At what age can I know this isn't a coincidence?

As infrequently as I've (regrettably) been posting on here the past few months, thanks to the new house and then this contract work, I've been even more scarce over at HotDads.

So head on over there to check out my latest post, with only this title as a teaser. Enjoy!

Huggy Bear's House of Coffee

Looking for a sordid tale of titillation at a Washington coffeehouse? Head on over to HotDads, to see my latest post with this great group bloggers of which I'm lucky to be a part.

If it doesn't make you want coffee with an unhealthy urgency, then I guarantee twice your money back.

Guest Post: Tough love to start the year

No, my wife J-'s not getting drunk on attention after her debut guest post last week, but while I recover from this crazy topsy-turvy week, I figured I'd post something she wrote for her own first day of school this year*, her third as a middle school Special Education teacher:

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Dear Self,

You've been having a great summer. You have accomplished some of the things you wanted to, but overall, you have been lazy, forgetful, and self-indulgent. You have been eating on no particular schedule, you have been recklessly using the bathroom whenever you want to, you have been napping at all times of the day, and worst of all, you have been going to bed at crazy hours, well past your 9 o'clock bedtime.

You're in for a rude awakening in a day or two, and you're going to get your ass kicked by the clock. Please, straighten out your act or I will be forced to do something drastic about this situation. These measures will include things like dragging your butt out of bed to work out before leaving for work at 6am, or depriving you of your soul-saving caffeine. So shape up or prepare to be shipped out.

Also, you have been doing things in preparation to organize your stupid behind, and I swear this time you must follow through with it! This year you must stop staring off into space while mold slowly over takes your desk. You need to remember that if you leave your lunch out all day, it will no longer be something you should eat. You should, however, remember to bring it home before too long after that happens.

Also, please stop losing important paperwork and putting it off until the last minute: this is your year to shine.

Don't embarrass yourself in front of your new Para[professional]: she's old enough to be your mother, instead of your little sister like the last two years. You can do better. I'm expecting to be impressed!

Love you,
Me


P.S. Okay, okay, I won't really take away your caffeine, but I will use it to torment you if you aren't careful, Missy!

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* Editor's Note: Her first day was actually this past Wednesday, but clearly this was written on Monday.

Guest Post: J-'s School Supply Fever

Well, here's a treat for those who've asked for a guest post from my wife J-. She was so overjoyed at her haul at school supply sales recently, both for her and my 5-year-old son D-, that she felt like expressing herself in print:

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This is my time of year. God do I love the fall and the rush of going back to school.

Mostly, I love school supplies, and I don’t mean that in a healthy, “Golly gee willikers, these are neat!” kind of way. I mean it more in the way some women describe shopping at huge designer clothes and shoes sales, where people will claw your eyes out for little or no reason. This was bred into me a long time ago, so I simply can’t help it.

If there's only one left of the item I am looking for, you had better believe I will do whatever it takes to make sure it becomes mine. A few days ago, I was out shopping and some lady was reaching for the last box of sheet protectors just as I was, while she complained about how expensive they were.

I was forced to take evasive action, asking her if she'd gotten the same 20%-off bag in the mail that I was holding. She stopped reaching to rub her chin as she considered the question, and while she did, I deftly put that last box in my cart.

I know, I know, I should be ashamed, but sadly I am not. She was unhappy with the price, so I relieved her of the problem! But you don't have to thank me: my new sheet protectors are their own reward.

A big part of the reason I have this great love of school supplies is my almost total lack of awesome school supplies as a kid. Back then, school supplies often doubled as birthday presents, and because we were so poor, even then I never had any of the cool things I was ogling in the ads.

Nope, I always had the “functional” supplies that generally kind of worked, but were certainly never the envy of anyone else in class. They usually lasted just long enough for the teachers to note that my mother had indeed sent in my supplies as ordered.

For instance, I think all my non-Ticonderoga pencils were created solely as an offering to the pencil sharpener gods, to provide a year's worth of blessings for my classmates' pencils. The only exception in those years of school supplies, possibly even coveted by others than myself, were my pens.

My mother felt this splurge was necessary mostly because she loved pens as much as I did. I never went for the girly, decorated, crazy pens, but more for the ones with the best grips, most practical sizes, most vibrant colors, the endurance of the ink, and how nicely that ink flowed. I have since grown into an addiction that is not limited to the beginning of school, which I have a constant excuse to feed now that I'm a teacher.

Ask my husband: if there is a good pen in a store, I know everything about it and why I need one. I can’t help it. Each pen writes differently, and with each new day, my hand requires different pens for the various moods I find myself in that day. This year's pen new set is an 8-pack of assorted colors of the simple Papermate Profile ballpoint pen:

So, with that, along with the rest of what you see below (some of which I got free from a store giving a tote bag of goodies to teachers), my inhuman demand for school supplies has been satisfied for this year. I think.


A. Pink is always better than Not Pink.

B. The aforementioned sheet protectors.

C. Between D- and I, Costco saved me almost $20 on pencils.

D. Pay no attention to the crap in my house I'm not able to Photoshop out.

E. These good-smelling dry erase markers are hard to find, but now I don't have to worry about my new whiteboards killing me with marker fumes in my dank basement of a classroom.

F. I probably don't even need these, but I just love them so much. They're great markers, and they double as air fresheners.

G. I've waited two years for these things, so I don't have to pile up folders in my filing cabinet drawers.

Snake heads, heifers, and Carnaval

Surprise, surprise, here I am on a Thursday just to throw you all off.

But wait, no... scratch that now-outdated post opening. Blogger has had some kind of issue with scheduling posts in advance this week, so now it's actually Friday as usual.

Here I am sitting in a hotel in New Jersey in the middle of the night, dreading getting back behind the wheel sometime late tomorrow morning, and I've got to pile on finding out that just like I feared as we crossed state after state all day, Blogger never published my post.

It's really not unlike the dog owner following behind the dog with a plastic bag and a scoop. Who really works for whom in this relationship?

Anyway, now that you've smiled politely and nodded through my whining, head on over to Hot Dads to read my post for today/yesterday. Then poke around a bit after you're done reading mine, and you'll be glad you did.

A conversation between M- & J-: We're not talking to him anymore

Head on over to Hot Dads to read my latest post there, a little conversation between my wife J- and 2-year-old daughter M-.

Maybe now I'll finally get some of that hate mail I've always wanted!

Service with a smile

Here's another teaser for my latest post over at Hot Dads, where I'm an ashamedly infrequent contributor.

While you're over there, be sure to check out some of the other contributors' (including a few LiteralDan readers) posts-- you'll be glad you did.

For my American readers, shouldn't you be filing your taxes right now instead of reading blogs? Or shouldn't you at least be in a panic, quadruple-checking that you already did so?

Daddy's little girl gone wild

Consider this a teaser for today's post appearing over at Hot Dads, where I am now an occasional contributor.

While you're over there, be sure to check out some of the other contributors' (including a few LiteralDan readers) posts-- you'll be glad you did.

6 uninteresting things about me

Well, folks, I was recently tagged by (the highly recommended) Kat* at 3 Bedroom Bungalow to Let in Crazytown, along with the reliably hilarious Middle Aged Woman at Unmitigated, with the 6 Uninteresting Things About You meme.**

In the spirit of doing whatever the hell we want to all the time, and since we were both hard-pressed to identify anything about ourselves that isn't fascinating***, we decided to swap responsibilities and write each other's lists. You can see the list I wrote about her here.

Hint: Some or all of these items may be partially or entirely fictionalized.

Disclaimer: The preceding may have been an understatement. Also, this disclaimer is untrue.

Now that we've weeded out those pesky blog-scanning spam robots via the ol' reliable circuit-frying logic trap, we can move on to these 6 Uninteresting Things About Me, according to very loyal reader Middle Aged Woman:

1. LiteralDan cannot sleep unless he is wearing toe socks. Something to do with not wanting the webbing to grow back.





2. LiteralDan has a dread fear of wet sponges. Really. The last time he tried to wash his car in the driveway, J- found him quivering and whispering, "The squishy...the squishy..."

3. LiteralDan adds pepper to his coffee. He feels it gives him a jump on those namby-pamby types who need sugar to swill the caffeinated-goodness in a cup.


4. LiteralDan absolutely cannot visit a museum without leaving a contribution in the form of what he calls "upgrades" to some of the artwork. Check this out from his recent visit to the Louvre:


5. LiteralDan has been lying about his children's names all this time. They are not D- and M-. They are actually R- and K-. And you thought you knew the guy.

6. Did I mention there were actually three of them?

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* And I was much less recently tagged for this same meme by SherE1 at His, Mine, Ours. I never got around to publishing something for it, but I fully intended to. This is what I console myself with when I attempt to sleep at night.

** It seems to me that this particular meme was cruelly designed with me in mind, not only because it's a tremendous challenge, but because going beyond 5 items without continuing on to 10 really gets under my skin.

*** If I actually had as many as SIX uninteresting things about myself, how would I be able to sustain this incredibly scintillating blog for the entertainment of many dozens of daily readers? And if I thought anything about me was uninteresting, would I be able to keep talking about myself this far into a footnotes section, time and time again? I rest my case, and apology accepted.

In two places at once

That's right, I'm both here and there, guest posting today at Heavy on the Caffeine about toilet training and spousal communication. The author of that blog, Christy, has been a loyal reader for most of the time I've been blogging, so providing a guest post is certainly the least I could do to help her enjoy a well-earned vacation this week.

As a bit of a teaser, I promise you that the three people involved in the post come out seeming either stupid or undignified, so you know you'll have a good time laughing at us.

What are you doing still reading here? Go over there now!*


* Please make sure you do come back, at least occasionally, because you know my world would crumble without the praise and attention of at least one little group of people who aren't forced to put up with me, right? Okay, now you tell me, "Buck up, Sport," and reassure me you'll always be back... aaaaand Action!