Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills!

As Napoleon Dynamite so accurately stated "Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills!". So I thought I should list some of my unique skills. Although I'm a bit rusty on my nunchuck skills and my bow hunting skills...I have developed some valuable skills these past 7 years as a single parent.

1. Minivan Driving Skills - I can pick up one child from elementary school, drive her to get a costume for the school play, arrive at the Jr. High in time to pick up my son and go get him new basketball shoes for his first practice, get my daughter to play practice, take my son to basketball practice and pick up dinner. And I can do all this while taking a business call on my cell phone and driving with my knee!

2. Laundry Skills - Laundry is an art form. The key is to be able to wash and dry clothes without every using the ironing board. To accomplish this I must be sure to time the dryer so I can take the clothes out immediately and fold them. I would rather wash clothes a second time then use that ironing board.

3. Dish Washing Skills - When you live with children you need to possess black belt level dish washing skills. Dirty dishes sneak up on you all day long and it requires Ninja-like reflexes to keep up with them.

4. Take-Out Ordering Skills - This is a highly underestimated skill. At first glance it may appear that even a chimp could order take-out, but that chimp would have a bunch of whining, complaining kids on his hands. When ordering take-out you need to know all the subtleties of your children's eating habits. Who likes pickles and who prefers mustard instead of ketchup. Which pizza chain adds too much sauce. Do they like shredded chicken or grilled chicken. Was that coke or sprite today? And you need to keep up with the constantly changing preferences. "What do you mean you don't like carrots? Carrots are your favorite vegetable!" "Daaaaad...that was last week!"

What The F@#% Are You Talking About???

How do we reverse the trend of vulgarity in this country? I'm not a sociology major and so I'm not speaking as an expert on human behavior, but I don't have to be an expert to realize that vulgar language and vulgar behavior is becoming more acceptable in our society. I know I'm not alone when I say that this trend is not progress, but rather a step backwards for humanity.

I was raised by a gentleman who treated people with respect and rarely used foul language. My father would occasionally use the word "damn" if he hit his thumb with a hammer, but that was the extent of his swearing. So I wasn't exposed to vulgar language in my home.

When I started going to school there was a certain amount of dirty jokes and foul language, but nothing that would make it seem like the norm. I don't ever remember being around people in High School who felt the need to use four letter words as adjectives in every sentence. But now it's impossible to avoid such people. And it's not just the men, I've encountered several women who have the foulest mouths I've ever heard. And since I have children, these women don't last too long before I distance myself from them. The last thing I need is a woman who feels it is appropriate to drop the f-bomb around my kids.

Our children are exposed to so much more these days. A couple weeks ago I noticed that they were televising the movie "40 Year Old Virgin". I'm not trying to play the part of "holier than thou" because I've seen "40 Year Old Virgin" and I admit it was a very funny movie. But it is also the foulest, most vulgar movie I've ever seen and entirely inappropriate for children. In our home I use all the parental blocks available, so my kids would never have stumbled across that movie. But what could possibly be the reason for putting that movie on network television. Is it any wonder our children are growing up to be vulgar adults? What kind of behavior are we modeling by showing that movie? Children are so much more impressionable than adults. My daughter will watch a movie about a "Kung Fu Panda" and be running around the house practicing her Ninja moves.

I've heard the argument from people who say "It's nothing compared to what they will hear in school". But why is that? The kids in school are bringing that behavior from home! If vulgar language is unacceptable at home and not encouraged in the media, our children would not be modeling that behavior at school. If we really want to reverse this trend it needs to start in our homes.

The other day I was picking up my daughter from school and I became frustrated with the traffic in the parking lot. I voiced my frustration and let a four letter word slip. My daughter immediately caught me and scolded me. "Daaaad...you said the s-word!" I apologized...but I was also absolutely thrilled that she was shocked by my foul language. If we have more children who are shocked by foul language then the kids who use foul language will be in the minority. Eventually it will become less popular and nobody in school wants to be doing something unpopular.

I know I may sound like a prude old grandma or maybe even a bit hypocritical since I have done my fair share of swearing in my life. But it is certainly something to think about. Try and notice how vulgar language has become more acceptable. See if you think that is a good thing and then make your own decision. Personally I would much rather live in a world that does not accept such language as the norm. Let's leave that behavior in the locker room and create a more civilized environment for ourselves and our children.

The Back Page

It was a sad day for Sports Fans when Rick Reilly, after nearly 23 years, decided to move to ESPN and stop writing his "Life of Reilly" column on the back page of Sports Illustrated. Sports Illustrated has been in my home since I was a child and I have always looked forward to reading Reilly's amusing and sometimes touching perspective on sports.

When Reilly left, Sports Illustrated decided not to replace him with one columnist, but rather have three columnists take turns writing the article. In my opinion one of these writers is head and shoulders above the others. His name is Chris Ballard and he as written some gems since he started. You can check out his archives at this link Chris Ballard Archives.

Here is a sample from the back page of this week's edition of Sports Illustrated:

LEARNING FROM THE PROS

by Chris Ballard

Envy me, for I have drunk deep from the chalice of athletic wisdom and I am a smarter man for it. For the better part of four days I have done nothing but read pro athletes' blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. (Don't know what a Twitter feed is? Ask the nearest nine-year-old.)

I know what you're thinking. Athletes' blogs? Aren't those filled with base self-promotion and mind-melting mundanity?

Not so long ago I thought the same thing, naively assuming today's jocks could offer little compared to their predecessors. After all, while playing for the New York Knicks in the 70s, Bill Bradley wrote an insightful book called Life on the Run that included sentences like, "My attention drifts out through the bus window to Cleveland, one of America's northern industrial cities where furnaces of progress leave everything ashen, like the gray of a December morning."

Why couldn't an athlete today write something like that? Well, besides the fact that they're rarely on buses?

So I plunged into the prose of the pros and stand before you a changed man. I have learned the secrets of success from Tiger Woods and Donovan McNabb, I have LOL-ed with Baron Davis and "got back 2 it" with Carmelo Anthony. When Marshawn Lynch asks whether "U feel me?" I can now say that I do, Marshawn, I do feel U. I have watched Ron Artest eating sushi and Diana Taurasi grooving to Haddaway's "What is Love?" And, with Shaq as my guide, I have pondered the mysteries of the universe, such as "Did mrs Clinton really take da job"

Yes, Shaq, she did. (Though when it comes to another question you recently posed - "Whatthe hell is wrong wit da suns" - that, I fear, is a deeper riddle.)

Oh, the places I have gone and the things I learned. I found solutions to the financial crisis ("Heck, come on people. Spend! Get this economy going" writes US Olympic swimmer Ian Crocker), learned the rigors of NBA training ("I play Halo some days for 14 hours," confides Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas) and had my misconceptions about NFL players corrected ("I think it's a reach to think of more than three or four on a team that really would carry around a gun," writes Redskins tight end Chris Cooley.) And I think I speak for all of us when I say, isn't that a relief!.

Some players marvel at their own skill ("The crazy thing is my jumpshot is really coming along [and] that could be scary," writes Nuggets forward Carmelo Anthony) while others focus on that of their progeny. ("We had a big boy moment!" reports softball player Jennie Finch, "Ace 2 days ago pooed in the potty!!!") I can only imagine what has to happen for Ms. Finch employs four exclamation points.

I encountered a wealth of trenchant discourse on current cinema, from Shaq's insightful take on The Punisher ("great bloody movie, aggggggh....aggggggh (growl) (snarl) spit") to Celtics guard Rajon Rondo's Denbyesque deconstruction of One Missed Call ("Hands down it was the wackest, most horrible, sorry, miserable, lousy, inappropriate, disappointing, pathetic, deplorable, atrocious, awful movie I've ever seen in my life.")

Regrets? On his blog, former 49ers linebacker/maniac Bill Romanowski admits, "I wish I had found meditation while I was playing football," and I'm guessing there are a couple hundred NFL wide receivers who wish he had too. While over on his blog, Arenas grapples with the tough dilemmas an athlete faces ("A fan sent a pair of his grandmother's underwear over to me when I was on the bench during a game," Arenas writes, adding, "it was a little awkward.")

Everywhere I clicked, I gleaned useful advice, from the obvious ("There is no better way to celebrate a big win," writes Cooley "then getting grabbed and punched in the balls by a bunch of offensive lineman on the bus") to the practical. When attempting to ingest nine pounds of fried asparagus in 10 minutes, one should "eat 2 spears at a time" advises competitive eater Pat Bertoletti, and use "wylers pink lemonade/raspberry to get it down."

There were tips for other bloggers ("please don't use Wikipedia as a reference," pleads Curt Schilling), tales of promotional snafus ("I've seen bobbleheads of me where I was a white player," laments the decidedly non-Caucasian Curtis Granderson of the Detroit Tigers) and helpful hints on eating pancakes ("Start by cutting your first bite out of the center," writes Crocker, as it's "the warmest, softest, most flavorful spot.")

I encountered no MDs, yet learned a remarkable amount about medicine. On her blog, Mercury guard Taurasi describes what it was like to have an infected hair follicle removed from her back ("incredibly painful...I could feel the creature in every nook and cranny") while promising "the video will follow" with "maybe a soundtrack." Arenas -- perhaps the most prolific pro blogger out there - reports on the downside of painkillers, namely that after taking them, "I couldn't use the restroom for like five days." Alas, there is no video to follow.

No one taught me as much, however, as Hornets center Tyson Chandler. For example, never play a "sex song by R. Kelly" while one's wife is in labor ("she almost kicked me out of the delivery room"). Likewise, it's foolhardy to loan your bike to random kids in Compton ("I would see the dude riding off to the sunset like, "Hey, you wanna come back?). And if you buy tickets to Sesame Street Live, be forewarned that it is not all about but rather only featuring Elmo ( "It's hilarious to me that Elmo is like Beyonce and Destiny's Child.")

Finally, near the end of my cyber wanderings I came upon the blog of tennis star Rafael Nadal and discovered a novel sentiment: insecurity. Nadal, it seems, just wants to say he's sorry - for the scarcity of his posts, their tardiness and, most of all, for their irrelevance. "Why am I saying this? Who cares, right?" he writes in one. In another, he hopes, "that I am not too boring because I would hate that," then apologizes again, professing that, "I don't think this will be a very deep blog if you know what I mean."

I think I do, Rafael, I think I do.

Girls Are Weird

Girls are weird! I've come to this conclusion through my own un-scientific study. Not only have I observed this during my past seven years of dating which pretty much qualifies me for a PhD in the subject. But I have also observed this in the girls that are my son's age.

You see my son started Junior High (insert ominous music here) this year...and that seems to be when girls make the transformation from sweet, fun-loving, happy girls and change into..._________ (fill in the blank).

We have several of these girls in our neighborhood. These girls used to wave to us when we drove by and say hello when we passed them on the street. They would babysit my youngest daughter. They would come around and sell tickets to their very own choreographed dance performance and set up chairs in their front yard. These girls even invited my son to a princess birthday party and crowned him the prince.

But then they started Junior High (insert ominous music here). Suddenly these same girls don't wave anymore. They walk by with their head down looking at their feet. Unless of course they are in a group and then they walk by giggling and snickering. We notice this almost every morning because there is a group of girls on the corner of our street waiting for their ride to Junior High (insert ominous music here). Every morning I wave and every morning they turn away, look at their feet, or turn to each other and snicker. My son and I laugh because it is kind of funny to observe this bizarre phenomenon.

I honestly have not figured out what causes this behavior. It must be some deep seeded instinctual gene that has evolved over millions of years. Of course they didn't have Junior High (insert ominous music here) millions of years ago. So maybe it is a relatively new behavior that developed at about the same time the public school system started. I really don't know and I probably never will because it has been 30 years since I attended Junior High (insert ominous music here) and I still haven't figured out the female gender. And based on my track record and recent experiences, I'm sure I never will.

The Stuff-Less Christmas

Partly due to financial necessity and partly due to this video http://www.storyofstuff.com, my kids and I have decided to have a Stuff-Less Christmas. Well...I guess Dad decided and the kids had no other option. But they did watch the video with me and had a bit of a paradigm shift in their perception of consumption. And before you call Child Protective Services, I should point out that a Stuff-Less Christmas does not mean a Fun-Less Christmas.

Traditionally in our family we have celebrated the Twelve Days of Christmas. This is a tradition started by my father and something I have continued because of my fond memories from my childhood. The way it works is the kids get to open a gift every day leading up to Christmas. These gifts would not be anything elaborate. Usually something like a pack of gum, tic-tacs, or a small toy.

But this year we have changed the tradition to include activities instead of stuff. I created a Twelve Days of Christmas Chart with flaps the kids can open each day. Underneath the flap is a picture depicting the activity for the day. So far we have been Bowling, played Monopoly, went Swimming and made a trip to the Bookstore. Still to come is a trip to the Ice Cream Parlor, going to see the Holiday Lights, Santa vs The Snowman in 3D, The Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, Cinemark, Miniature Golf, a BYU Basketball Game, and making a Ginger Bread House.

The plan has been working out very well. The kids are still excited each day to see what the Twelve Days of Christmas Chart will reveal. We are spending time together and most importantly...the stress level for Dad has been reduced by a factory of 10!!! Can you even imagine how thrilled I am not to be fighting the holiday traffic and crowds trying to find a gift that my kids won't even care about after Christmas Day. In fact...someone asked my kids what they wanted for Christmas and they couldn't think of a single thing.

One of the most satisfying moments of this Christmas season was when someone asked me if I was getting ready for Christmas. I replied "I'm ready!" She said "What?!? What do you mean you're ready???" Then I explained that we are doing something non-traditional this year and I told her all about the idea for a Stuff-Less Christmas. As I walked away leaving her with that "Deer in the Headlights" look, I couldn't help smiling because I really was ready for Christmas and enjoying the experience for the first time in years!

The Lonely Guy

As a single dad I often end up playing the part of "The Lonely Guy". I'm not always a loner, but sometimes circumstances conspire against me and I'm left with the choice of staying home with the kids or going out alone. Such was the case last night.

I had tickets to see one of my favorite musicians...Kalai. And for some reason he was playing a concert 10 minutes from my house. This was an event I couldn't pass up. I invited someone to go with me, but due to the bad weather she was unable to make it. My son needed to go to a concert for a school assignment for his guitar class, so I took him with me. The problem is that concerts never start on time and then you have to sit through the lame warm up musicians. So half way through the second local musician my son was ready to go home. My babysitter needed to get home anyway, so I took my son home and quickly returned to the concert...ALONE.

I've been to concerts by myself before. Mainly because I love music and don't want to miss the experience of seeing one of my favorite musicians live. But I always end up feeling like that creepy loner guy. Once the music starts I become part of the experience and the fact that I'm alone doesn't matter anymore. But the showing up alone and leaving alone is always a little depressing.

I don't know how it is for other single parents. I often wish I was part of some cool group of people like the cast of "Friends" or "Seinfeld". You know...those people that always socialize together and go out together. But most of my friends are married and mormon. Not exactly cool. And you can't call your married buddy and say "Hey, let's go to a bar for a couple drinks and listen to music".

Then I have my single mom friends. I love my single mom friends, but you always run into that "When Harry Met Sally Syndrome". You can't really be "just friends"? I can honestly say that I've tried friendship with single women on several occasions and it never works out.

I guess since I love music and I'll be a single dad for the next 10 years...I'm destined to be the creepy, middle aged, lonely guy at concerts. If you see me at one of these concerts, don't be afraid. I'm just there for the music and a much deserved break from the life of a single dad.