitchen sink and buttoning her onesies?

Let her grow up. See if I care. Let her turn into a little old lady, if that's where she's heading. No matter what happens, or how old she gets, or whatever she accomplishes in her life, in my mind's eye she will always look like this:

© 2013 Mark Feggeler

A Brief Update from a Busy Life

The Pale Rambler, my mainstay blogging alter ego, must be scratching his pink and balding scalp and wondering what has become of me.

After all, he was created for the sole purpose of providing a creative outlet for the wanna-be writer trapped deep inside of me. He hasn't always had profound things to say, but he had been posting fairly consistently up until recent months.

Truth be told, time has been scarce. What little spare time I've managed to get my hands on has been devoted to writing the second book in the "Psi Squad" series. I've never written a series before, and to date I've only completed two books, but I take seriously the challenge of completing the nine-book series as originally outlined. That leaves little time for pale ramblings or other online shenanigans.

Some day in the distant future, when I smell like my Grandfather and worry more about the regularity of my bowel movements than the earning of a paycheck, I might find the time to sit and write all the day long. Rather than scratching down errant sentences or paragraphs here and there on scraps of paper in the hopes of tying them together into a collective whole, my energies can be focused from dawn to dusk when the mood strikes and the ideas are flowing.

It's a pleasant dream, just not one to be realized today. Today is meant for more important things.

Today was spent bringing a meaningful wage into our household. Today was spent calling the school (and being called by the school) to straighten out our twin sons' schedules on their first day of middle school. Today was spent talking with our daughter over breakfast as she prepared for her first day of eleventh grade. Today was spent sitting at the dining room table as our entire family of five attempted (and failed) to solve a sixth-grade math problem. Today was spent enjoying a quiet lunch in a noisy restaurant with my best friend.

As time continues to pluck hairs from my head only to plant them in my ears, I realize how fleeting are the opportunities to carpe the remaining diem of my children's childhoods. The memories of walking Sara through the hallways of middle school for the first time have hardly faded, yet here we are entering her critical college-planning year. Two years might sound like a long time, but for a parent looking at the prospect of sending a first-born to college it might as well be two weeks.

And so, the Pale Rambler waits patiently, as do the "Psi Squad" characters. They'll be there when I need them. They'll come running when I call them out to play.

In the meantime I will cling tightly to every hug, capture the essence of every laugh, collect kisses and wipe away tears. Those are the things that make up a life, and they are far more tangible, valuable and meaningful than any silly dream.


© 2013 Mark Feggeler

Sour Patch Lamaze

The twins have always served to complete the missing parts of each others' personalities. We often joke that, had they been one baby instead of two, they would have been the perfect child. For example:

• The German is always quiet and reflective. The Italian is always loud and emotional.
• The German is soft and sedentary. The Italian is sinewy and strong.
• The German loves peanut butter but hates jelly. The Italian loves jelly but hates peanut butter.
• The German has excellent hand-eye coordination. He swims like a fish. The Italian does not have excellent hand-eye coordination. He swims like a drowning man being electrocuted while having an epilectic seizure.

Despite their differences, which are endless and register deep down to their inner cores, they desperately need each other. And regardless of the numerous "aw"-inspiring displays of brotherly love this need creates for our amusement, I must admit there are times when the bond does seem a little too tightly fastened. Take the example of the the Sour Patch candies as a case in point.

We were vacationing on Hilton Head Island a few weeks ago and someone with whom we were traveling purchased a bag of sour gummy candies, but several days into the trip had still not opened the bag. One rainy night, as we shopped for contraband candy to sneak into a movie theater for an evening showing of "Despicable Me 2," the German could no longer stand to be denied. For his treat he selected his own bag of sour patch candies. We crept into the theater with eight pounds of sugar in our pockets and left two hours later five pounds of candy -- and several ounces of tooth enamel -- lighter.

On the way back to our rented townhouse, I was groggily attempting to pay attention to the road when I heard My Lovely Wife begin to chuckle. My first thought was that she was recalling some bit of comedy from the movie. That's when she motioned for me to observe the boys.

Turns out the sour candies were so sour that one child alone could not manage the supreme sourness without moral support from the other. As each new morsel was popped into a mouth, the afflicted boy firmly gripped the other's hand. Like coaches in a birthing class, they encouraged each other to squeeze tightly and breathe through the eye-closing, mouth-puckering delight of sour candy pain. I experienced a fleeting flashback to twelve years earlier when I was rubbing My Lovely Wife's lower back and assuring her the epidural was on its way.

At the very least, when it is time for their own children to enter this world, I will be able to advise the boys' future wives they do not need any instruction. They've already experienced sour patch Lamaze.


© 2013 Mark Feggeler

Breakdown in Communication

We've been pretty lucky, as parents of a teenage daughter go.

Here we are, almost sixteen years into this parenting experiment, and we all appear to love each other and get along fairly well. Our Daughter is sweet-natured, doesn't like foul language, dotes on her younger brothers (whether or not they want her to -- although they usually want her to), earns excellent grades at school, stays active in music and dance, doesn't talk back to her parents, and still laughs at my fart jokes.

What more could a parent ask for?

Okay, maybe the ability to communicate and share information utilizing complex sentence structures and multisyllabic words when texting. And also the ability to read simple text messages and fully understand them before responding. For example, here is a brief conversation from April:

    Me: "I can pick you up at 3:45 from school or from the rink later."

    Our Daughter: "I get out of school at 3:45."

    Me: "Okay. I will pick you up at 3:45."

    Our Daughter: "Um why?"

    Me: "I though you were asking me to. Just let me know when you want me to pick you up."

    Our Daughter: We will be at the rink around 5:45."

    Me: "Okay. Now. Do you want me to pick you up from the rink at 5:45?"

    Our Daughter: "Yes!!!!!"

For the record, adding seventeen exclamation points does not convey any more meaning to me than one exclamation point. I'm also not a huge fan of emoticons -- those little smily, winky faces that are supposed to let me know how you feel at any given moment in time. That's what words are for. Long ago, by which I mean the early 1990s, people knew how to express disappointment without book-ending the word "sad" with matching frowny-face emoticons.

At least we have moved beyond the days of the one-letter answer. Having graduated from college with a Bachelor's degree in English, I'm always thrilled when my children respond to a lengthy, multiple choice question with the moronically simple, unhelpful, uncapitalized and unpunctuated response: "k." If I'm planning dinner and I send a text to ask if you prefer corn on the cob or broccoli with your grilled chicken, "k" is not a valid response. If I ask whether your boyfriend is eating dinner with us or going home to eat with his parents, "k" is a relatively answer-free return message.

Some day soon, when I find myself babysitting my grandchildren and Our Daughter texts from some fancy dinner across town to ask if her offspring have been fed and bathed and put to bed on time, I will wait a full thirty minutes to respond with a simple "k!!!!!!!!!"



© 2013 Mark Feggeler

The Chocolate Deficit

Stop the presses!

Call nine-one-one!!

Get FEMA on the phone and tell them to alert the nation about the most distressing national disaster of all time!!!

Worse than a tornado! More terrifying than an earthquake! As devastating, if not more so, than the impending zombie apocalypse (scary fast-moving zombies, not the slow "I can't believe I can't outrun them" zombies). What's the dilemma, you ask? The chocolate in our kids' leftover Easter candy bags is disappearing!

Every Easter, when that stupid rabbit breaks-and-enters our house with his paganistic eggs and candy and fills our kids' baskets to the point of bursting, you'll find me lurking in a corner, rubbing my hands together and snickering like Snidely Whiplash. For the next few weeks, I lay in wait, plotting and planning and scheming endless ways to separate foil-wrapped chocolates from their respective rightful owners.

Our Daughter never used to eat any of her candy. Out of sight, out of mind seemed to be her modus operandi. That made her candy easier pickings than a pocket-protector nerd in a dodgeball game.

The Italian never liked peanut butter chocolate eggs, so those were the first to go from his bag, one by one, wrapper by empty wrapper hidden in the kitchen trash can. Like magic the peanut butter chocolate eggs vanished. The German never liked those crunchy chocolate bars with the puffed rice inside of them, so those were next on the hit list. Unwrap it, sweep it through the five-pound container of peanut butter in the pantry, and down they go.

When it comes to chocolate, to call my craving a sweet tooth does not do it justice. Too limiting. Mine is more like a sweet limb, or even an entire quadrant of the body. The fact our kids hardly ever ate their holiday candy simply meant more for me.

Christmas? Stocking candy!

Halloween? Random sampler stranger candy!!

Easter? Holy crap it's time to buy a girdle candy!!!

But this year, something strange happened. I'm suddenly living in some bizarro alternate universe in which children eat candy. And not just the good candy, either. Not only are the Snickers and Milky Ways and Hershey's solid milk chocolate bunnies wrapped to look like Star Wars stormtroopers being eaten, even the jelly beans and faux marshmallows in the shape of cartoon foods that typically spend their days collecting lint and wrapper shrapnel at the bottom of the bag are disappearing. What does that leave for me? Nothing.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Dude, you're forty-five years old and can go buy all the chocolate and candy you could ever want, eat it 'til you puke, and go back for more."

That's true. I can, and I probably have, but it isn't the same. The expression "easy as taking candy from a baby" came about not only because it satisfactorily expresses the ease of accomplishing a task, but also because taking candy from babies is fun and gratifying, especially when those babies are yours and they don't even realize they're missing out on a good thing when you take their candy.

Maybe, if I'm lucky, this trend will reverse itself before Halloween.



© 2013 Mark Feggeler

Knife-Wielding Children

It was declared the other night by My Lovely Wife while dining at Vito's that the boys could cut their own food from here on out.

To be fair, it isn't as though the boys squawk like baby birds for us to cut up their food into bite-size portions, and we're not intentionally trying to pamper them. It comes down to a matter of efficiency. We are efficient cutters of food, they are not. We have the ability to cut hot pizza with a knife without sending bits of it flying across a restaurant and blinding fellow diners with scalding tomato sauce. Their level of proficiency at this same task is questionable.

I suppose history will show one of our great failings as parents is not having taught our children to properly use knives. When I see the boys attempting to cut anything from steak to potatoes, I can't help thinking they'd experience greater success bashing their food with sticks and rocks in order to break off easily digestible pieces. Even Our Daughter, who recently started driving, looks as though her hand-eye coordination suffers a seven-second delay whenever she tries to use a knife.

When the children were very young, it made perfect sense not to place serated steak knives next to their plates. After all, when your diet consists primarily of fish sticks, chicken tenders, applesauce and string cheese, there really isn't much call for cutlery. But, as they have grown and their diets become slightly more sophisticated (no more fish sticks), we find we can't leave them weaponless and have them lifting large chunks of grilled meat to their mouths and tearing at it with their teeth. They need the right tools and the training to apply them correctly to the task at hand.

The Italian will welcome this change, I expect. He is passively-aggressively independent and always eager to prove his self-sufficiency. I believe the German, however, secretly enjoys our taking the reins and managing the food-cutting, if for no other reason than it allows him to keep his hands clean. He is a fastidious little bugger at the best of times. One night, several years ago, we were dining at Olive Garden when he decided to survey the table.

"Who had a breadstick?" the German asked.

We each raised a greasy-fingered hand in the air.

"Then you all need to wash your hands," he ordered.

So, now begins a new chapter of our lives as parents, a chapter in which we move away from plastic knives and safety scissors, pack away the Disney character plates and bowls, and treat our children as dining equals capable of cutting their own food.

Maybe we should plan on serving soup for the next few months...



© 2012 Mark Feggeler

Skinny Pants

Pants are tricky things.

You can't even purchase identically marked pairs from the same manufacturer with any assurance each will fit you as well as the other. Hanging in my closet at this very moment are two pairs of Levi's, both marked thirty-six (shut up) by thirty-two and aquired on the very same day at the very same store, yet one pair fits perfectly and the other pair causes any of a variety of medical conditions, including diminished circulation, acid reflux, diarrhea, loss of appetite, and depression.

My prime time for wearing skin tight jeans was a brief window that lasted from 9:57am to 3:42pm on March 12, 1986. When that window closed, and increasingly so as the years have progressed, it became morally irresponsible of me to don tight-fitting pants. The more my natural form is left to the imagination, the better a place the world becomes. Therefore, the slimmer of the supposedly identical pants remains hidden away in the closet to be saved for those days on which I can button them without experiencing light-headedness.

The Italian does not subscribe to this theory when it comes to his own form. After all, being in the fifth grade, he has the luxury of existing primarily in a world of oblivious 11-year-olds. The girls have not yet transformed into the style-conscious butterflies middle school will make of them, and the boys are more focused on ultra cool things like dirt and origami ninja stars than they are on what clothes their friends are wearing. This creates an awareness vacuum in which children are able to wear their favorite clothes, regardless of how bizarre or poorly fitting they are, with little fear of mockery.

Which is why the Italian frequently must be rescued, against his will, from certain articles of clothing in his wardrobe. Being a typical American child, his closet is stocked with far too many choices for him to wear, even if he decided to wear a different outfit each day of the year. Despite the expansive selection available to him, he regularly chooses the same shirts over and over again. One shirt, in particular, has survived several recent purges led by My Lovely Wife. It is a gray t-shirt with a screenprint image of a drum set. If he could, he would glue the shirt to his body.

One recent wardrobe casualty was a pair of jeans that had hung around a few months longer than necessary. To label them "flood pants" would be an insult to flood pants, but showing off his ankles was not their biggest failing.

The Italian, you must understand, is a bone-skinny kid. He's so skinny, zombies wouldn't waste time trying to eat him if they ran him down during the apocalypse. If anything, they'd probably offer him a spare limb to eat. Because he is so darned skinny, not only do we need to buy slim-cut pants for his emaciated frame, the pants also need to have elastic built into the waistline so he can draw them to fit his five-and-a-half-inch circumference.

But skinny pants are not outgrown gradually. One day they fit perfectly, the next day the Italian looks like he's been shrink-wrapped in too little denim.

He vocally protested the expulsion of the skinny pants and made several futile efforts to model them for us in the hope we would change our minds and agree they did not make him look like a disco-era reject or a Christmas ornament with blue pipe cleaners for legs. His argument fell on deaf ears and the pants were added to the donation pile in the basement.

On a positive note, it does seem like his appetite has improved now that he's wearing pants that allow food to settle into his digestive system.



© 2012 Mark Feggeler

The Forbidden Condiment

I'm guilty of breaking the rules, and so is my Rule Following daughter.

Just last week, I smuggled an illicit substance to her during the school day, on school grounds, and under the very noses of the school officials whose mission it is to keep scofflaws like me from penetrating the sacred halls of their educational institution. I loitered in my car, only mildly menacingly, waiting for the opportunity to hand off to her the prohibited package between classes and on the sly.

Yes, that's right. I brought Our Daughter her lunch.

You wouldn't think bringing your child's lunch to school would be cause for so much super-secret spy stuff. It wasn't like I was trying to hand off TNT in a nitroglycerin sauce, or sneak her a crack pipe and baggie full of crystal meth. It was a turkey sandwich, a Camelbak sipper filled with water, and a snack bag of Sun Chips. So, you can imagine my surprise when I was informed by the secretary at the main office I was not allowed to leave the bag for Our Daughter to pick up.

Evil Lunch Item

According to a new policy instituted either by the high school or the county school system, leaving lunches at the main office puts the school at legal risk by placing it in direct responsibility over the contents of the lunchbox. As explained to me, if the sandwich in question is slathered with rogue mayonnaise and sits for several hours under a hot lamp and the kid who eats it gets sick, the school could be held liable. Likewise, should some random ne'er-do-well decide to commit some random act of ne'er-do-wellness on the unsuspecting lunch items, the school also could be held at fault.

Seemed like an overreaction to me, but I played along, offering to wait at the office for them to call my daughter down so I could hand the paisley lunch bag directly to her, thereby relieving the school of any potential threat of legal action.

Or not.

Turns out the new rule also disallows my bringing to the school any food items whatsoever and doing anything with them other than standing in the main office eating them myself and possibly wearing the lunch bag as a hat, which for all I know might also be against the rules. This is the same institution that charges me $4.00 for a poorly prepared cheeseburger cooked and served by gloveless volunteers out of a dirty concession building each fall at football games just across the campus. Exactly how serious can they suddenly have become about foodborne illness?

I tried in vain to argue the ridiculousness of not allowing me to hand to Our Daughter a lunch bag she would have been carrying around with her all day long had she not left it standing by the front door when she went to school. If anything, the mayonnaise on her turkey sandwich was all that much more the better for having sat in our refrigerator at home for several more hours instead of being kicked around the floor of several overheated high school classrooms.

In the end, I had two options: (1) leave money in an envelope so Our Daughter could purchase lunch from the cafeteria; or (2) follow the wink-and-a-nod "don't ask/don't tell" instructions from several of the people with whom I argued that morning and text Our Daughter to meet me at my car so I could hand off her lunch like covert operatives trading plutonium at the Iranian border. 

It's nice to know the health and well-being of our children are being taken so pseudo-seriously that, although I could in theory drop off a loaded howitzer and a box of hand grenades without any questions being asked, I can rely on the beauracracy of the school system to keep my daughter safe from mayonnaise.


© 2012 Mark Feggeler

Da Votion

So, we've taken to reading a daily devotional, courtesy of a book from my sister-in-law.

Somewhere, deep inside me, a snarky little cynic is mocking the routine with derisive laughter, but I'm game for the experiment. My thought is it can't hurt. What's the worst that can happen? Communication and conversation? Even if the conversation inspired by the devotionals focuses only on how ridiculously pollyannaish they are, or how ill-fitting they are to our lives, then they've still achieved their goal of encouraging us to communicate.

For instance, one recent devotional talked about turning off the television and getting involved with our children's lives. I estimate My Lovely Wife and I watch approximately one hour of television a day, and many times we aren't even paying attention to it. On the other hand, this week alone we have marching band practice for Our Daughter, dinner with the grandparents, hockey practice for the boys, 10th grade check-in and fee payment for Our Daughter, back-to-school nights at the high school and elementary school, one dentist appointment, three orthodontist appointments, tailgating on Friday before the marching band's performance at the high school football game, the football game itself, and hanging out with the kids at Sonic after the game. And because my brain is like a sieve, I'm probably forgetting half a dozen other things. All this happens around work, which we're always told is less important than family, but you can't afford any of the things you do with the kids unless you make sure your at-work productivity doesn't suffer.

In other words, the person who wrote the devotional chastising us for watching television instead of interacting with our kids can cram that particular life lesson where the sun don't shine. Maybe that's a little hostile. Don't worry. I'm sure the book has a devotional about anger management.

The funniest thing to me is the bit of scripture leading off each devotional. For some reason the writers of the book really seem to put a whole lot of stock in Ephesians. All I've ever known about the book of Ephesians is that Paul, for someone who lived in the first century AD, had pretty steady access to papyrus and ink. I can't help thinking the Ephesians -- or the Phillipians, or the Galatians, or the Corinthians, or the Romans, or anyone else Paul took a fancy to sending a letter to -- were happy to get his letter but always a little annoyed at being obligated to write back.

    "Look! Another letter from Paul."

    "But we just answered his last one!"

I'm always dubious whether biblical passages used to support a point are applicable if you go back to the Bible and learn for yourself the true context of the passage. Maybe we're not getting the full meaning of the snippet we're being handed.

For instance, here's a brief line from Luke 12:1 -- "Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees..."  If I ignore the fact the entire passage from which I lifted this quote is meant to serve as a warning against hypocrisy, I could end up writing an entire devotional about the soul-rotting dangers of buying matzoh and challah from Jewish religious leaders. In fact, that sounds like a fun false teaching to mess around with next April Fool's Day.

Or how about this entire verse from Hosea 3:1 -- "The Lord said to me again, 'Go, love a woman who has a lover and is an adulteress, just as the Lord loves the people of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes.'"

That one really has me scratching my head, and I doubt even the devotional book writers could manage to work that into any kind of contemporary context. For starters, the whole loving an adulteress thing would never go over well with my mother, and especially with My Lovely Wife. It's a nice offer, but I'll pass.

And what does the Lord have against raisin cakes? I understand the whole "other gods" reference but raisin cakes? I've never cared for raisins in my baked goods and cereal, so I can sympathize, but lumping somebody who occasionally enjoys a nice Irish soda bread with people who've run off and sacrificed lambs to a statue of a golden cow seems a bit extreme.

Actually, we have found a couple of the devotionals from the book to be slightly more relevant to our lives than raisin cakes and yeast. And reading together at night, if even for a few minutes, is proving to be a relaxing experiment I wouldn't mind continuing. Maybe I should write my own book of daily devotions. There must be plenty more inspirational baking references in the Bible...



© 2012 Mark Feggeler