Time is a fascinating concept to me. I’ve written about it before, but it just seems so arbitrary sometimes. It amazes me how we can suck at it so badly that we have to add an entire extra day every four years to keep our system going — and no one really bats an eye.
We break things up into millennia and centuries, decades and years, months and days, hours and minutes and seconds. Not satisfied with that, we break up groups of months into quarters, which, if nothing else, allows for orderly American football and tense times for businesses that report to stockholders.
I can’t beat the system here. As much as I’d love to live away from time and all its constraints and limitations, it appears as if I’m stuck here in a society that values it and adheres to it in equal measures of strength.
So without further ado, here’s my Q1 report from my “One Hundred Intentions for 2022” list!
On Target
Lots of things are either done or on target to being done. Let’s review.
No. 1 — Go on 52 dates with CC: We have, indeed, gone on a date every week of this calendar year. I value these times to reconnect with Wifey Poo. We live busy lives, but I’m grateful for the time we take to be “just us” every week. It makes us better spouses, yes, but also better parents and better people.
No. 2 — Go to a Yankees/Cardinals game: I am a life-long Yankees fan, having grown up an hour from The House The Ruth Built. Wifey Poo is a life-long Cardinals fan, being a St. Louis regional native. Our teams play in early August and, thanks to the players and owners working out their differences, the tickets I bought Wifey Poo for Valentines Day remain valid.
No. 5 — Go to a concert: Music is my thang, and the f’n pandemic killed live music for a while. I’m making up for lost time. This summer and fall, I will see, if all goes well, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Shinedown, Jewel, Gin Blossoms and perhaps Evanescence. Rock on’, yo.
No. 11 — See license plates from all 50 states: Though the end of the first quarter, I have seen 44, which puts me on pace to see 176 different state license plates and is a lesson on why you need to be careful with statistics. Living near I-70 has helped. Going on a few road trips has been a great assist. I’m imagining I’ll be able to find Connecticut, Nevada, Rhode Island, Vermont and West Virginia in the next nine months. It’s Hawaii that worries me.
No. 16 — Go to Ikea: Insert whatever the Swedish word is for “done.”
No. 20 — Go to a stand-up comedy event: Wifey Poo and I went to see Tim Allen in March. He was… meh. Very meh. We’re going to see Sebastian Maniscalco later this year, and Tom Segura is coming into town. I’d love to see him.
No. 23 — Go to a WLW wrestling event: So Harley Race was a badass wrestler from the 1970s-80s. He ran a wrestling promotion near where I live until his death a few years back. His son now runs it. Though this didn’t happen in Q1, Boy The Younger and I went this past weekend to Race Arena, which is really just a small warehouse with a roof so low that off-the-top-rope moves took on a different kind of risk than I’ve ever seen before. There were maybe 75 people in attendance. And it was awesome.
No. 24 — Start a collection of something: I began collecting CDs (see No. 5). I love music. And CDs were the pinnacle of sound quality. So I’ve started an eclectic collection that features Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Metallica, Bob Dylan, Marcus King, Evanescence and the Eagles. Recommendations are always welcomed.
No. 30 — Get Uber Eats delivered: Nothing like some Buffalo Wild Wings left on your doorstep when the family is out of town and you don’t feel like cooking.
No. 31 — Go to three new restaurants: Wifey Poo and I went to an African restaurant called Chez Ali, a really cool diner-type place with friends we met in Indianapolis called Rosie’s Cafe and, for our 25th anniversary, an amazing seafood place called Splash in Des Moines, and yes, despite being in Iowa, it truly was an amazing seafood place.
No. 36 — Read five books: This one was a matter of redemption for me. I used to be beyond an avid reader. Then Longhaul Covid turned my brain into mush. I can’t exactly describe what it’s like to try to read with such a brain, but the feeling is kinda like when you’re trying to get the top off of something and, no matter what you try, it just … won’t … budge. A neurologist recommended I push through that feeling as a way of helping my brain rewire itself. And it’s working! I read three books through Q1 (Blaze, by Stephen King; Heavier Than Heaven, the biography of Kurt Cobain; and Klara and the Sun), and just finished Stephen King’s The Institute yesterday. Now I’m onto Dave Grohl’s new book. Suck it, Covid.
No. 37 — Play Dungeons and Dragons three out of every four times the party plays: This had been another Longhaul Covid casualty. Just when I had reconnected with some high school acquaintances and begun slaying dragons, my brain turned to mush and, aside from reading problems, long periods of exposure to technology was horrific. So I stopped. Now I’m back, and I brought Boy The Younger with me. We completed one adventure in February and have started a new one. I’m now a half-orc barbarian with major rage issues. Seems about right.
No. 40 — Get a bottle of bourbon that’s on the “best of…” list: I bought a bottle of Woodford Reserve Double Oak Barrel and, I must say, it’s delicious.
No. 42 — Create a college football bowl pool with a traveling trophy: I did exactly that and the trophy was won by … Boy The Elder’s girlfriend? She was not much of a sports fan at all until she started dating BTE. Now she’s the champion of the tournament.
No. 43 — Start The Waffle House Fantasy Baseball League: So there are lots of leagues out there in fantasy sports in which the winner gets a trophy or money. I don’t know how many there were in which the loser has to spend 24 hours in a Waffle House and is able to reduce the time by an hour for each waffle consumed, but there’s now at least one.
No. 47 — Pick up a freelance marketing side gig: So I love what I do. I love writing, designing, videography… whatever. I had a nasty habit for a while of doing what I love to do and am good at doing for free. While nice and friendly, that doesn’t help my finances. So I let it be known I was in search of a side gig and landed a few in Q1, including a side job for my boss, a one-off in which I designed a flyer for an early learning center and an ongoing one in which I write articles for Northwestern University to help attract students to its masters programs.
No. 51 — Get new pants that fit: Having pants that don’t constantly threaten to fall down around your ankles is a good thing, I think we’d all agree. As part of my battle against Longhaul Covid last year, I completely switched up my diet to remove any and all foods that could cause inflammation. In the process, I lost 30 pounds. This year, I bought new pants to celebrate my less-fatness. Two pairs are in hands. A third is now somewhere out there in a DHL warehouse or truck making their way to me. Thanks Indochino!
No. 54 — Get a monthly massage: This one almost fell by the wayside in January. If not for a last-minute appointment, it would have. Now I have a great new massage therapist who is amazing to talk to and who, every month this year, has worked out the various knots and kinks that plague my neck and back.
No. 55 — Do a float every quarter: If you’ve never done a float in a sensory deprivation tank, you should. Yes, I know you feel like it’s closed in and scary. Try it and take deep breaths. For me, it’s a necessary thing, I’m finding. As an extreme empath, I’m constantly bombarded by other people’s crap. Locking myself in a chamber of warm salt water that promotes effortless floating and is completely dark and quiet is an amazing way to disconnect and just be.
No. 60 — Keep my new healthy eating habits and maintain my weight: See No. 51, above. I have had some day-to-day fluctuations — it appears I can gain or lose 5 pounds in a day based on what I drink or don’t drink — but I’m still below where I need to be below.
No. 64 — Get into and stay in the 99th percentile in Lumosity: So yeah, a lot of things on my list this year had to do with saying “fuck you” to Longhaul Covid. This was one of them. As part of my “retrain my brain” efforts, a doc recommended Lumosity in addition to reading. At first, the games killed me. Then I started to heal. Now, I’m in the 99.4th percentile for my age group overall. Suck it, Covid.
No. 65 — Take care of a pet: The original intention here was to watch someone’s dog or lizard or something. Then we got it in our minds that we were somehow ready for a new dog. I had been staunchly against this in the wake of the deaths of both my dogs in 2020, within three months of each other. Wasn’t 2020 a great year? Anyway, that all changed when we saw our Luna, an English bulldog who’d been used up as a breeding dog by some asshole who deserves a throat punch. She’s slowly coming around to the reality that people are good and love her. And I do. A lot.
No. 72 — Give an anonymous gift each month: What I’m learning is that, in this day and age, it’s tougher to stay anonymous. Still, I’ve been able to thanks a college friend, a work colleague and my middle school English teacher.
No. 73 — Create a screen-in-porch oasis: Another one not totally finished until April, but it’s finished now. May the creator of allen wrenches forever be damned to have blisters from turning his infernal creation! But the porch furniture is assembled and this past weekend I put together a mobile TV stand and hooked a TV to it so I can wheel it out and watch baseball on nice spring/fall afternoons.
No. 74 — Create with BTY his new bedroom: Doing this Q1 review has made me realize I put a lot of stuff together this year. And this is amazing, considering there was a time in which I felt totally incompetent with things like this. Now, I feel like I could put anything together. BTY has a completely updated bedroom — less like a child and more like the teen he soon will be. I put together his bed, his dresser, his nightstand, a fish tank stand and installed three shelves. This came after painting the walls (with his and Wifey Poo’s tremendous assistance).
No. 83 — Write my own obituary: I don’t want anyone else telling my story when I die. First off, I don’t want anyone to put in any bullshit like “He was loved by all who knew him.” My own sister hates me, and my mother ain’t too fond of me either. And there sure as hell are some former work colleagues who aren’t going to be sending me any Christmas cards of the non-ticking variety. I made a first pass at writing this and it’s technically done, but I wrote it when I was kind of angsty and should probably revise and soften it a bit.
No. 88 — Watch season 5 of Better Call Saul: Damn, I love that show. And I loved Breaking Bad. The fact that the latter is over and the former is heading into its final season makes me sad.
No. 90 — Watch a classic film from the 1940, 50s or 60s: Wifey Poo and I watched Casablanca for Valentine’s Day. The intention was to have a crowd, as part of No. 61: host a monthly movie night, but that plan didn’t work because I apparently have no one living within 50 miles of me who thought my planned movie night worthy of their time in January, February or March. Still, it was nice to watch it with Wifey Poo. Great flick, great date.
No. 98 — Make an anniversary video for Wifey Poo: We celebrated our 25th anniversary in March. I made her this. Ladies, if you’re looking for romance, marry someone who knows Adobe Premiere Pro.
No. 99 — Rent a Jeep for Wifey Poo to drive for a day: Wifey Poo loves Jeeps. We currently drive piece-of-shit Nissan Versas because we’re poor and love good gas mileage. Someday I will buy her a Jeep, but for now, renting one to take on our 25th anniversary getaway brought a smile to her face. Speaking of which…
No. 100 — Plan/go on a 25th anniversary trip: The original plan was to go to Alaska this summer, though Wifey Poo didn’t know that. When things didn’t happen as I wanted them to with my job soon enough, I pivoted and creating something far less adventurous but far more sentimental. We went to Des Moines Freaking Iowa, back to Drake University, where we met. Back to Roseman Bridge, where we got engaged. Back to Drake University club hockey, where we had our first date and where, this time, I arranged with the team to be at their practice and for them to surprise her with flowers and a team “happy anniversary” wish. It was awesome. A lot has changed since our Drake days (1992-96), but one thing that’s stayed the same is us. Always us.
This is how I invited her:
Probably Not Gonna Happen
Ahh, if everything could be going as swimmingly as the items above. Alas, this was a list of intentions, not a list of things I definitely was going to do. Some things probably aren’t going to happen. A few definitely won’t happen. Let’s discuss.
No. 39 -Take enough photos to have a Photo of the Week for 52 weeks: I love looking at the world through a camera lens. I love capturing moments from that world. I just live in a very small world and am pretty boring, which makes finding interesting photographs a challenge. Or I’m just plain lazy. Whatever.
No. 58 – Go to restorative yoga 52 times: I love restorative yoga. I love my little yoga studio. But perhaps going, on average, once a week was a little ambitious. Weather canceled some classes. BTY’s sporting events, my round-two battle with Covid and other situations led me to skip out on a few more. Fifty-two ain’t happening. But some is better than none, and I’ll keep going.
No. 59 – Meditate daily: If you’re picking up on a theme here, you’re not alone. These highly time-bound items are killin’ me, Smalls. “Daily” was perhaps ambitious. Of course, “not meditating at all for the first two months of the year” was perhaps lazy and stupid. March saw me get into more of a routine, and now I’m approaching something like four or five days a week. But daily? Pshaw. I should have known myself and my own affinity for ignoring self-care better.
No. 61 – Host a monthly movie night: My long-standing battle with not having friends is a thing. I thought this would help alleviate that. I would invite a shit-ton of people I kinda sorta knew, and at least a few of them would show up for some fun and entertainment. In doing that, maybe one of those folks would turn into an actual friend. Yeahno. Not one person RSVP’d to January — and then Covid invaded my house and it was canceled anyway. February came and went with no RSVP’s. March was successful only in that BTE and his girlfriend came, but they’re not exactly friend material. So screw it. You don’t want to come? I don’t want you here. (And you wonder why I don’t have friends?)
No. 77-82, 84 – Writing stuff: I had grand plans to do a lot of creative writing this year. It’s not happening, though it’s for a good reason. It’s because I’m getting paid to spill words out, as I mentioned in No. 47. That said, I’d like to do at least something creatively. I have started a few short stories. I’m real good at that — starting stories that never get finished. We’ll see what happens.
No. 94 – Take an improve class: I love comedy. I have been someone who makes people laugh ever since I was a little boy. I think I could perhaps do something with comedy to make more people laugh. So I put this on there because I know of a place where improv happens and where they’ll teach you how to do it better. That said, the thought of actually doing it, of putting myself out there like that, terrifies me. So I say this probably won’t happen, but in reality, it really should. I mean, at the very least I can laugh at myself.
So there you have it, the Q1 update on the List of One Hundred Intentions For 2022. I’d say I’m fairly happy with where I am. Q2 has started off well. Let’s see what happens.
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🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩CC, BCC, FU 📧Basketball Poll 🏀Andy Rooney 🎙️ This week has largely been a Shit Week marred by Shit People. What are Shit People? They aren’t exactly easy to define, but one hallmark of a Shit Person is his rampant use of the CC function at work to passive-aggressively play power…
Brain Rest — Feb. 13, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Chill Day 🛋️Busy Weekend ⚾Halftime 🏈 I’m not working today. Not only am I not working at my day job, I’m not doing any work for my side gig today. I’m not planning on doing much of anything, actually. And I don’t feel guilty about that. This weekend was insanely busy.…
Drugs — Feb. 10, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Big Pharma Sucks 💊Work Rules 🧑💼Big Weekend 🏈 Spend any time in front of the television and you’ll see ads touting the latest drugs that you shouldn’t take if you’re allergic to and that you most definitely need to ask your doctor about. Now comes a study showing that the people…
Missourah and the Spy Balloon — Feb. 7, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Top 5 🎈Symphony 🎻Living Eulogies 💗 Top 5 things overheard in Missourah last week as a purported Chinese spy balloon made its way over the state en route to its rendezvous with an F22’s missile: Despite my high-brow upbringing in Suburbia, New York, I’m not what anyone would call A Symphony…
Pokey Joe — Feb. 2, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Space Walk 🧑🚀Bye-Bye Brady 🏈Failure Rate 🐿️ When Boy The Elder was just Boy and devoid of a younger brother, we had a nickname for him: Pokey Joe. BTE didn’t do anything fast, but more than anything, what he did incredibly slow was get out of a car. That would suck…
Stuck Balls — Feb. 1, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Raccoons 🦝February 💘Man Nips 🕺 Today I bring you the story of a raccoon who got his balls stuck to railroad tracks. But the reason you think I’m bringing you this story is not the reason I’m bringing you this story. You think I’m bringing the story of the raccoon Neil…
‘Fuck Tha Police’ — Jan. 28, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Tyre Nichols 😔Tattoo Day ✒️Nephew Hoops🏀 I was a white kid in suburbia, New York, in 1988 when the gangsta rap group N.W.A. came out with its album Straight Outta Compton, featuring the song Fuck Tha Police. It was scandalous, at the time, to suggest that the police would be anything…
Snow — Jan. 25, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Car Concert 🎵Sick Wife🤒People Suck 🖕 Within the 24 hours in the run-up to Snowpocalypse 2023, the estimates on the Weather Channel app for our snowfall total ranged from 1 to 10 inches. That’s like going to the doctor and being told you have anything from a splinter to terminal cancer.…
STUPID Goals — Jan. 20, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Mission: Failed 👎Ho 🤣Handy Family 👍 It has to suck to work at the Missouri Department of Transportation. Why? It took exactly 75 minutes for all of 2023 to be a failure. Let me explain. Those of you unfortunate enough to have been involved in any sort of corporate planning process…
Writing Retreat — Jan. 15, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Houston 🖊️Sad clown 🤡Taco Seasoning 🌮 Houston, Missourah, is not unlike a lot of other rural Missourah towns through which I’ve driven and bears a resemblance to the Small Town USA in which Boy The Elder did a lot of his early growing up and to which Boy The Younger came…
Ceilings — Jan. 14, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Definitions 📖Missing Bourbon 🥃Mysterious Knocks 😵 I generally abhor any writing that starts with, “Webster’s dictionary defines …” Webster’s dictionary defines “ceiling” as a noun meaning “the overhead inside lining of a room.” The implication is that it’s a limitation, a max, a point of demarcation between what’s out there and…
Movie Ambush — Jan. 13, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Sadness 😥Annoyance 😠Disappointment 😞 When Boy The Elder was Boy The Only in our home, he watched one of the Air Bud movies featuring a basketball-playing dog. Or maybe it was football. Or soccer. By the time that series was over, that dog had played them all. Anyway, whichever Air Bud…
Animal Updates — Jan. 12, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Thor’s Blurry Hammer 🍆Pigeon Delivery 🕊️Idiot List 🤪 Thor is really, really good with his hammer. And by that, I mean that Thor the walrus in Scarborough, England, is really good at masturbating and ruining New Years Eve. If you haven’t heard about this story, stop reading stupid news like politics…
Bad Boys— Jan. 11, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Bruising Basketball 🏀Poke ☝️Six?!? 🔫 I grew up in the NBA era of the Bad Boys Detroit Pistons while loving a New York Knicks team that was, to put it mildly, quite physical. Guys like Steph Curry and LeBron James can makes basketball seem like artistry these days, but give me…
Done — Jan. 10, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩What There is Like! ⛅’Modern Policing’ 🚨Xylophone Time! 🎵 When you decide to talk about a time in which you truly believe you more-or-less died and saw what comes after this life, you have to be comfortable with the fact that people might think you’re nuts. Hell, talking about it on…
Media Landscape — Jan. 6, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Grace Ashford! 📰Idaholy Shit! 🥔Story of the Year! 🍆 The three most influential people in my life as a journalist are, sadly, all part of the Great Newsroom in the Sky now. Professors Michael Perkins and Bob Woodward (AKA Bob Woodward-Not-That-Bob-Woodward) helped educate me at Drake University, and Lisa Warren was…
Santos Kills Puppy — Jan. 5, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Poor Puppy 🐶Romeo and Juliet 🤴👸Meta Mistake 🙊 Disturbing news out of Washington, D.C., today as Republican Congressman-elect George Santos (if that’s his real name) brought a 6-month-old puppy to the house floor and screamed “Hey, look at me!” before slitting its throat and lapping up its squirting blood like a…
Institutions — Jan. 4, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩A Pretty Good Rant 😠Tesla Plunge 🚗Missed Lasts 😥 Those of you who regularly read my drivel (I see you, DirtySciFiBuddah) might have become aware of the fact over the past year or so that I am not a huge fan of our world’s modern institutions. All of them might, in…
Finishing — Jan. 2, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Incomplete 🕮Frustration 😠Bowl Bust 🏈 To say that I know how to write is like saying I know how to breathe. No one considers that they know how to breathe. They just … breathe. No one is particularly good at breathing or bad at breathing. Again, they just … breathe. I’ve…
Fifty Intentions for 2023
Welcome to Issue No. 15 of Listicles, the feature that presents the Top 10, Top 5, Top 3, Top 100 or Top 1,000,000 of whatever it is you want to know about. Email your Listicle suggestions to johnagliata@gmail.com. So last year, I had a list of 100 intentions for 2022, and I did fairly well,…
Vision Board — Dec. 30, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩2023 📅Helping 🧠The Universe 🔭 I’m not much for long-term plans and goals. This isn’t to suggest I don’t think they’re important. I just think that spending a lot of time on them is futile. What’s the saying? Man plans, God laughs. Something like that. Anyway, I’ve learned through experience that…
The Point of Suffering — Dec. 27, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Chain Links 🔗”Work” 🧑💼Popular Toys 🧸 After my first son died in December 2000, I spent a lot of time wondering why. Why me? Why Wifey Poo? Why Jacob? Why this level of suffering in a world supposedly created and run by an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful God? So I did what…
Freezing Fans — Dec. 26, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Chiefs! 🏈Indy Tickets 🏎️Bank Visit 💰 When I bought the tickets to the Christmas Eve contest between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Seattle Seahawks as a gift for Boys The Elder & Younger, it was sometime in September and temps hovered around 90 degrees. The thought that the game might…
Jacob at 22 — Dec. 20, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Timelines 👶Extinctions 🌋Sin City 👌 As I fall deeper down the rabbit hole learning more about theories on space and time, the concept of alternative timelines comes up again and again and again. Whether it’s the stuff of science fiction or one day will be proven to be the stuff of…
Joe(y) the Comedian — Dec. 18, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩’Cousin’ Laughs🎤Improv!?!? 🎭Drake Hoops 🏀 Back when I was a boy, I had a favorite Cousin-Who-Wasn’t-A-Cousin. His name was Joey DeVito, and he was in no way a blood relation to me, though I called his father Uncle Frankie and his mother Aunt Celia. I’m pretty sure this is an East…
Doughnut Guy — Dec. 17, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Glazed 🍩Bingo! 🖥️Disappearing Christians ⛪ I didn’t intend to bring doughnuts for my co-workers yesterday morning. It just sorta happened. How it happened and how it played out is a window into my weird mind. First, an explanation: I have a card purchased from Boy The Younger that entitles me to…
James and Stinky — Dec. 15, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩STL’s Homeless 😥Snake Hoo-Hoos 🐍That Was Epoch 👴 I found James huddled underneath a blanket as he sat, knees to his chest, head bowed, just outside the doorway of a CVS in the Delmar Loop section of St. Louis. If you’re not familiar with the area, it’s a fun place filled…
Paul Silas — Dec. 14, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Knicks Memory 🏀JBM LLC 🧑🏼💼Brain Drain 🧠 My most memorable interaction with Paul Silas occurred when I was a 17-year-old kid with big dreams of being a sports reporter. I’d talked with Paul before — his wife and Mother Dearest were active in the local Make A Wish Foundation chapter and…
Humbug — Dec. 13, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Piped-In Music 🎵Astronomy 🔭Fusion ☢️ Here’s the thing about Christmas: I want to love it, and in many ways, I do. I love giving gifts and, to be honest, I love getting gifts. There’s something so cool about the magical times when someone knows you well enough to get you that…
Aunt Pauline — Dec. 9, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Familial Reflections 👪Career Rebuild 🛠️Andrea 📱 It’s hard to think of my Aunt Pauline as old, hard to imagine how it is that she’s just about to leave her 80s and, thus, it’s hard to understand how she could be in such poor health right now. Aunt Pauline is Father Dearest’s…
Bye-Bye, Zombies — Dec. 8, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩The Walking Dead 🧟Nose B Gone 👃Turkey Trouble 🦃 I spent Tuesday night watching the final episodes of The Walking Dead. I have always been the type who can get so lost in a good story that I have really strong emotions (shocker, I know) when it ends. It happens with…
Redefining Family — Dec. 6, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Who’s Family? 👪Music Speaks 🎵Wedding Websites 👨❤️👨 I was raised as an East Coast Italian, despite being a mixed bag of ethnicities born in Denver, Colorado. That meant that there was this huge importance placed on family that’s not necessarily shared with the same ferocity by others. Yet as I grew…
Grief — Dec. 5, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Messy Grief 😔Hear Ye! 👂Die Trump Die 😡 I am acutely aware that I am hardly alone as a 48-year-old man when I say that I am well acquainted with grief. I’m not sure if it was always this way — though I imagine it was — but I don’t think…
Human Jewel Beetles — Dec. 3, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Beer Bottle Connections 🍺Ear Concerns 👂BTE vs. Deer 🦌 What exactly is reality? Is there a limit to the universe? How can something as heavy as the Earth be just sort of suspended … and what exactly is it suspended in? This is the rabbit hole I’ve fallen down, all while…
Be Yourself — Dec. 1, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩A Good Self 👋Urgent Care, Revisited 👩⚕️Slow Down 🐢 I remember this time back in sixth grade when a trusted adult was talking to me as I struggled through what turned out to be a pretty life-defining traumatic experience. The friends I’d grown up with since I was a small boy…
Deer Drama — Nov. 30 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Shooting a Fake Deer 🦌Time Spent Poorly ⏰Child Support 💸 About midway up my left shin underneath my leg hair is a scar about three inches long and the width of a deer antler. Well, a fake deer antler, anyway. “Deer-antler width” is hardly a standard unit of measurement, I know,…
Metallica! — Nov. 29 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Gods of Music Deliver! 🎸Insta-Anger 😠Unpleasant 😓 I was in need of something good to happen yesterday. Desperate need. The gods of music delivered. Metallica is coming to St. Louis in concert in 2023 for a two-day show at the Dome at the America Center. I found out about this at…
Double Ear Infection — Nov. 27, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Urgent Care 👂👂Alone Update 😔Rest 🛏️ It’s never a good sign when, less than two seconds after sticking a light in your ear and gazing through the little viewfinder thingy (patent pending), the doctor says, “Oooooooooh.” That was followed by a diagnosis of a “nasty” left ear infection and the question,…
Fitting in — Nov. 25, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Alone 😔Christmas Changes🎄My Two Skillz 🔪 I would venture to guess that most of us like the feeling of fitting in somewhere. Even the most self-confident, secure person likes to have a tribe. We’re social creatures, and to have a place we just seem to slide into safely is a blessing.…
Spouse+ Subscription — Nov. 23, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Marriage Talk 💑Requesting Money 💰Murder-Free 🔪 If you’ve been married as long as I have (rounding the corner and heading toward 26 years), you understand that conversations between spouses can sometimes be awfully weird. I mean, Wifey Poo and I have known each other more than 30 years now. How much…
Coffee Hand — Nov. 22, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Man Cold? 🤒Balloon Analogy 🎈World Flop ⚽ If you want to know how my Monday started yesterday, I poured coffee all over my hand. It isn’t that I don’t know how to pour coffee. I’ve done it a billion times. It’s that, on this particular Monday, somewhere in between the start…
Zoo Signs — Nov. 20, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Gorilla Harassment 🦍Brother Love 👨👦👦True Crime 🔪 My love of wild animals was fostered early in my childhood. Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom was appointment viewing for my family. I grew up with scenes of hungry cheetahs chasing down baby gazelles that included what’s not included on nature shows today ……
No Slides Allowed — Nov. 17, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Presentation Skillz 📽️No Tribe 😔Fuck 45 🖕 There was a time not all that long ago, cosmically speaking, that the mere thought of standing up in front of a crowd and giving a talk would have made me want to throw up in my shoes. In fact, there has been a…
What’s Funny? — Nov. 15, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Boss Kudos 🙌Chill Time 😌One In 8 Billion🧍 It always feels good when the Big Bossman comes up to you and shakes your hand for a job well done. That happened last night when El Presidente of our company congratulated me on the video I wrote, shot and produced for our…
Engaged — Nov. 14, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩BTE and Div 💍Brother Greetings 👨👩👦👦Travel Day ✈️ The morning after Boy The Elder was born, I awoke in the hospital to his sweet cooing and his momma’s deep-sleep breathing. Scooping him up carefully and holding him nervously, I sat in a rocking chair in the pre-dawn darkness and talked to…
Dying Democracy — Nov. 11, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Election Message 🗳️School Priorities 🏫Tickets Aplenty 🎫 It would seem to me that if a common sentiment from wise people following an election is that it’s a good thing the results were so muddled because it means not much will get done in the next two years, you’ve got yourself a…
Fairy Tale — Nov. 9, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Stephen King 🕮Legal Weed🌿Public Schools🏫 I read my first Stephen King book when I was in high school. It was summer, if I remember correctly, and everywhere I went, I carried a worn library copy of Pet Sematary. Since that time, King’s words have been a regular companion through every stage…
Year In Music — Nov. 5, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Concert Craze 🎵Back Crackin’👩⚕️To-Dos Done🚗 My year of music is over. And, my God, has it been good. It started on a sweltering mid-July afternoon at Hollywood Casino Amphitheater in which Wifey Poo and I watched my Backup Wife Jewel do her thing. It ended last night on an evening that…
Update: My Favorite African — Nov. 3, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Little D’s Return 🏥Irony 🔨Planet Killer 🌎 Being a host parent to a little boy from Africa (Burkina Faso, to be precise) was one of the hardest and most rewarding things I’ve ever done in my life. And now, that little boy is returning to the United States. For those not…
Mega Billions — Nov. 2, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Stupid IT Rules 🖥️The Bend 🚑Is The War Over? ✌️ Tonight, there will be a lottery drawing in which someone could win $1.2 billion. That someone won’t be me, as I didn’t buy a ticket, but it didn’t stop me from thinking about what I would and wouldn’t do with that…
Fun Family — Nov. 1, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Family Dynamics 👪New Mattress 🛏️To Share Or Not To Share? ❓ Let’s say the only cracker you’ve ever eaten is a Saltine. You have no experience with any other crackers. In fact, you don’t even know that there is such a thing as other crackers. You might not love the Saltine,…
Halloween Haters— Oct. 31, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Ghosts of Halloween 👻Wrinkles 👴Words Spawn Action ✍️ Wifey Poo made a bold declaration about her opinion of Halloween on our drive back from Springfield, Missourah, Saturday afternoon: “Halloween is a great time for kids to dress up …” If you think there’s more to that statement, nope. She added: “Period.”…
How I Do Me — Oct. 27, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Empath Life 🤗Earthquake 🌎Revolutionary Failure 😶 About six months after I started my career as a professional journalist, I started walking past this job opening in our company every time I walked in and out of the building. It was for editor of a weekly paper routinely ridiculed by those who…
School Shooter Match Game — Oct. 24, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Game Time 🎮Family Picture📸Marriage Tips 🪢 I remember when it was simple. Horrible, yes … but simple. There was Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and they matched up with Columbine — which, side note, would have been my high school had my parents not moved to NY when I was 2.…
Helping the Homeless — Oct. 23, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Helper Bags 🆘What’s In The Bag?🎒Mini Golf ⛳ I was raised to avoid the homeless. Avoid eye contact. Avoid conversation. And most definitely avoid giving them anything they asked for. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this, which doesn’t make me feel any better. What was instilled in me as…