Good on the Carolina Hurricanes. They’ve advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals. They won four in a row in a best of seven tourney.
The feat is referred to as a sweep.
The final match was held in Raleigh at PNC arena. There’s a tradition of fans bringing props to games, such as a piece of fencing with a giant “D” attached to it (to promote D-fence, get it?). To encourage the ‘Canes to accomplish a sweep, PNC and the team anticipated that attendees would bring brooms along with them.
They quickly nixed that idea.
And, if you’ve ever attended a hockey match, you know why they forbad it. I went one time, and I have never, in my life, felt the pure violent fury I felt that night. If I’d had a stick in my hand? I would still have been on the chain gang, paying my debt to society.
The Kid, who is normally a quiet, non-violent child, was told by strangers, more than once to hush—at a hockey game. Think about that for a moment. How loud and unruly must you be at a packed stadium full of unhinged hockey fans, to be asked to calm down?
Which brings me to my first mystery.
Why is it that it’s accepted, even expected, for the game to routinely and regularly break out into fisticuffs?
Can you imagine Coach K’s Blue Devils whaling away on the admittedly annoying Tar Heels? They’d be hauling away those children in handcuffs. What about robot quarterback Tom Brady getting sacked and coming at the Panther’s Luke Kuechly with the lid off a Gatorade cooler?
Tom Brady can approximate all human emotions and totally isn’t a robot.
Wouldn’t happen. But somehow, in hockey, it’s ok.
All longitudinal lines begin at the geographic North Pole. Because of this, there is no time zone there. So that means that for fans of imbibing spiritous beverages, it is always five o’ clock there. I’ll bet elves drink a lot. 
I admit my science knowledge is lacking, but I just can’t wrap my head around no time zone.
The Kid and I have an agreement. I’ve washer, dryer, and time. The Kid generates dirty clothes but has no personal laundry facilities. So, my child buys supplies, and I wash, dry, and fold—for everyone.
But I absolutely refuse to match and bundle socks. As I pull them out of the dryer, I toss them, orphan-like, into The Kid’s basket. I decided a long time ago that I will not make myself insane looking for socks that may will never be found.
Over the years, I have lost more lids from more Tupperware, Rubbermaid, Ziplock, and various other plastic leftover vessels than most small nations have owned or will ever own. How? They should be either in the cabinet, sink, refrigerator, or dishwasher. And yet, somehow, they disappear like a series of Atlantis’, Judge Roy Beans, and Amelia Earharts.
So, the question is: do the socks and lids go to the same domestic black hole?
What did we do before Google? Sometimes it would take days before Petey and I could remember who that guy was in that thing. I almost miss waking him up in the middle of the night yelling, “Mr. Whipple played the drunk guy in ‘Bewitched’!”. Just now, Google found that info for me in 1.1 seconds.
Lately, at Chez Matthews there’s been a frequent, nagging mystery. It happens a good three, four times a day, and if you, Gentle Reader can supply a solution I will be forever in your debt and bring the potato salad to every barbecue you have forever more.
What did I come in here for?
Thanks for your time.
After having to reschedule at least four or five times, the Matthews Family Band finally made it to North Carolina’s little piece of Swedish heaven last week.
The Kid’s been before, and in fact, sleeps on an Ikea bed. Petey and I were both neophytes. I wasn’t expecting much, I mean, it’s a furniture store with meatballs—I’ve shopped for furniture and home goods, and Stouffers make perfectly fine Swedish meatballs.
Mothers: you know how everybody talks about how much labor and childbirth hurt? And how the real thing is so much more painful than your wildest nightmares? Like how there really are no English words that can adequately describe the scorching, soul-eviscerating torment you’ll experience?
The place is huge. This isn’t Target with full grocery store. This is original thirteen colonies huge. The foyer is bigger than an airplane hanger. There’s a nursery/kid jail that’s bigger than your average Chucky Cheese.
Then I found my dream closet. It was more of the Louvre for clothes, shoes, accessories and purses. There was a beautifully upholstered slipper chair and even a glass of Champagne waiting for me on the luxurious dressing table.
And throughout, everything is clean and bright with that Ikea blend of attractive casual yet super chic.
And PS, the meatballs were way better than Stouffer’s.
In one week, my little brother will be fifty-one(!) years old.
My mom was not on board at first. But we liked it, and it was our special little tradition. In three years, the first bill got filled up, so we just took a new Monopoly C-note and stapled it to the first. This year is the fourteenth year. Other than a kinda sweet, kinda sappy sibling tradition thing, I love it for a far more important reason.
Each year we try to find cards that are so rude (Not dirty, just extra snarky), the only person you could send it to is a sibling—they already know you’re a jerk. Shoot, they had a hand in molding your clay into jerk-like form.
Shows how much he knows; my mustache has gone gray, so I don’t have to wax it anymore.
I had a few lessons in twirling, but I was never very good at. It did come in useful when I wanted to whack something or someone on the head—not to hurt them, just to get their attention.
When I was in college, I had some minor surgery. One evening my folks came to visit me in the hospital, having left my fourteen-year-old brother at home. The next night when they visited, they told me that the mirror in the bathroom my brother and I shared had shattered. Nobody knew what had happened, but it was completely busted when they got home.
“Were you trying to make a blow torch?”
Thanks for your time.
The first time I met the man, it cleared up one mystery. The second time, it initiated another mystery that’s never been solved.
Mostly, I’m the lone human of the forest. So one day when I saw an ATV half hidden out there, it made me very curious. I was sure I was alone. Had it been stolen? Where was the owner? Was he ok?
But as he approached me, he stopped. And he asked me for a word.
“My friend’s father does. I look after it, and he lets me hunt back here. When you’re here you disturb the deer with your white hat.” The way he said hat, it was like I was wearing rabid badgers on my head. For some reason, he really hated my simple white baseball cap.
“Every time we put ‘em up, someone pulls ‘em down.”
After a couple hours of research, I discovered the man’s name and eventually found a phone number. I gave him a call. I explained who I was, where I lived, and asked if there was any way, under any conditions, I could keep going.
He didn’t have a son and there was no friend looking after the woods. Not only was I very welcome to visit his forest, he absolutely did not want somebody back there hunting.
Finally, he rode up on his ATV. He looked like he was going to scold me for coming back, but I didn’t give him the chance. I told him about my conversation with the owner.
Then he rode off and I never saw him again.
But there are two things about me he didn’t know.
Thanks for your time.
My father’s horse, named Macho (Spanish slang for arrogant, extra strength, manly man), wasn’t very tall, but he was sturdy, and built like a dump truck. He was also quite beautiful; chestnut brown with black socks on all four feet. His mane was black, thick and stood straight up.
The general consensus around the base’s ranch, Lazy R, was that he’d been badly gelded. So badly that it never even occurred to him that he was, in fact, a gelding.
Except in the case of hurricanes, the horses were always pastured at Lazy R. When we went to the ranch, we’d grab some halters and leads, then go out into the pasture and bring out our horses.
Macho and I were friends. I adored him, and that half-stallion was firmly convinced that all the attention and affection I gave him was absolutely his due. One night he actually fell asleep with his head on my shoulder as I rubbed his neck and spoke quietly to him.
Usually, as I approached our horses and called to them, they’d walk up and stand patiently while I hooked them into their halters. Then we’d go on to the next horse and repeat until I had all three and we walked out of the pasture to the corral for food and grooming. Like I said, usually.
Macho was the first horse I got to that day. He was surrounded by his mares, and looking like he was feeling especially stallion-y. Really keyed up and full of himself. Ominously, he didn’t approach me, but backed up a few steps.
Horses will not run over a human. It may look like they’re going to, but they will veer off at the last second. So, I stood still waiting for him to run past, then I’d hook him up, and go after the next one.
He knocked me down, ran over my prone body, stepped right on that hollow where the collar bone meets the shoulder, and got in one last insult when a hoof flipped up and smacked me right on top of my skull (there is still a horse hoof-shaped indentation on my melon). He then turned around and calmly walked back over to his pasture groupies. 
It was weeks before I went into the pasture by myself.
Thanks for your time.
Are you having a bad day, week, month, year?
I’ve got great tidings for you. The problem is neither in your stars nor yourself. You’re not to blame.
The entire list of previously awesome things that are now atrocious due to millennials is too long to list, but what follows is some of the more hair-raising examples.
Shopping malls; the places where we grew up, hung out, met crushes, fell in love, then bought our wedding dresses and rented turquoise tuxedos. Those whippersnappers now shop online and patronize locally owned small businesses. They are responsible that those giant cathedrals for the worship of conspicuous consumption, and its ensuing unnecessary credit card debt are quickly becoming empty things of the past.
The game of golf. For some reason kids today don’t see the allure in dressing in ugly candy-colored matching sets and riding a kiddy car around acres of land tortured with chemicals, chain saws, and mowers into perforated, make-believe Edens so they can hit tiny balls with sticks and pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for the privilege.
Next time you run into a grocery store and those thousands of boxes of sugar-frosted, vitamin sprayed, artificially colored and flavored breakfast cereal have dwindled to a mere few hundred, blame those kids. For some reason they think they’re too good to eat pseudo-food full of ingredients that were created in a lab in Altoona.
This info has been interpreted that with makeup and filtering no one will ever look old. Maybe not in a photo. But remember, the oldest of the millennials are not even forty yet. The first time a 45-year-old millennial looks into the bathroom mirror in full sunlight after a long night? Amazon won’t be able to get enough vans full of anti-aging products up their driveways.
There are industries that will disappear because young people have no need for the product. But that’s been happening since folks lived in caves and hunted woolly mammoths with sticks and spears. When’s that last time you bought a chamber pot or a buggy whip?
But they are also fiercely protective of each other, their struggles, and vulnerabilities. It may not be their journey, but they are deeply committed to help make the paths of each other as smooth and safe as they can.
Thanks for your time.
Have you ever been so tired that you got punchy? Where everything is hilarious and you laugh so hard, so continuously that you’re also crying?
What actually came out was, “Everybody’s a chameleon.”
And it’s kind of getting on my last nerve.
I’d take out the trash and somebody I’d never met would tell me why my grass was more weed than grass and what combo of toxic chemicals would take care of it. Or a complete stranger would inform me that the shovel I’d picked out wasn’t the right tool for the job, even though, he had no idea what particular job I planned on doing.
Financial geniuses would insist we absolutely should renegotiate out mortgage, never mind interest rates were going up; we were just too unsophisticated to understand the complex forces at play.
Then we met a whole new raft of scholars when we were expecting, and again after The Kid arrived.
Lucky for The Kid, we ran into hundreds of child development specialists and pediatricians each time we left the house.
Solid food should be eaten within days of birth or maybe not until the thirtieth birthday. Potty training should be early and Draconian, or child-led and have a goal of the child being fully trained by sometime around high school graduation.
Once one becomes a dog owner, it’s astounding how many authorities you’ll encounter. If you have a mutt, you’ll be shamed for encouraging indiscriminate mating. If you have a full-breed, people will inform you that a rescue dog in a shelter was put down because you have a fancy, over-bred show dog.
If you do have a an AKC registered pooch, you’ll discover 90 percent of the population is either a breeder or trainer of that variety. One should treat them like the fur-covered children they are or treat them like wolves and never show affection. 
One guy in our neighborhood has bred every Akita anywhere on the planet for the last 200 years (except ours, I guess). He’s also trained them all to obey him by blinking his eyes.
I went to BJ’s and picked up some Nabs for Petey. And because I got them at BJ’s, there were 36 full-sized packages of crackers and peanut butter in the pack—hey, he likes Nabs, and they were really cheap.
While I was in there, I noticed an old Duke three-ring binder. I opened it to see if there was anything interesting in it. In it was pure comedy gold.
The Kid has always had an interesting imagination, and a way with words. Not long after learning to write, my child wrote a story about a pirate that was both afraid of the water and prone to extreme seasickness. I know that’s my baby, but c’mon, that’s hilarious—I mean, just picture that poor guy. Somebody’s junior high had the world’s worst guidance counselor.
Each morning at camp they had a writing exercise. They were given a prompt and had a set amount of time. Where they went was up to them.
What follows are The Kid’s own words. Comments from me are in italics.
Because the mole men tell me to. They’ve stopped urging creativity and are now focused on digging and building an underground kingdom into which I’ll one day fall while mowing the lawn, never to be heard of again. 
Because they serve a combination of chicken and fish called a chish. Gross.
Because I have a chalkboard full of ideas and I can’t write about just one. Lay’s potato chips of the mind.
There you have it. A hopefully humorous, but more likely unsettling look into the mind of my one and only progeny. Who’s now living as an independent, unmedicated adult.
In school, The Kid had a band of unique children for friends.
Yup. Then she’d eat it.
With Andy as accomplice, there was skipping of school, saying they’d be one place, and actually being somewhere else entirely, and all-round, general butt-head-ery. But even though they drove all the involved parental units crazy, they were and are thoroughly good kids.
The child was a walking exposed nerve. Everything was felt very deeply, and all emotions were heightened, given free rein, and emoted with volume and gusto. There were no mixed messages from Thea. If you ticked her off, you would be informed of it, with no room for misunderstanding or confusion.
While in high school, The Kid, Thea, and a third student James Henry, were chosen to compete on Brain Game, a quiz show on a local TV station.
We arrived for the taping well before the appointed hour. That left plenty of time to kill, with contenders that were already twitchy with anticipation.
She resembled a real-life mole in a garden-themed whack-a-mole game.
*Spoiler alert: our kids won. They blew the other teams out of the water. They almost had a perfect game.
For the entire thirty minutes of taping, the child was broken. Then the show was over, and the red light went out. And like an especially loud and profane meteor striking the earth, our scrappy Thea was back in the building.
Thanks for your time.
bull city mom 