I work full time and do most of the cleaning, cooking, and kid stuff. My wife is handicapped and several months into recovering from a major surgery that didn’t go well, and she’s only recently starting to pick up the slack again. I’m exhausted. I feel like our home is wasted because it’s never clean enough to enjoy it. I use what energy I have on the important things like making sure my kids have healthy meals, but that means letting other things fall by the wayside, like basic repairs and mopping.

But I’m happy. I love my family. I love spending time with them. Every once in a while I can just sit back and be grateful for all the things that have gone right in my life.

And at least once a week my kids do something genuinely hilarious.

Lately my two-year-old son has been doing this baby talk thing, copying his sister who was copying from a video she saw of herself as a baby. So we’ve been gently reminding him that we don’t do baby talk in our house. No baby talk.

The other day, I heard my wife singing Baby, baby, baby… in a way that was unmistakably Celine Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back to Me”, except then she’d suddenly transition into Smokey Robinson’s “Tracks of My Tears”. I heard her do this three separate times throughout the day. Then she did it in the car and I pointed out that she was definitely doing the wrong baby, baby, baby.

She disagreed. Phones came out. Songs were played.

“See? It goes Baby, BAby,”

“No it’s Baby, baby, baby…”

“No, that’s too flat. You’re doing Baby, baby, baby, but it’s Baby, BAby-”

Then my son interrupts from the back seat: “Stop it! No baby talk!”

That’s true.

With a T9 phone, I used to be able to send a complete text message without ever taking my eyes off the road.

Now that I’ve got a touchscreen I’m swerving all over the place every time I try to text. It’s way less safe.

Or just stop after the first sentence.

Have you tried saying, “Please don’t ask me that anymore”?

That will address the exact problem without being rude, without offending him, and without opening it up for more questions. You don’t owe him an explanation, so don’t leave an opening for one. Just say: “Please don’t ask me that anymore.”

If he asks why, you say, “Doesn’t matter. Please don’t ask me that anymore.”

If he offers an explanation for why he’s asking you that, you say, “Ok. Please don’t ask me that anymore.”

Neat and easy. No unintended consequences.

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Fuck. I’ve gotten so used to it on reddit that I didn’t even notice it this time.

My daughter once asked me, “Do rainbows stop the rain?”

She was three and, in my opinion, very insightful. These rainbows keep showing up right about the time the rain stops. A little too convenient to be a coincidence, right?

The CEO would just be a fall guy, and the decision-making would go to someone else.

“customers are shopping more with Kroger now than ever because we are fighting inflation and providing great value.”

I call shenanigans. I don’t always pay close attention to the prices of all the things I buy, but one thing I do pay attention on is soda. (Probably because it’s bad for me, so I give myself additional justification to buy it or not.)

And amidst all this “inflation”, and all the talk about lowering prices back down to reasonable levels Kroger’s price just on soda just jumped 25%.

Years ago I used to get a 12-pack for $5, and sometimes there’d be a 3-for-$12 deal. When COVID hit, it was 3-for-$15. Post-COVID, $7 a box. When they raised it to $8, I stopped buying it unless it’s on sale or if my wife specifically requests it, and then I only buy one.

Then I went to Kroger a few weeks ago, and the only way to get a price under $8/box was to sign up for something on their app and sell them my personal information. So I decided not to buy from Kroger anymore.

This week my wife specifically requested a box, I was in Kroger anyway, and now it’s $10/box or 3-for-$8. Fuck that. They hit their limit with me, and there are no circumstances in which I’m paying that much for soda.

My person was like a disembodied arm. Like if pushing the ball off the table were a game on the Wii, which I guess would mean it was in first person.