Seriously... I'm Kidding

trophies but instead of a person bowling on top there would be a little statue of a parent sitting down to watch some mindless TV after scraping dried peas off the sofa while their son or daughter is finally sound asleep in the other room. That might be too much to put on a trophy, but you get the idea.
    First you have your baby, which in and of itself is a stunning feat. I won’t go into specifics, but ouch and no thank you. Then you spend the next eighteen years raising the child. Throughout that time you ask questions you have never before thought to ask another human being, like, “Who needs to go potty?” and “Can you please take your underwear off your head for Mommy?” and “You got what pierced? Where’s that?”
    Once your kids turn eighteen, you think you’ve done your job and you can go back to having a clean basement. But it turns out, according to an article I read, 80 percent of college graduates are now moving back home with their parents. Eighty percent! It would probably be 100 percent but some parents were smart enough to move without telling anyone.
    That has to be frustrating for a parent. Your dream is to send your kid to college, be there when they graduate, and watch them go on to do great things. They’re not supposed to come back home. Their room has already been turned into a gym.
    That sort of thing doesn’t happen in nature. When a bird leaves its nest, it leaves for good. The mama bird does all sorts of things to get those babies out of that nest for the long haul. First she’ll nudge them to encourage them to get up and move around. Then she’ll show them how fun it is to fly. She’ll circle the nest, swoop around, play peekaboo. Then she’ll fly to another branch and squawk, “Hey, get out. I have company coming.”
    And the baby bird leaves. It learns to fly and make its own nest. It doesn’t leave, get a bunch of tattoos, and come back to mooch off its mama. It starts looking for its own food and searching Craigslist for temp jobs.
    I think parents can learn a lot about parenting from nature. Not only can they learn from birds, they can also learn from the wildebeest. When wildebeests are born, the parents encourage the babies to walk right away. And if they don’t learn fast enough, they get eaten by a lion. So I guess what I’m saying is—parents, once those kids are out of college you’ve done your part. If they come back home after you’ve spent all that time and money on their college education, what you should do is get yourself a lion.
    Okay, maybe don’t get a lion. Maybe just change the locks.
    Portia and I don’t have any children. That’s why we’re always full of energy and smiling. But we do have a lot of animals that we treat like our family. We have two dogs, Mabel and Wolf, and three cats at home, Charlie, George, and Chairman. We have two cats on our farm, Tom and Little Sister, two horses, and two mini horses, Hannah and Tricky. We also have two cows, Holy and Madonna. And those are only the animals we let sleep in our bed.
    We really treat our animals like they’re our babies. We don’t dress them up or anything. But we do take them to Mommy and Me classes every Friday. You should see the cows play the maracas during music time. If it isn’t the most adorable thing you’ve ever seen.
    I know having pets isn’t exactly the same as having babies. It’s not like I have to stay up all night nursing our cats. I mean, I do but I don’t have to. But our animals have taught us valuable lessons that could be applied to parenting human babies, should we ever change our minds. Things like when your baby wants to communicate something, it will moo loudly. And when your baby is hungry you will need to feed it some hay. Maybe that only applies to cows. But one thing we know for sure is that you should never sneak up on your baby, and when you’re feeding it, you should always hold your hand flat. Now I’m thinking of a horse. You know what, we mostly know about animals. We’re not gonna change our minds.

My Bucket List

     
Buy more buckets.
Travel to distant lands to learn more about different people, cultures, societies. Watch more Discovery Channel.
Wear more white.
Learn to fly.
Build a canoe.
Tell everyone I know I built a canoe.
Go see the philharmonic, concerts, operas. Watch more PBS.
Call more people “rascal.”
Watch someone run a marathon.
Learn to speak a foreign language, like Australian or British.

I Am Not Lazy

    I am not a