CSotD: Domestic grumbling
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It used to be nearly impossible to win one of the giant teddy bears depicted in this Rhymes With Orange (KFS) strip, given the various tricks and outright cons employed by the carnies who run the midway games at the county fair. But, yes, you would see some parent or two dutifully schlepping one of them around, which, if nothing else, meant no more rides for the rest of the visit.
And likely a lumpy toy that would soon fall apart if it weren’t simply sagging dejectedly in a corner of the kid’s bedroom at home.
The good news, however, is that these cheap monstrosities now show up in grocery stores and at prices that won’t break the bank.
Which suggests that they’d be good products for the Non-Custodial Parents’ Gift Shoppe, a dream of mine for years, where they would be listed along with toys that come in a million tiny parts and hand-held games that make obnoxious noises and have no mute buttons.
The motto of the Non-Custodial Parents’ Gift Shoppe being “Revenge may not be sweet, but it sure is cute.”
I’d have made millions.
Juxtaposition of the Day
It’s apparently Clean Underwear Day on the comics page, and RWO once more pings a scathingly brilliant plan I never put into action, which was packs of women’s underwear with, instead of the days of the week embroidered on them, the months of the year.
It would have been a great gag gift, the problem being that gag gifts need to come in bundles. You can’t successfully market just one, unless it turns out to be a Rubik’s cube or pet rock. You need to have a full catalog if you expect to play the odds on making a profit from ephemeral crap.
As for fretting over clean underwear in case you’re in an accident, I’ve got some bad news/good news for Mom, depending on what she was hoping for: As the father of a first-responder and having several nurses in the family, I can assure you that the odds of having both a serious accident and clean underwear simultaneously are very low, regardless of how you left the house.
Juxtaposition of the Day II
I used to respond to football widow jokes by pointing out that, ferchrissake, it’s only 16 days out of the year, but what with Monday and Thursday games and extended playoffs, not to mention a longer season, that argument won’t do anymore.
Then again, the Monday and Thursday games are at night, and so what you miss is not a chance to go antiquing or hitting craft fairs but a chance to watch “The Masked Singer” or the 400th season of “Survivor.”
You’ve still got more than half the Sundays and nearly all the Saturdays to check out the decoupage and crotched statuary with delighted hubby in tow, while even if you aren’t among the 82% of US homes with a second television, you can still download an app to watch “Love After Lockup” on your cell phone while he’s watching football.
I’m more open to complaints about Fred, though I’d say it’s a good argument in favor of long courtships, if not in support of cohabitation before marriage. Some men are persnickety about having a place for everything and everything in its place, but an awful lot are, as Rita Rudner put it, “bears with furniture.”
Well, Rita says a lot of things about men, most of which I can’t dispute, or at least won’t, because, in my post-divorce second bachelorhood, I learned a lot about first husbands that let me know why there were so many women in the 35-45 demographic available.
Particularly if you showered occasionally.
Still, first marriages seem to be how women learn, which I guess explains why there are so few women skydivers.
Another group-created cartoon from the New Yorker, this by David Ostow and Lindsay Arber, which touches on something I blame for turning out people who won’t eat things today that they didn’t eat yesterday.
Kids menus are for parents who have long since given up.
The real key to turning small children into interesting adults is in that third item, only it’s not “everything” on your plate but something from your plate. There’s no need to order anything but an extra plate for a very small child, onto which you put some of your food so that they learn new flavors and textures.
This, of course, assumes that when you cook at home, you don’t serve up lobsters for the adults and Spaghetti-Os for the kids on the Dickensian assumption that “they wouldn’t appreciate it.”
Of course they won’t, if you force them to subsist entirely on a diet of chicken nuggets and toaster pastry.
It would also be nice if they’d seen a china plate and utensils made of metal before you bring them to a restaurant where such oddities are in use.
Though I’ll grant you this much: If you have to ask the server more than once to bring the breadsticks now and not with the first course, the restaurant deserves whatever pint-sized chaos ensues.
Someone at the dog park yesterday confessed to being a “helicopter owner,” and, Lord knows, those of us who make the trek at least once and often twice a day are guilty of a bit of that.
But The Other Coast (Creators) reminds me that while it’s still ridiculously warm here and the leaves don’t show any inclination to turn, autumn is indeed approaching, and at the first hard frost we’ll start seeing dogs decked out in their little snowsuits.
If only the dogs who needed jackets wore them, you’d have to make your own. The fact that it’s a thriving business is testimony to people who think that their dogs need them.
I finally found a jacket that Suzi can’t wriggle out of, after having bought several out of which she could, but she only wears it when the temperature is below zero Fahrenheit. And then the reason isn’t that she’s cold enough to want it but because other people demand to know why she isn’t wearing one.
She loves the snow and cold. My role is to let her.
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