Tag Archives: ipad

20 Pro Tip Life Hacks that will Literally Save Your Uninteresting Internet Dependent Life.

If this changed your life, is it really worth living?

If this changed your life, is it really worth living?

1. Remember the name of someone you just met by writing it down in an old tattered spiral notebook you keep folded in half longwise and hanging out of your back pocket. Bonus points for asking them to spell it and give country of origin.

2. Keep track of all of the cords around your computer or entertainment center by randomly unplugging them and looking to see what device won’t work. I can’t keep up with those little bread bag holders during the 10 days I have the loaf of bread, how am I supposed to avoid losing them long enough to build a cord labeling system?

3. Keep your car from running out of gas by looking at the fuel gauge and add more when the needle gets close to the E.

4. Look thinner in pictures by going on a diet and losing weight.

5. Use stuff like a paper clip or clothes pin or scotch tape or a chip clip or rolling tightly to keep your bag of chips from getting stale. Don’t use pant hangers, what are you some kind of freak?

6. Throw a Frisbee like….you know what? If you don’t already know how to throw a Frisbee, don’t bother trying now. There are some things you should just be able to figure out without the internet.

7. Make a grilled cheese the way your mom taught you and the way that has worked for a hundred years. Do you have any idea how hard it is going to be to clean the melted cheese out of your toaster, not to mention once you turn that thing on its side guess who has 3 years of crumbs to clean up?

8. Leave ketchup and mustard in the bottle they came in and set it out for a cookout. No one wants to scoop mustard out of your rusty old muffin pan and you know what is less than one dish to wash? No dish to wash.

9. There is a right way to put your daughter’s hair in a pony tail, dads, and it doesn’t involve the dirty hose from a vacuum cleaner. Stop being a stereotype.

10. Open a banana by pealing from the stem like a normal person. Stop making monkeys your life coach, monkeys don’t care if their banana is smashed but you have a shirt on.

11. Just turn your windshield wipers on low, there is no prize for spending your entire commute trying to lock in the perfect intermittent setting.

12. If you want extra ketchup grab another little paper ketchup cup. There is a stack of like a million right in front of you and they are free. Don’t hold up the line by unrolling the top of your little paper ketchup cup to hold 1/8 of an ounce more. What are you, a serial killer?

13. Use household cleaners to clean things around the house because vinegar smells like someone just peed on a pile of rotting fruit.

14. Get free on demand movies by calling your cable company when you finish watching it and telling them that your toddler did it by mistake, threaten to cancel your service if they don’t agree. (this one only works like 1 or 100 times depending on the direction of your moral compass).

15. Wear goggles when you are chopping an onion to keep from tearing up.  They also keep blood out of your eyes when you are chopping up people because what kind of psychotic freak cooks with goggles on, Dexter?

16. Use a crayon, brown marker, or furniture polish to cover scratches on wood. Or go out and find a place that will sell you a single walnut so you can try this thing you saw on the internet.

17. Keep milk from going bad by drinking all of it in a reasonable amount of time and never ever under any circumstances believe some nonsense on the internet that tells you to keep drinking milk past the expiration date. Gross.

18. Use a toilet paper roll for an iPhone speaker because that was the one decoration you were missing in your cubicle. Congratulations, you just became the weird guy people are afraid to talk to. Good luck dodging all of the ladies when you start rocking out to your toilet phone.

19. Instead of taking pictures of your friends holding the thing they are borrowing from you, get new friends that don’t try to steal your stuff.

20. Just pour your pancake batter out with a spoon or measuring cup. We don’t need it in a ketchup bottle. Stop creating fixes for things that aren’t broken. Have you ever tried to wash the inside of a ketchup bottle? Do you know how hard it is to pour pancake batter into a ketchup bottle? Just stop it, this wasn’t a problem or life struggle before the internet saved us from it.

 

 

 

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Let’s See What Every Public Restroom in Our Town Looks Like

Sweet

Big Girl Panties 

You're basically a horrible parent if you don't buy your kid's an ipotty, I mean how did anyone live before these were invented?

You’re basically a horrible parent if you don’t buy your kid’s an ipotty, I mean how did anyone live before these were invented?

I say the phrase “big girl panties” far more than I am comfortable with but my modicum of machismo is a small sacrifice in this rite of passage known as potty training.  We’ve traded in Minnie Mouse pull ups for Hello Kitty underwear and so far so good.

I shudder at the risk of writing some mundane blog post that reads like so many all too graphic status updates we have endured on Facebook about the trials and tribulations of dumping the diaper.  I refuse to chronicle the occasional set-back and focus on the fact that we are no longer forking over hard-earned cash for it to get peed on.

I think that we, as parents, are usually so happy to be passed the diaper changing stage that it doesn’t dawn on us for a while that it really is the conclusion of the baby stage.  There is no stopping them from growing up so we may as well appreciate that their maturation can provide a bit of a break for us as well.  As a dad of daughters I could live without the daily 3 minute decision process of is she in more of a My Little Pony mood or a Tinker Bell mood to gird her fanny with but getting your kid potty trained is totally sweet.

Weak

I need to go  

Seeing this is totally clutch.

Seeing this is totally clutch.

Here is the deal, 74% of the time you hear a child utter the phrase, ‘I need to go to the bathroom” what it really means is, “I want to see the bathroom.”  I won’t discredit my sentiments from above that your child being potty trained is a good thing but ugh, can we go one place in public without visiting the loo?  Since that is obviously not an option could we please limit our public wanderings to places that have a family restroom?  I don’t mind navigating the potential minefield of taking my daughter into the men’s room but I think we can all agree that the family restroom is pretty clutch.

We have been to the restroom in every store, restaurant, post office (haha, it isn’t 1987, we don’t go to the post office), park, doctor’s office, and gas station in at least a 8 mile radius of our home.  I don’t shy away from taking my girls to the restroom out in public but it ain’t all roses and sunshine people.  Here is just a sampling of some of the thoughts that have gone through my head while fake potty dancing our way to use the water closet:

  • Please don’t ask about the urinals, please don’t ask about the urinals.
  • Oh good, an automatic paper towel dispenser, guess we are coming back here 14 times in the next hour.
  • Good thing we don’t need a special license plate to use the handicapped stall.
  • LOOK AWAY!!!
  • Sure, I will hold you above the sink so you can get soap and wash your hands and splash water because it is important to form a healthy habit even though we both know you just sat there with your hands clasped while I did all of the dirty work.
  • Honey, unless you are ready for her to start watching rated R movies, it looks like its your turn and let’s hope the lady’s room is more G rated.
  • It’s a good thing this kid can’t read (this is mostly on a road trip emergency stop at a highway gas station)
  • I think I put that paper seat cover thing on backwards.
  • NOPE, too many dudes in here = too many potential questions.
  • I already know that this is a false alarm but this is not the type of thing you risk.

So, we visit them all and hope for the best.  At some point they will surely realize that none of them are really that special but I think I know what their angle is. It is the nemesis of parent’s taking their kid’s to the bathroom and the crown jewel of children’s restroom adventures.  The water fountain.  Man I hate public water fountains.  Just as you finish the whole restroom experience and think you are free, you exit the door and your child’s eyes light up with the desire for cool, bacteria laced, free, public refreshment.  Not only does that water fountain present one last obstacle / opportunity for you to be a meanie head, they remember that water fountain and you can bet your life the next time you visit the location, they will want to visit. No one wants their child to be in diapers forever but that doesn’t mean that taking your kid into a public restroom isn’t completely weak.


Finding Your Inner Strength

Sweet & Weak

Roughing it

Sometimes life throws you a curve ball and you have to dig deep inside to muster the strength to go on and overcome sudden hardship.  It is in those times, when situations look hopeless, that families can find a way to come together and triumph.  With gritty determination, teamwork, and good old fashion gumption, my family came out on top this morning smelling like vanilla.  That’s right, vanilla.  That is because this morning’s metaphorical Everest was a 5:55 power outage and we held on tight and reached the summit together by 6:30 thanks to flashlight apps on our phones and a cabinet filled with half burned scented candles.

I will not make light of it (horrible pun), it is a difficult thing to look into your child’s eyes and explain to her that “No sweetie, I can’t turn on a kid show while we finish getting ready.”  With holiday scents released from our flickering light sources wafting through our humble abode, my brave little girl found the strength to occupy her time by sitting in the dark playing Angry Birds on the iPad.  She was scared and didn’t understand why the sink would work but the lights were dead.  It is in moments like this that a parent can take advantage of a real learning opportunity and share a pint of ice cream with his little ones for breakfast, explaining what life was like for people long ago.

I was truly proud of the resourcefulness  exhibited this morning as we made the best of things.  Make-up was applied by candle light and moose and hairspray saved the day as the flat-iron lied impotent on the counter.  Lunches were packed and coffee was replaced with caffeinated soda (even if it was a hard pill to swallow realizing the refrigerator wouldn’t drop the ice directly into our cups and we had to scoop it out with our bare hands).  Our problem solving was at its zenith as we continued to find a way where there seemed to be no way.  Garage door openers were pushed out of habit and the fear of our cars being stuck was quickly washed away as we remembered to pull down on the red hangy down thing to open the garage manually.  In a stroke of luck we even knew where a key was to our house so we were able to lock up behind ourselves to hopefully protect our possessions once the inevitable looting began.

As we drove down the streets of our dark subdivision you couldn’t help but feel a sense of community as parents escorted their kids to the bus stops flashlights in hand.  Somehow we all managed to make it out alive.  It may have taken longer to update our statuses relying solely on 3G instead of wi-fi, but we did it and we learned a few things along the way.  I like to think that our forefathers would have been proud of us this morning for pulling up our bootstraps and exhibiting the kind of determination this great country was founded upon.  In fact, I could hardly wait to share our story of overcoming hardship and roughing it like a real pioneer as soon as I got to Starbucks.

Sometimes a morning that starts off pretty weak has a way of turning out sweet after all.


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