RaisingDad

My Dad LOVES going shopping.      Well, let me rephrase that: My Dad loves going shopping to COSTCO.      Well, that's not quite right, either: My Dad loves going shopping to Costco... with my wife . My Dad loves going shopping to Costco with my wife because she doesn't have the heart to tell him no.      That nasty bit of parent-parenting, she leaves for me.      Many a time we've been at Costco, he'll pick up an item, look at it, look at me, and put it back down. With my wife, he'll pick up an item like gourmet cheeses (which his digestive system doesn't need, if you've read my last two stories), and just plop them into the grocery cart, expecting the Wallet Fairy to pay for it, I guess. My wife won't say a thing.      If I happen to catch him doing this, sometimes I'll just take the item out when he's not looking, put it back, and when we're back home, if he notices tha...

Early this morning my grandson and I are sitting on the floor of the great room and playing poker... using  his rules.      He's only four, but he likes to stacks the cards in his favor.      "Hey," I'll tell him, "that's cheating."      "I like to win," he'll tell me back with the blunt logic of a four-year-old. He and Mr. Spock have a lot in common.      My Dad is sitting in his-- my -- favorite chair. Cartoons are on the TV I never get to watch and things are running smoothly. That is, until I hear him say, "I better get up."      No sooner does my Dad get up than--man-oh-man--the smell hit my nose. No, smell's not the right word because everything has a smell... the stink, stank, stunk hit my nose. It was a horrible odor. My eyes started to water, and we weren't even sitting that close. My Dad's little dog, who was s...

I'm sitting at the kitchen counter, reading the morning newspaper and enjoying a nice, hot cup of coffee. Gourmet coffee. Not that I'm being snooty, but being a man of few bad habits--you won't find me making a road trip to the Colorado Rocky Mountain high--I figure I can splurge on gourmet coffee.      This morning, the coffee's especially good. I added a cinnamon stick to the coffee grounds before I brewed it. Cinnamon is good for diabetes. It helps regulate your blood sugar. Personally, I don't have diabetes, but I thought you might like to know.      In the mornings, while I'm savoring my brew, I also like to leisurely read the newspaper. But what I like doesn't seem to matter much these days. You see, when my Dad gets up and makes his way from his house into my house, he, too, likes to leisurely read the morning paper. If he can't, because--oh, say--his son happens to be enjoying it at that moment, he gets antsy. He starts exhaling ...

     "You think you've got problems?" Maloney asked me, although it really wasn't a question he expected an answer to. It was the kind of question that told you to sit back and listen. (And, by the way, I'm paraphrasing what he said here.) "Saturday morning my wife has to pick up her mother at 6:30 in the morning from a sleep study to determine if she snores or not. Hey, I don't need to give her a sleep study to tell her that. She snores! I don't hear her myself, but my little girl is always telling me, 'Daddy, Grandma keeps waking me up.'      "So she picks her up, they go to Valentine's bakery to buy some menudo for breakfast, and when they get home, my wife has to go right back out to take Boswell--our 23-year-old! son--to one of those 24-hour medical clinics. He had been sick the day before, coughing all over everybody, but it didn't occur to him to go to the clinic after he got off work. No, he thought he'd bring it ...

My Dad never answers the phone. NEVER!      A couple of weeks ago I went to the doctor. My ears have been bothering me for months but, being a man, I waited almost six months before I decided to go see a doctor. My hearing is fine, but it's the voices in my head that are the problem.      Just joking.      I don't hear voices, I know it's just my wife and my Dad talking to me, but my inner ears do hurt, I'm not joking about that part.      (But, since I bring up the subject of voices in people's heads, why don't those voices ever tell those people to get a job?)      Well, anyway, I went to see the doctor. He ran all kinds of tests, or, rather, he authorized a bunch of tests for others to perform on me (stay in school, kids). He had me hearing sounds. Soft sounds, loud sounds. He had me hearing beeps. High-pitched beeps. Low-pitched be...

Remember the brother I told you about? The one who buys expensive gifts, but gets them at a really good price?      Well, he and his family came by on New Year's Eve to finally celebrate Christmas with us. He was going to wait until after the holidays to visit, but I made the mistake of saying "free meal," and before I knew it he was at my door. I think this is the fourth Christmas gathering we've celebrated this year.      Anyway, he gave our Dad a single--as in one--shirt for Christmas as a gift from him and his family. He must have still had some stashed away from the fire sale at Macy's where he bought a dozen expensive name-brand shirts for the price of a six-pack.      "I wanted to buy Dad more than one shirt," his wife told my wife, "but he told me, 'What for? Dad doesn't go anyplace.' "      And while that's true, he could at least have splurged for some Joint Juice...