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Cry Me a River
My wife and I have five kids. We started with three boys and then, once we'd officially learned the basics, went on to have twin girls. I thought I knew how to parent, but going from males to females was like going from basic math to trigonometry.
I …Read more.
Cat Craze
I have a confession to make. I am afraid of cats.
I'm not afraid that they'll attack me or sneak up in the middle of the night and suffocate me (as they have been known to do to babies for centuries — look it up on the Internet).
I'm afraid …Read more.
Money to Burn
Yesterday, over my morning coffee, I read in my paper that parents in New York City are all atwitter because tuitions at most private schools are just about to creep up past the $40,000 mark. I stared at the story for a full minute before it hit me: …Read more.
Tweenage Dream
Like almost every other American household this year, our home ended up after the holidays with a lot of new electronic items. I got an iPad. It was one of those gifts you don't know you want until you have it. Suddenly, I could check my email and …Read more.
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Just Say Cheese!Last Saturday, I dragged our vacuum up to our master bedroom to do a thorough cleaning. We make the bed every day and put away clothes on occasion, but every once in a while, I notice that when I hit the snooze button on the alarm clock, I'll raise a cloud of dust. I then know it's time to vacuum. It took some time to go through the clothes that fell into the recycle pile — stuff I'd worn once, hadn't really sweated up or anything, and I decided not to throw down the laundry chute. You never know — they might be able to go another round if I didn't plan on seeing anyone important and kept a few steps back from the people I did see. Anyone who pretends to be offended by this is a hypocrite. Chances are you've got a shirt hanging off the doorknob right now that you're planning to wear again, and you're not telling anyone, are you? (Socks and underwear, however, are another matter altogether. People who double-team those are beneath contempt.) At some point, though, the recycle pile gets deep enough that you can date the layers like fossils in sedimentary rock, and then it's time to toss them all. Soon after I started vacuuming, though, I started feeling a little stuffy-headed, like there wasn't enough air in the room. We have a gas fireplace in our bedroom, and I'm always a little worried that one day I'll keel over with carbon monoxide poisoning. I glanced over and only saw the pilot light on — not enough to poison a mouse. I kept vacuuming, but I felt a little woozy. Soon, though, I realized the room was filling with a deep, funky smell. I glanced toward my recycle pile. Maybe it was a critical mass thing. Each shirt alone was not big deal, but when you piled them up, it was another thing altogether. I leaned over and sniffed the pile. Nothing. Was it me? I stuck my head down into my sweatshirt and took a deep breath. Despite the fact that this sweatshirt hadn't seen the washing machine in a dog's age (sweatshirts, in my opinion, can be reused until someone — usually my wife — complains that I look like a hobo), I didn't encounter anything too toxic.
I started to worry that something had crawled into the rafters and passed away. About a month ago, I'd heard scratching noises in the middle of the night on the roof, but I just assumed that a raccoon was up there. Maybe whatever that was had ended badly and the remains were left behind. Finally, I realized it was the vacuum cleaner. Over the years, I've gotten so many things stuck in the vacuum that I've developed almost a bloodhound's sense of scents. I can instantly tell whether it's a stuck vacuum belt or a kid's belt stuck in the vacuum. I can tell you what carpet fringe smells like, and I know the exact odor of Christmas tinsel as it wraps around the beater and is about to melt. I turned off the vacuum and flipped it over. Nothing. The stench was now filling the room to the point where I had to crack open a window. I was starting to feel a little nauseous. If you can think back to the way the showers smelled in middle school, you'd have an accurate picture of what I was going through. At the same time, though — and this was very unsettling — as I sat there on the floor with the overturned vacuum cleaner, I started to feel really, really hungry. At this point, the air in our bedroom was thickening in a gray haze and I started to worry that I was hallucinating. I got up and stumbled down the stairs. I found my wife in the living room. Was there something wrong, I asked, with the vacuum cleaner? She thought about it for a moment, and then raised her finger the way that people do when they're about to tell you something they should have mentioned earlier. "Oh, that's right!" she said. "Yesterday, a full package of parmesan cheese fell out of the fridge and all over the kitchen floor. I couldn't find the broom, so I vacuumed it all up!" I nodded and trudged back up the stairs to open more windows, fighting conflicting urges: Either throw up or order a pizza with extra cheese. To find out more about Peter McKay, please visit www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM
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