Family News in Brief -- February ’09

‘THERE'S NO PLACE TO SIT,' SAYS WIFEAt about 4:30 p.m. on Wed., Feb. 4, my wife came home from a long day of work and said she couldn’t go another night in search of a place to sit, that the constant mess in the living room was becoming a nuisance. “Every day,” my wife said, “I come home tired, wanting to sit down, relax and watch TV, but I can’t because my husband and 5-year-old son have built a fort that takes up not some, but all of the living room. Or they’ve rearranged our couches to be a spaceship or a car or some Zapper 3000 machine.” My son wouldn’t comment on the matter. I apologized for any damages caused, and promised that my wife, from that day forward, would always have a seat in the living room. The next day, as promised, my wife had a place to sit on the couch -- right next to the starting point of the toy roller coaster my son and I built. Mommy could be the first person to place a marble on the track and watch it take a run down the sofa, over the coffee table, across the top of the TV and through a series and twists, turns and loops in the center of the room.

SON COMES HOME FROM SCHOOL SMARTER, SICKEREarlier this month, my 5-year-old son brought home a lesson he learned in school about patterns. According to my boy, “Cough, cough, sniff. Cough, cough, sniff.” He followed his cough and sniff attack with an observation: “It’s a pattern,” he said. “Cough, cough, sniff. Cough, cough, sniff.” It seems my son also brought home a cold.

LAST CHANCE FOR LOW, LOW-COST EXTENDED WARRANTY My wife and I were the lucky winners of an offer to buy a low, low-cost extended warranty for one of our vehicles. The guy on the phone said so. “This is a one-time offer that won’t be offered again.” My wife said thanks, but no thanks, and hung up. “Wouldn’t you know it?” my wife said. “The next week my husband and I were, again, the lucky winners of yet another offer to buy a low, low-cost extended warranty for the same vehicle. And this was the company’s final offer, they said. Again I said no.” My wife and I have such good luck. Each week, for the last several months, we are the lucky winners of the same one-time final offer to buy a low, low-cost extended warranty for one of our vehicles.

HOUSE FURNISHED WITH BUTTON PANELSFollowing a recent visit to the hospital to see a sick friend, my 5-year-old son decided to turn our three-bedroom home into a medical center, complete with all the necessary “machine buttons.” The boy installed buttons at the foot of our beds, buttons on the arms of the couches and chairs, buttons on the walls in the hall and buttons below every light switch. “He’s taken pieces of paper from our printer and drawn button panels on each sheet,” my wife said yesterday. “Then he’s taped them on practically every surface in the house.” Asked what the buttons are for, my son said, “They’re for kids not to touch.”

-February 2009