Oh god, dad was raging about my little boxer and his giant Doberman being assholes one day, “I’ll take the little one and beat the big one with her!”

Still laughing about that 25-years later. Thanks for bringing that up!

EDIT: Just dropped my kids back to their mom, but this quote would work perfectly with the 10-yo and 12-yo…

Read the post and am seriously afraid my kids are too scared. 😬 I’d rather the “I hate you” once than that. OTOH, while not the greatest parents, I hope my ex and I somehow made sure that sort of talk was verboten.

No! :) I meant buy bars of soap or make your own instead of trying to refill containers.

Um, buy bars of soap or make your own?

Man, got lucky with mine. Both of those animals slept anywhere, anytime. And it’s not like my ex took all the heat, we tagged teamed them bitches. “fine… my turn…”

Secret sauce: If they can only fall asleep, and stay asleep, in perfect darkness and quiet, you’re raising a hellion. So raise a little hell!

Not one of those, “Meh, let 'em cry.” parents. Now you’re raising insecure teenage hellions. No. But stop pussy footing around. Your ancestors fucked in the same bed as the kids, they’ll be alright if the TV is a little loud.

Is your dryer 220V? Keep that in mind.

I doubt hardly anyone remembers the Tylenol Murders, but that was a monster change in our mental consumer safety map. I was a child and watched grocery store packaging change overnight. Freaked me out as a kid to see such change vs. what had been normal before.

Suddenly everything was tamper resistant. If people stepped into a 1980 grocery store they would freak out, think it was sooo unsafe.

And while we’re at it, that was around the time idiots were protesting paper grocery sacks, as if the evil corporations were chopping down old-growth forests. So they won and we got plastic.

Nope, you can dry it on a cookie sheet as I described.

Fair point! But you have to be standing right over the fire, huffing the fumes, to catch any smell. Get it rolling and step away.

Got me thinking, the dried version is not nearly as smelly. Harder to produce though.

Along these lines…

We ex-wife and I had a horizontal freezer her folks gave us. We lined the bottom with rows of bottled water, filled it over the tops with the garden hose, put our frozen groceries on top. We had a freezer that would easily last 2-weeks if a hurricane knocked us out, and plenty of clean water. Plus, being “thermally full”, it took less power.

Using a fake tree we found on the side of the road. Perfect size!

Also, learn to maintain a poinsettia or a Christmas cactus. (You probably don’t have enough light inside for the former.)

Neighbor kids come over to play. Daughter runs out to join, “C’mon James!” 9-yo James, who just woke up, is framed in summer sunlight, staring despondently out the open door. Sotto voce, “It’s too early for this shit.” Hangs his head, stomps outside and slams the door.

What was I gonna say?! I was about to cry from holding the laughter in. My god he sounded like a tired old man. Truth be told, he sounded like his tired old man.

I had pubic lice 30-years ago, and even then we didn’t have to shave.

If you read the bottle, the “medicated” shampoo is nothing but bug killer (pyrethrin) mixed with shampoo. There is literally nothing else in it. Mix up some Raid and Pantene, good to go.

And before anyone chastises me for giving this advice or being stupid, pyrethrins are harmless to humans. They only fuck up insect nervous systems, can’t interact with mammals.

To add: Get hydro-seal bandaids. Game changing for healing. You will thank me later.