Paving our driveway with good intentions

We weren’t prepared for the ambush, which is what made it such a good one.  The pickup truck pulled into the driveway behind us, blocking our escape route, its occupants intent on separating us from our money. 

I hadn’t even noticed the ringleader jumping out of the truck behind me, getting ready to execute her plan.

“Dude, these paper towels aren’t the Select-a-Size kind,” I said, peering at the avalanching groceries in our car’s cargo area.  Somewhere, under those piles, was a folded-up stroller the size of an Abrams tank, from which we’d hopefully remembered to remove the baby.  We’d set out to buy bananas and milk at the grocery store, and had somehow spent $200 on a pile of food that blotted out our car’s dome light.

“Aw, they’re the regular kind?” my wife Kara said, emerging from her seat.  Prior to having children, we used about three paper towels per year, mostly to clean up beer spills.  Now, with two small children bent on the destruction of our house via the contents of their plastic plates and sippy cups, we go through enough paper towels weekly to sop up a lesser Great Lake. 

To assuage our eco-guilt, we try to use the smaller Select-a-Size ones, which should really just replace the standard size altogether.  A normal-sized paper towel could, in a pinch, serve as a cape for a very low-rent (but super-absorbent) superhero.  If you need that size of paper towel in your life, it might be time to consider eating your meals in a kiddie pool that can be hosed out later.  We’ve thought about it.

“Truck!” our son Evan yelled from his car seat, recognizing the familiar rumble.  Finally, his lifelong quest to point out large motorized vehicles to everyone in earshot fulfilled an actual purpose.
I turned to find a woman looking down, pacing around our driveway while two guys waited for her in an idling pickup truck. 

“It’s holding up pretty good,” she said when she saw me looking at her.

I glanced at the truck and noticed the logo painted on the door, for a local paving company.  They’d coated our driveway a few years back.

“We like to do it every two years,” she said.

“I bet you do,” I thought. 

“Really?  That often?” I asked.  She mustn’t have known she was talking to a family with two kids in daycare.  Our general plan is to let our house biodegrade until next year, when Evan starts kindergarten.  Anything that falls apart or implodes in the meantime didn’t really deserve us, anyway.

“Yup.  It’s been three years since your last coating,” she said.

“Let’s make it four,” I thought.

There’s an old Jerry Seinfeld bit where he talks about maximum-strength headache medicine.  “Nobody wants anything less than 'extra-strength,’” he said.  “Give me the maximum allowable human dosage.  Figure out what will kill me, and then back it off a little bit."

If you turn that idea around, you’ll arrive at my general attitude toward the maintenance of our property.  Figure out what will anger the neighbors, then step it up a little bit.  Anything more is just wasting time you could have spent playing with your kids, or scrubbing dog barf out of the carpet.     

“Replacing a cracked driveway costs a lot more than coating it,” she warned as she handed me her card.

I thanked her for her waylaying our family and she hopped back in the truck.  Evan stood at the edge of the garage and waved as they backed out.  As the engine noise faded away, he started scanning the sky for airplanes.

She was right.  We really should coat the driveway again this year.  Or maybe I’ll just blot off the rain with our new paper towels.

You can hand Mike Todd his asphalt at mikectodd@gmail.com.

New ways to get our kicks

“Look at you, man.  I can’t believe this day has come,” my buddy Jeff said as he watched me undergo one of life’s great transitions.  Like the doctor from “Field of Dreams” who could never go back to his old life once he stepped off the field, my life would never be the same once I walked to the edge of the parking lot and stepped onto the grass beyond. 

I’d begun the day as a regular dude.  I would end it as a soccer dad. 

My wife Kara, a newly minted soccer mom, was already on the field with our four-year-old son Evan, participating in loosely organized pandemonium.  A coach with a whistle barked out orders while a roiling sea of children attempted, for the most part, to comply.

The league was structured so that there aren’t fixed teams, just a gaggle of children who do practice drills for half an hour, then break into smaller groups for scrimmages. 

“They don’t have real games.  They don’t even have teams.  Who came up with this idea?” Kara asked when we received the email that explained how the league operated for Evan’s age group. 
 We pictured walking up on our first day to the soccer field, where there would be a drum circle and people in knit hats passing handrolled cigarettes.

“Dig it, man.  There are no losers in soccer.  Like, you know?” the coach would say.

But after watching dozens of soccer balls sitting patiently as tiny cleats whizzed past them over and over, it became clear that some skill-building was probably a good idea, especially before putting the kids in front of concession-stand-paying customers.

After the drills, the kids broke into smaller groups for the main event: the scrimmage.  Evan and his two teammates donned their blue jerseys, while the opposing three kids put on red jerseys.  Game on.  This is what we came to see.

“Let’s do this,” Jeff said.  After he’d booked his weekend visit with us, Jeff found out about the start of soccer season.  For his own master class in being a good sport, he attended the game with us.

As soon as a parent placed a ball on the field, the red team sprang to life, dribbling and passing the ball before kicking it into the open goal.  Evan gamely ran in the general direction of the ball while his two teammates cried and ran to the sidelines.  It wasn’t the other team scoring that bothered them, it seemed, so much as the idea of soccer in general.  There may be no crying in baseball, but, in my experience, there is a LOT of crying in soccer.

This process repeated itself about a dozen more times.  Eventually, a parent started serving as a goalie for Evan’s team.

“I think the red team is juicing,” Jeff whispered.

Final score: 37-2, or thereabouts.  And that was due to a late comeback, during which the opposing parents were holding back their kids by their jerseys.  Evan had absolutely no idea that his team had just been drubbed, though, so he walked off the field happy.

 You haven't lost if you haven't noticed.

Afterward, over a well-deserved pizza lunch, Evan said, “I think that boy was tryin’ to make me not get the ball.”

“That’s right, Evan.  He didn’t want you to have it,” I said.

“Why not?” Evan asked.   

We may have dulled his killer instinct with all our talk of sharing and being nice.  For all the good that sports can do for kids, helping them to excel apparently requires a bit of reprogramming.

“See that nice little boy wearing the different-colored jersey?  Destroy him, Sweetheart.”

That must be what soccer parents are supposed to do.  We’ll check into it, right after we purchase a minivan.   

You can give Mike Todd a red card at mikectodd@gmail.com.

Cutting the umbilical cable

“Are you kidding me?” said the guy as he got in line behind me, shaking his head at the expanse of humanity between us and the service desk. 

I smiled and gave him a look that said either, “What are you gonna do?” or, “Hey, nice legs.”  I’m not that good at giving looks.

Even though some of my compatriots were disgruntled at having to wait in such a long line, I was quite gruntled; I’d gladly have waited all day to reach that desk.  At the end of the journey, I would be dumping off a money vacuum that had been inhaling piles of twenties straight of our checking account every month for far too long.

“You cutting the cable, too?” I asked the angry guy behind me.  We both cradled large cable boxes in our arms.  The previous month, we’d each paid the cable company $6.95 for the privilege of renting our respective boxes, including the twenty-four-cent surcharge for the remote.  During the six years I’d rented that box, I’d paid $500 for it, money which could have gone toward a much better cause, like twenty-three minutes of daycare.

He looked at me like I was nuts.

“Nope, just getting it fixed,” he replied.  Then, perhaps sensing that he was speaking to a person of extreme cheapness, he said, “But I’d love to dump it.  When you wrap in Internet and phone, I’m paying $240 a month.”

All of a sudden, the suspicion of insanity became mutual.  This guy might as well have just run through the nearest forest every month, dumping the contents of his wallet for woodland creatures to use as nesting material.  Generously assuming that internet and phone accounted for $100 of his bill, he was paying $140 each month for TV.  Nothing is that entertaining.  Squirrels could easily have made better use of that money. 

I’d recently waged a campaign in our house to rid ourselves of wasteful spending.  With two kids in daycare, we’re basically paying for a second house, except instead of lakefront views, we get glitter on our floorboards.  (Incidentally, if early learning institutions decided to put a moratorium on the use of glitter in art projects, I doubt anyone would complain.  Just throwing that out there.)

The cable box became my number one target.  By switching our phone provider and using cheaper TV alternatives, we could save $100/month without really changing our life-wasting habits.  The decision seemed to be a no-brainer, though one could rightly question the decision-making capabilities of people who choose to spend their precious few moments on Earth watching The Bachelorette.

Already, our kids have grown up watching streaming shows over the Internet, with no idea what a commercial is.  We find this to be a nice byproduct of foregoing regular TV, though our children may enter adulthood without the ability to synchronize bathroom breaks and commercial breaks.
Once, on a JetBlue flight, we found a Dora the Explorer episode for our then-three-year-old son Evan to watch.  Five minutes in, a commercial came on.

“PUT DORA BACK ON!  PUT DORA BACK ON!” Evan screamed while a cartoon bird tried to sell him Cocoa Puffs.  It was his first commercial.  We spent the remainder of the break wiping his tears and explaining capitalism to him.

Over time, we came to realize that with all the other available programming options, our cable box had become a very expensive clock.  It was the only clock in the house that was correct for the few weeks after a Daylight Savings Time switch, but the expense no longer made sense.

“What can I do for you?” asked the lady behind the counter when my turn finally came.

“We already shut off our TV service.  Just handing over the box and remote,” I said.  Then I gave her a look that said either, “What a relief,” or, “Hey, nice legs.”
   
You can cancel your Mike Todd service at mikectodd@gmail.com.

Exercising in futility

“I’m going for a jog,” I said, then paused, letting those words hang in the air. 

“Wait, really?” my brain asked.  Then my eyes looked down at my feet and saw garish yellow shoes with built-in reflectors on them.

“I think he’s serious,” they reported.

I can understand why various body parts would be confused.  Between the ages of 18 and 34, I didn’t run a single mile.  At least not a consecutive mile.  If you added up all the times I ran across the room to keep one of my sons from falling down a flight of stairs, I might have logged more miles than, uh, you know, a famous long-distance runner.  For instance, several Kenyan people.  Also, the guy from Chariots of Fire.  Note to my young reader(s): If you want to get famous, long-distance running probably isn’t going to do the trick.  Keep posting Youtube videos of yourself riding shopping carts down ski jumps.  

Until last year, in answer to the question, “The last time you ran a mile, why did you do it?” I would have replied, “Because the gym teacher made me.  And so did the president.”

“It’s time for the President’s Physical Fitness Test,” Mr. Garber would say after blowing his whistle, smiling at our obvious distress.

We’d groan and rend our Umbro shorts at the beginning of the annual rite of passage, a battery of exercises designed to quantify our progress toward manhood.  It was like those National Geographic videos where the young tribal men jumped off a giant bamboo scaffold with vines tied to their ankles to demonstrate their courage, except I bet those guys didn’t have to try to touch their toes in front of the girls’ class.
 
By executive decree, though, we had no choice but to do all the exercises.

“Why does Bill Clinton care how many pull-ups I can do?” I’d wonder. 

When my turn at the pull-up bar came, I’d struggle and kick my way up to the bar a couple of times, then dangle for a while, wondering how long I’d have to hang there until my muscles got big enough to do another one.

I’d see Mr. Garber penciling a “2” on his clipboard beside my name as I dropped to the floor, ashamed that I’d failed my country.

Then I pictured the president’s chief of staff bursting into the Oval Office, waving Mr. Garber’s clipboard over his head.

“Sir, I’m afraid there’s a crisis.  We’re facing a severe shortage of adolescent upper-body strength in southeastern Pennsylvania.” 

But the pull-ups, though humiliating, were at least quick.  The mile run was the worst, oh, say, twenty-two minutes of the school year.  Or the worst seven minutes for the kids in decent shape, who then got to lounge at the finish line while the rest of us stumbled and wheezed across, hoping the girls across the field weren’t paying attention.   

So the president ruined me for running for a solid two decades, but the reality of approaching (okay, and possibly arriving at) middle age brought me back.

“I’m going for a jog” has always been one of those things that other people say, people who wear skintight pants in public and who know what gluten-free means.  But I’ve had to start saying it, too, because as you get older, you gain two pounds just by inhaling the steam off the pizza.     

A good thing about jogging when you’re in horrible shape is that, when it comes to setting personal bests, the competition is extremely weak.  For the first time in twenty years, though, I can jog a mile, sometimes even plural miles.  I kind of wish Mr. Garber would tell President Obama.  Presidents get pretty wrapped up in this stuff. 

You can blow past Mike Todd at mikectodd@gmail.com.

Not much labor going on around here

What?  You're off celebrating Labor Day and don't have time to read a column?  Dude, that works out really well for both of us, since I didn't write one. 

How about we slap some hiking pictures from a few weeks ago out here and call it even?  Done.

Anyway, happy Labor Day, all!  And if you're a Russian comment-spammer or other person from another country, happy Monday!

Something stinky this way comes

Just beyond the reach of the floodlight, something bad was happening.

“Memphis, get back here!  MEMPHIS!  No, no, no, no, no, no.  Aw, dude, this is bad,” I said. 

“What’s going on?” my wife Kara asked from her hotel room in Tulsa.  We’d been on the phone, saying goodnight during her work trip, when I’d decided to take the dog for one last visit to the backyard.  Rather than meandering down the stairs like usual, Memphis bolted down in one leap, ran to the edge of yard and then pulled up short, jumping and growling.  In the darkness just beyond her, I could see an occasional flash of white fur.

The regular reader(s) of this column will recall that last week, I discovered the laxative effect of having a large timber rattlesnake announce its presence beside my foot.  This column is the second (and I sincerely hope final) installment of a series I’m tentatively calling “Nature Sucks.” 

“Memphis!  Memphis!” I called, but the commotion continued.  A feral white cat lives in our neighborhood, emerging every couple of months to prove that it can take care of itself just fine without humans and their Fancy Feasts.  Memphis, I assumed, was tangling with the wrong feline.

Just as I started to run out to extract Memphis, she came slinking back into the light, trotting toward me with her head down. 

“Something’s not right.  This is bad,” I told Kara.

I opened the door and brought Memphis inside, turning up the kitchen light so I could get a better look.  No obvious damage, but she looked distressed.   

“I don’t see any blood,” I said, and that’s when it hit. 

“Aw, DUDE!” I said, throwing the door back open and commanding Memphis outside.  But it was too late.  She’d already brushed against the curtains, stepped on our carpet and wafted all over the place.  Apparently, from a distance, in the dark, much like Pepe le Pew, I can’t tell the difference between a cat and a skunk.

When you drive by a skunk, you think, “Hey, you know what?  That smells kind of bad.”

But when your dog takes a direct hit to the face and then comes into your kitchen, the input to your senses can no longer be described as a smell.  It’s a full sensory overload.  The concentrated stench of burnt rubber and sulfur would have made Satan dry heave.  It felt like a NASCAR race had just taken place inside my mouth, and all the drivers had just burnt their hair with curling irons. 

All of this is just a long preamble to explain to my neighbors why I was running around in my underwear at 1AM last week, cussing and chasing the dog with the garden hose, soap suds flying everywhere.

“Sorry I’m not there to help,” Kara told me after my initial pass at the dog, though part of me figured this was cosmic payback for the time both kids caught a stomach bug while I was in North Carolina.

“I can’t go to the store with the kids asleep upstairs, so I just had to use what we have in the house: Palmolive and Head & Shoulders.  Memphis still stinks, but she won’t be getting dandruff anytime soon,” I replied.

“What about baking soda?  That might work,” Kara suggested.

One helpful Internet post I’d read on the topic of skunk remediation said that if you didn’t get rid of the smell right after the incident, the odor could persist for up to two years.  So I dumped half-a-box of Arm & Hammer on the dog.

“Did it work?” Kara asked.  Memphis looked pasty and pathetic as she rolled around in the yard.

“I think it helped,” I replied.  “But if a heat wave comes through tomorrow, she might turn into a casserole.”

You can bathe Mike Todd in tomato juice at mikectodd@gmail.com.

Pit vipers can really rattle you

The eastern timber rattlesnake hardly ever shows aggression towards humans, so, if you really think about it, I’m actually quite fortunate.  If I wasn’t a super-lucky dude, I probably wouldn’t have encountered the largest pit viper in North America at all.  That gigantic, venomous reptile might have just heard me coming and hidden somewhere until I’d wandered past, subjecting me to a serene, boring day in the woods without any heart palpitations at all. 

But I am a lucky person.

I’d set off down the trail last Saturday as a part of an elite expeditionary force, consisting of me, my 40-pound dog Memphis and my fifteen-month-old son, Zack.  We might not sound that elite, but right in the corner of Zack’s nursery, you’ll find a Diaper Genie II Elite model, which they don’t sell to just anyone (unless they have diapers to dispose of).  It says “Elite” right on the thing.  We have credentials.

The rest of our family had a baby shower to attend that day, so they missed out on our luck-filled adventure.

“I’m going to Julie’s baby shower tomorrow.  You can come with me and eat cake and help open presents, or you can go hiking with Zack and Daddy,” my wife Kara had explained to our four-year-old son Evan.

Evan loves hiking.  Something deep inside him just connects to the sounds of the birds, the crunch of the leaves under his feet and the unwrapping of the candy bar his father bribes him with.  (Go ahead and judge, but I bet Thoreau’s dad hooked him up with some serious candy in his formative years.)

But I knew I had no chance when the decision boiled down to this: Mommy and cake, or Daddy and exercise.  His four-year-old brain couldn’t even process the decision anymore once it hit the word “cake.” 

Without Evan on our expedition, I decided we’d go further from home and tackle a larger, more remote hike.  About five minutes up the trail from the parking area, Memphis trotted twenty feet ahead of me.  Zack sat perched on my back, quietly enjoying the ride, just as his big brother had done so many times before.

I was just getting my camera strap adjusted around my neck when this sound came from the bushes beside my ankle.  “I’M CONSIDERING KILLING YOU!” it said.

Actually, that’s just how I translated it, but the rattle sounded like a child’s car that you pull back, but instead of letting it go, you pick it up and let the wheels spin.  It wasn’t the gentle tika-tika-tika noise I would have expected.  The rattle was fast, urgent and an effective cure for constipation.

I looked down and saw a large, ornate snake within easy striking distance of my leg, piled on top of itself like a hastily coiled garden hose.  He watched as I jumped, cussed and scooted away, my heart pounding as I put precious distance between us.  Then he slowly straightened out and slithered across the trail as if to say, “Glad we have that settled.”    

In the research I’ve done since, I found that timber rattlesnakes are generally docile, rarely rattle at people, and even when they lunge, they often do so as a warning, with their mouths closed.  The majority of bites happen to adult males who intentionally provoke the snake, often while drunk or otherwise intoxicated.  At first, this sounds like damning evidence against my gender, but you can say this about us: At least we know better when we’re sober.

After the snake slithered into the bushes, heading for the open field beyond, I stopped to collect my breath and my thoughts.  Memphis trotted back and stood next to me.

“We’re pretty lucky, huh?” I asked her, giving her a pat. 

And indeed, we were.  Also, I’m lucky Zack’s not old enough to repeat the words he learned that day.

You can weld cast iron shin guards with Mike Todd at mikectodd@gmail.com.

Are these mental health days working?

As seems to happen about once a month these days, getting a column done for this week just wasn't going to happen.  I turned in this oldie-but-not-that-baddie instead.  Sorry for being a degenerate.

Just so your retinas have something to do for a few more seconds before you click along to a website that's actually been updated, here are some more pictures from our trip to Rangeley, Maine, a couple weeks back.  That place makes me smile.  'Til next week!  (Probably.)

Home on the Rangeley Lake

“Look out!  He’s going to crack his head open!” my wife Kara yelled, pointing across the cottage at our son Zack, who was wobbling along as if he were sailing on a storm-tossed ship.  I grabbed Zack’s shoulder and redirected him away from the Coffee Table of Doom, the one with edges so sharp that you could shave your legs just by walking too close to it.

Zack’s at that tricky developmental intersection at the corner of Ambulatory and Clueless.  Given the choice between going down stairs or a ramp, he will choose to go over the railing.  He navigates around rooms like a bat, except instead of bouncing sound waves off of everything, he uses his head.
 
In our normal lives, we’ve managed this situation by removing all the right angles from our house, or burying them in a half-inch of foam padding.  On vacation in a rustic Maine cottage last week, though, we had much less control over an interior that seemed designed as a baby obstacle course.

“AHHHH!” Kara yelled, diving to catch the lamp that Zack was pulling onto his head.

We knew what we were getting into.  My family has been renting the same cabins on Rangeley Lake in western Maine for nearly thirty years.  Looking back at the pictures from our early summers in Rangeley, it’s amazing how little the place has changed.  Only the people are different, with each of us, in our own way, getting thinner and better-looking every year. (Which is what you’d say, too, if you knew your family was going to read this.  In our case, it happens to be true.  Which is also what you’d say.)

The cabins, though, look exactly the same.  Every winter, they are battered by wind and snow, biodegrading at such a rate that without intervention, they’d be gone in five years.  Then the warm(ish) weather comes, and the family that owns the camp begins the process of cobbling the place back together, just keeping pace with entropy.  A woodshed collapses, a new gazebo is built.  Everything stays in balance. 

We like these cabins just the way they are, with nails poking through the floor, leaking pipes fixed with strategically placed bowls and extension cords stapled to the ceiling.  It wouldn’t feel like vacation without these things.  If my family wanted light switches instead of pull cords that you had to stumble across a dark room to locate, we could just stay home. 

We love it there because when you try to open that creaky screen door that wedges itself against the floor when you pull on it, just on the other side, you might see a loon pop up beside the dock, framed by a mile of water before the mountains rise in the distance beyond.  Or you might see one of your little cousins inviting you to come for a swim, or throwing cracked corn to an army of perpetually hungry ducks.  Or you might just see nothing but gently lapping waves and a soon-to-be-occupied Adirondack chair.

“Dude!  He’s going for the stove now!” I yelled as Zack tottered toward the Franklin stove with the concrete hearth.  Kara put herself on a direct intercept course.

While it’s great to see your kids experiencing the same things you experienced so many years ago, it’s tough to relax when your offspring is bent on self-destruction.  When I mentioned this observation to my cousin Rachel, who has three children of her own, she said, “We don’t call them ‘vacations’ anymore.  We call them ‘family outings.’  Helps us to keep our expectations in check.”

In the end, our family outing was quite a success, mainly because we managed to keep Zack from plunging off the end of a dock.  This may have been a temporary victory, though, since he’ll get another shot at it next year. 

You can pull up an Adirondack chair beside Mike Todd at mikectodd@gmail.com.