What I've become...

I was making the kids lunches this morning when a small irritant led me to believe I had become a crotchety old man. My father, in fact.

The source of this revelation were the mini-bagels I was working with. Specifically, they were supposedly sliced - but they weren't. They were partially sliced but had a remainder, deep inside the middle part of the bagel, that required cutting. I found this particularly annoying, and I'm quite convinced it is somehow responsible for the World Economic Crisis and Climate Change.

The bag says 'Sliced'. Right there. Sliced. If you grasp one and attempt to pull it apart though, you are in for a dreadful surprise. They are only partly sliced, and it is off to the cutlery drawer you go, in search of the serrated knife that works best for bagels. Which is in fact in the dishwasher, the door of which you bash your shin upon when stooping and rooting around the insides, searching for your knife which is at the back of the bloody cave you are stooped over peering into!!

Gah!!

If you just pull the bagel halves apart you are left with little bagel nubs sticking up, which burn and smoke upon insertion into the toaster. You wind up with pale, un-toasted bagel, with a strip of blackened bits running in a line down the middle.

This is unacceptable. It may cause me to go off on a rant about something that isn't really all that important in the overall scheme of things.

Oh just get off the lawn and leave me alone...

Gift of Gab

In one short car ride yesterday I was challenged as a parent in two completely different ways within a single topic. Namely, the fine art of conversation.

The first challenge was presented by my daughter, who, while lovely and charming and wonderful up to yesterday, will now have to be sold into slavery.

You see, she has begun speaking in questions? Ending all her sentences with question marks? Like this? Which is so annoying I may lower my price for her when I sell her for medical experiments at the start of business tomorrow?

Thankfully she doesn't do it all the time (she saw my face turn sour in the rear view mirror yesterday and wisely chose to clam up), but it has been happening more and more of late and so I'm afraid the sale is inevitable.

Oh sure - the parenting pundits will say something about how parents are not teaching their children how to converse and listen and participate in a relevant fashion to the talk going on around them. WE can do that, but sadly we are not in charge of training the other 300 miscreant, illiterate peer-pressuring children my kids interact with on a daily basis.

The other parenting dilemma I faced during the same car trip was my son not really participating in Dad's chosen activity.

Now I know I should not be so insensitive as a parent to actually indulge in something I want to do for a few brief minutes, but I thought I could get away with it yesterday.

I was listening to a science program on the radio, about the possibilities of space-based power generation. Science intrigues me, and this topic was particularly stimulating.

In the middle of the best part of the interview, my son loudly said: "Dad? Jordan has a red Hot Wheel car - did you know that?"

This immediately brought a response from his sister, further drowning out the science program on the radio.

Sister: "Is that the one in the basement or the one in his bedroom?"

I comforted myself, face in hand, with the thought that the program I was listening to, now lost in the jumble of voices in the back seat, is also available in podcast form.

In the meantime, I have for sale 2 children, 8 years old, both with most of their grown-up teeth, house trained, polite, generally agreeable when not gagged. Will trade for new recliner or reliable automobile. Inquire within.