How to feel like an Asshole, by Russ

'Tis rather simple really! All you need is my dog who hates all creatures furry and four legged. Take said dog on a walk while pushing your two children in a double stroller (if you only have one, that will have to do, if you have more, even better).

While on the walk, make sure you come up behind two blind people and their seeing eye dogs. Have your dog lose her shit at the seeing eye dog and attack it. (Biting it in the lip, no blood drawn thankfully.) What do you do? Let go of the stroller with your two children? Thus letting it, potentially, drift off into on coming traffic. Hold on to the stroller and let go of the dog? Thus guaranteeing a lawsuit. Or hold on to both and hope that you don't catapult your child into said on coming traffic? Which is what I did.

Evidently, having the pooch on a short lease did not help out. But, while my dog, most certainly provoked the other dog, a seeing eye dog is supposed to ignore distractions. They are most certainly not supposed to snap back (which put the beast in range of my dog, thus the lip incident).

What do you do?

Temperature Sensitivity in Adolescents: Part 2

The kids continue to puzzle me with their hypocrisy. Both are rigid about what they will wear to bed; the hotter the better. The Girl insists on wearing underpants under her PJ bottoms. She finds it "too weird" to sleep with her privates completely exposed, in flannel.

This is the child who prefers to jump on the trampoline in the raw, especially if the lawn sprinkler can be turned on it. The 14 year old is the same way. Unsupervised trampolining for those two often results in an All-Nude-Sibling-Jumpoff.

Maybe it’s not so much about temperature issues, but a reversed sense of public exposure. They love sharing what God gave them with the world, but feel the need to cover up in the privacy of their own rooms. This is like a stripper who wears a burkha around the house.

As parents, their mom and I never had any hangups about modest nudity around the kids, but I can't figure out how ensuring they were not ashamed of their bodies resulted in their need to do front flips in their birthday suits. And they sleep dressed up like Cosmonauts.

The dogs are so much more sensible. They just lick themselves indoor or out, day or night.