Posts tagged Minivans

Minivan Monogamy

March 4, 2010 · Filed under Children, family, Marriage · Tagged , , , , ,

I know that title is really random and doesn’t make sense.  It is one of the random thoughts/ideas that I have about marriage and family.  The divorce rate is not zero, so it is not good enough.  No one goes to the alter thinking,”This ‘I do’ is only good for about 18 months and two super bowl parties.”  One of my observations is in regards to one of our biggest marriage problems….infidelity. 

More times than not, it is the husbands eye who wanders.  I can not lie, usually men are relationally retarded for great deal longer than our more mature counterparts.  If you want to put a monogamous straight jacket on a man make him drive a minivan. It is the epitome of commitment, family, children, and no other womendom.  It is a wedding ring with a V-6 engine, 4 wheels, and smells like trans fat french fries.  Nothing says “I have got multiple kids!!!” like a mini.   Single women look at a man in a minivan and say, “Girl….you know he’s either got a wife or a child support payment the size of Mexico’s national debt.”  Either way he is going to be safe from temptation.  A lady’s closing line in the wedding ceremony should be, “With this ……2005 Dodge Caravan with fold out child car seats…..i thee wed”  We could lower the divorce rate at least 30% with more minivans with Disney movies in tow and that endless supply of minivan trash.  It seems as if all the space behind the driver seat is a crop that grows barbie heads, melted crayons, straw wrappers, and M&M’s.  We don’t even buy our kids M&M’s, but we can find an abundance welded to the van carpet.  The kid’s movies are a must.  If you think Little Nemo is watching you, how could you ever try to flirt with another woman?

I by no means feel like all men need the minivan monogamy therapy.  But I consider  it like vitamin C, “it can’t hurt and it may keep you from getting into ill situations.”

This is a warning.  If you ever see a single man that has not fathered any tax deductions….er…. children driving a minivan, and I mean ever, immediately call the FBI, forest rangers, the boy scouts, and neighborhood watch.  Any single man driving a minivan is doing something illegal.  Money laundering, cheating…..on his taxes, serial stalker, peeping, drug muling, killing the ozone for no good reason.

My name is Todd and I drive an Oldsmobile Silhouette bc I love my wife.

God Bless you guys and remember to buckle up your kids,

Todd McCauley

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Commuting Time Warp

December 10, 2009 · Filed under Children, family, Marriage, Parenting · Tagged , , ,

There is nothing more mind-boggling to me than my talent to arrive at work 5 minutes late under all circumstances.  Very similar to putting a hot pocket in the microwave.  Regardless of 10 seconds, 10 minutes, or the time it takes to cook a turkey, it always seems like the hot pocket center has a temp of molten magma from the core of the Earth.  Hot pocket goo has to be made of some type of nuclear component. That is the only way to explain the heat those bad boys produce.  The impressive part of my commuting super powers is that I only live 7 minutes from the office.

Most mornings we wake up and  we begin with getting the kids fed.  You know, oatmeal or cereal and repeating common breakfast sayings like, “Zander…..stop eating your boogers at the table and finish your oatmeal man.”  Unfortunately that command ensures my son that he has the green light to consume snot rockets every place but the table.  Then I get my son bathed and dressed to go to preschool.  Since I am getting dressed at the same time, I throw his outfit to him in the order he needs to get dressed.  If I do not give him his outfit chronologically, he will end up with his shoes on first  looking like a nude jogger.  And with nothing else on he will try to force his shoes through his pants legs and appear as if he is having an epileptic seizure.  Or I walk away to grab my clothes and come back to Zander flying his underwear as a flag from the top of a dollhouse while using cargo pants knunchuks to assault the baby.  Now comes the grooming part. For some reason, he does not like to have his hair brushed.  So holding him down to run something through his hair feels like wrestling a wild boar in labor.  There are alot of leglocks, moaning, some weeping, a few forearm shivers, a little denouncing me as his father and then we are done with his hair.

Zander has a few health issues that we treat.  One those requires a B-12 shot every third morning.  Most of the time his mother takes care of this task.  But every now and then it falls on my shoulders.  It is alot of the same process as getting his hair combed, except more moaning and I end up singing the theme song from Hannah Montana.  I can not blame a man for crying while getting a shot in his hind quarters while your father emasculates himself to a soundtrack.  Only therapy could unlock the correlation between me holding a needle and singing “you get the limo out front….oh ah oh….hottest styles every shoe, every color…”  If you are unfamiliar with her work, you can youtube Hannah Montana theme song.  But do so at your own risk.  It will somehow permeate your subconscious and be embedded in your mind…..forever.

Finally we are on the road.  Well almost, it takes my kids longer to get in the minivan when we are in a hurry.  It feels as if they are moving in Matrix slow motion while dodging all the blunt objects I am throwing in an attempt to speed them up.  Now we are on the road and I have happened to turn the wrong way out of our subdivision.  It is like I have some kind of rare directional amnesia only brought on by my son asking me to play a movie in the car 37 times in the span of 3 min and 23 seconds.  After getting Buzz Lightyear rolling on the screen, we are going the right direction only to notice, we have just enough gas to get half way to his preschool.  At this point we are holding course like the Titanic and making it to his school at all costs.  Even if that cost is exercise in the form of me having to carry him the last mile after we run out of gas.  We make it and the mini is only slightly sputtering, so it’s all sunshine and oreo cakesters.  He is properly deposited into the kid bank and I am off to wait in traffic and pray to Exxon there is no line.

I quietly enter in the back of the office at 9:05 and begin my day.  Spending the first hour wondering if I remembered to put on deodorant before saving Zander from getting stuck in his pants.

God Bless you guys,

todd mccauley

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Minivans and Furniture

October 30, 2009 · Filed under family, Marriage · Tagged , , , , , ,

you know, we all go through this at one point in time…..you are getting in the minivan, start up, and see a message blinking on the dash board….”rear hatch ajar”….either zander did not close the door hard enough…..or you have a newly purchased table big enough to be a tongue depressor for Kong in your minivan.  last night i was dealing with the later of the two situations.
 
and what’s with the messages from cars/minivans these days. “rear hatch ajar”?  come on….our news papers/websites that deliver life and death info are written on a 5th grade reading level. but our car computers have apparently graduated with honors and gotten a masters from Harvard. who even uses the word “ajar” other than a cat at a jar factory.   it’s not like you tell your kids “if you ajar those oreo cakesters while i am gone you are going to rue the day” “stop leaving the door ajar when you throw the dog outside” “will someone help me ajar this stinkin jar”. and “hatch”? are we driving a minivan or sailing a pirate ship to school. the only dude i have heard use the word “hatch” was Johnny Depp when he said “down the hatch” in a pirate movie. and i thought he was talking about someone’s mouth. so if the minivan is talking about someone’s mouth being open in the back of the van, then i can sympathize bc that’s the gospel. someone’s hatch is always ajar in the rear of our minivan. so i guess “rear hatch ajar” on baby….(i hate it when the van is smarter than the WalMart cashier checking me out.)

back to the obese piece of furniture.  she bought a table big enough to seat a kenyan village and the duggars (family of 18) at the same time.  dude it’s huge. and in our house it’s like the equivalent of me putting on an extra smedium shirt from children’s place clothing store.  i felt like the table was wearing the kitchen instead of sitting in it…..and like a growing child, the table has already out grown it’s pants and the shirt buttons won’t even meet for coffee. it’s crazy big. i sit down at the table and feel like a hobbit.  i have to stop myself from asking Frodo to pass the sugar.  it’s like they took a bowling alley lane and put four legs on it.  but on the plus side we can have the guys over to the house for bowling tourney sometime soon.

my wife sends me to the furniture store to pick up this redwood turned dining table.  i get there and ask about someone helping load it….and the manager chuckles.  “you couldn’t load this piece with two men. we have a crew in the back.”  holly told me before i got there that it would fit in the back of van and might not close, barely.  well barely turned into the rear door being more open than a 24hr supercenter.  when the crew couldn’t get the table to fit they asked, “how far do you have to go?”  i told them about twenty miles….and they give a “OOOHHH” in “your crap out of luck four part harmony”.  (hopefully they will perform at my sons birthday party.)

they get the table loaded and bungee corded in and i am off.  i can not remember the last time i felt that imminently close to being arrested.  almost like i should have worn cuffs on the drive home to make it easy on them.  so police officers could know what it was like to press the Staples Easy Button.  i could not have been more illegal unless the table was made out of cocaine, cuban cigars and elephant ivory.  on top of driving with the “rear hatch ajar” i lost a pink cowboy hat, assorted mcdonalds toys, and probably the cure for the common cold out of the back of the minivan.  it’s amazing what you can find in your car where your kids sit on a routine basis. on top of all that, the road noise was amplified times 10.  it sounded like a monster truck driving through a wind tunnel while whistling the theme to some obscure 80’s tv show theme song.

after losing copious amounts of sweat and kid car trash,  i finally make it back home.  we get it wedged in the kitchen and admire it’s beauty. you see, in a family of six, new furniture never looks the same after your kids start using it.  so holly was more protective of the table than the KCF colonel is of the 11 herbs and spices.  i am on the opposite end of the spectrum. i always like to get the worst case scenario out of the way so it’s not hanging over my head like doomsday. so i invited my son to urinate on the center of the table.  kind of like a baptism into our family. but my wife declined.

so if you have any new furniture that needs to be initiated, i have a 4 yr old boy fueled up and ready to deploy.  i had to apologize for getting him worked up for nothing and promise him, his day in the kitchen would come.

God Bless guys,

todd mccauley

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