In fact, I think what they do is pretty smart.  Get a tradition like that going and every year when news is slow between Christmas and New Year’s Day, suddenly CNN is putting your organization’s name on TV twelve times a day with your list of “words of the year.”

Maybe I should give this a shot myself.  I have cited on several occasions my bizarre desire to coin a phrase or introduce a saying into the popular culture.  I don’t expect to get rich doing this, but would derive immense and inexplicable satisfaction if I knew that, for example, I had been the first person to describe Martha Stewart as a “domestic diva.”  Just overhearing “my” phrase in strangers’ conversations would be sort of a kick (unless I suppose they were discussing how stupid they think it is).

I want to introduce a phrase that fifty years from now will make people say, “Where exactly did that come from, anyway?”  And whatever Google has become at that point will eventually lead them to some pitiful archived copy of my little blog.  Sadly, I have all but given up on conjuring such a word or phrase by myself.

So instead I’m going to camp onto a couple of gems from Shelby, our eight-year old daughter who pretty much reads, writes, and creates stories all the time.

Our first phrase this year has already taken its place as an almost daily staple in our household.  It’s just appropriate for so many things.  I should give some background.  Our household is a big fan of the Beverly Cleary books about Henry Huggins and Beezus and Ramona Quimby.  In one of the books Ramona’s teacher admonishes the children that when creating their art projects that they do not want to waste paste.  I think Ramona describes some of her classmates as “paste wasters.”  Shelby seized onto that concept and thus was born the phrase that we use anytime something happens that was not worth the time or effort:

“That was a waste of paste.”

A meeting at work that didn’t accomplish anything?  A waste of paste.

Find some leftovers in your fridge that you forgot to eat before they spoiled?  Well, that was a waste of paste.

Keep this phrase handy.  I’m telling you it can be applied often.  And somehow it takes the edge off the frustration of whatever unfortunate event just happened.

Our second phrase is really more of a folk saying.  And I think it’s brilliant.  In fact, I think as a phrase it may work on a level that I haven’t fully appreciated quite yet.  This saying deals with disappointment.  It’s also about managing expectations and being a realist.  It’s also about injecting a little perspective into any situation.  Let me give you the background before I spring this one on you.

Shelby is creative and artistic and not a big eater.  Thus, much of her time at the dinner table is spent doing things like telling stories or asking questions.  Or rearranging her food.  Or making art out of her food.

Recently she had a round piece of baloney lying on her plate.  To her it was a medium.  I looked over and she was using a butter knife to carve pictures into the baloney before she ate it.  The government has subsidized lesser performance art.  And then this happened:

“Shelby, are you carving pictures in your baloney?”

“Yes,” she said sadly, “but there’s only one color in a baloney rainbow.”

Wow.  Remember that the next time you’re watching a TV commercial.  Or listening to a political debate.

Or making your New Year’s resolutions.

(Years ago I mentioned how the word “meteorologist” had forever been ruined for me when I realized it sounded like “meaty urologist” and how almost all TV weather casts now result in me thinking about a portly physician).

These are the perils of having a precocious child who reads a lot.  And when I say she reads a lot, you should know that more than once I have found an abandoned book she had propped up behind the bathroom faucet so that she could read while brushing her teeth.  Some people channel-surf.  Shelby book-surfs.  Books are all over our house and half of them are ones she wrote herself.

She ruined the word while our family was seated around the dinner table.  Jacob asked Laura a question about something I don’t even remember.  And then he asked another.  And another.  He was having fun and maybe just trying to tweak her a little.  Finally she laughingly suggested that he stop asking so many questions and try and “be a little more intuitive” about the situation.

Shelby piped up in mock disbelief, “You want him to be more like an Eskimo?”

Silence fell.  Blank faces were shared while Shelby sat there with a mischievous grin.  She knew she had us and relished the moment while she was the only one in on the joke.  Did you get it?  I’ll let you off the hook.

Inuit.  That was her wordplay.  One of the two main indigenous people groups that comprise Eskimos are the Inuit.  She had probably just finished reading some book about a plucky Inuit girl who saved a wolf or something.

And henceforth when I hear the word “intuitive” my brain is going to see that little devilish grin at my dinner table and translate it into “Inuitive” and wonder what Eskimos could possibly have to do with the situation.

Happy birthday, sweet girl.

Thirteen.

I haven’t lived full time in a house with a teenager since I was a teenager.

Jacob is a great kid.  Smart.  Funny.  Athletic.  A wonderful big brother.  And I have to admit there are unexpected benefits of having him grow up on me.  For example, I’ve always been a big University of Kentucky basketball and football fan.  But I’ve struggled with being able to enjoy watching UK with anybody (Laura’s not a big sports fan).  Seems like everybody else I know is either a little too into the game, or not into it enough.

But now when it’s time for a big UK game, Jacob’s my guy.

I’m starting to realize that some of the wistfulness of having ones kids grow up is softened by the development of a new kind of relationship.  I used to not really like the thought of having a teenager, but now that I have one, I have to say I really like it.

Because of the one I’ve got.

The root cause is a combination of picky-eating kids and a (presumably) evil genius in the McDonald’s marketing department.  As a parent, there are times (long car ride) when a quietly-accepted McNugget is worth its weight in gold.  And when it’s time for lunch on a car ride, there is always a McDonald’s nearby.  It’s as if Ray Kroc himself conjured the interstate highway system for the sole purpose of linking his restaurants into a sentient matrix.

But recently I have begun to sense my family turning a fast-food corner.  We have yet to progress to any of your more exotic haute cuisine like, say, Taco Bell.  But lately we’re not getting nearly as strong a lobbying effort for McDonald’s from the back seat.

And that makes me happy.  Again, nothing personal against McDonald’s, but you must agree that there’s something unsettling about how McDonald’s food all smells the same in your car regardless of what you ordered.  And the way a lone wayward fry can make your car smell like a vat of oil for a week.

Let’s be clear.  I’m not some kind of gourmet snob.  Give me a sack of White Castles and a tub of Skyline chili to dip them in, and I’m a happy man. (As a distance runner, my theory is that one must consume a certain level of grease to keep one’s knees from seizing up).

But McDonald’s?  I’m just tired.

A couple weeks ago Laura had a Sunday School function after church so the kids and I were on our own.  (I would have cooked them a healthy, delicious lunch myself but Laura’s group was meeting at our house).  My plan was to go to Fazoli’s, which offers me the opportunity to feed pizza to happy children while enjoying some kind of pasta for myself.  I am a little ashamed at how much I was looking forward to my Fazoli’s.

But on the way I made a wrong turn and popped out on a main thoroughfare going away from Fazoli’s.  Do you know how sometimes when one little thing goes wrong, it spins off in unexpected directions?  Sort of like when you find yourself at work wearing blue socks with khaki pants because the phone rang while you were brushing your teeth that morning and interrupted your routine?

So as I looked for a place to turn, I noticed a new burger restaurant I’d heard good things about.  I’ve wanted to try it for a couple months.  It was right there in front of us, and since Jacob and I love burgers, and surely they offer a chicken nugget, ring, or finger for Shelby, this would be a great Plan B.  We pulled into the parking lot and I immediately became disoriented.  I should have called a timeout right there and immediately retreated to Fazoli’s.  But I forged on.

The parking lot was tiny and full, so I went around to the other side.  Here I encountered a dead-end and even fewer parking spaces (all full) with a sign telling me that there was additional parking in the rear, but on the side of the building from which I had just come.

And here is where things get fuzzy.  I think I saw open space off to the side and figured I’d just go over there and park, and drove out of the burger place’s lot.  I immediately encountered signs telling me I better doggone not park there if I was going to that burger place, since those spaces belonged to another business.  I turned to go back around one more time (my mind was reeling), and then something happened I still can hardly believe.

As I tried to work my way back out to the street, I realized I was literally driving through the outer reaches of a drive-thru lane of an adjacent McDonald’s.

All of the frustration of the last few minutes built into a wave that crashed upon our old Toyota Camry.  I gave up.  Sometimes not just electricity but electrical engineers seek the path of least resistance.  “Kids,” I asked dejectedly, “what do you want from McDonald’s?”  The sack was in my hand before I considered how easily I still could have just gone back down the road to Fazoli’s.

A man can do a lot of thinking as he marinates in fry fat fumes.  I wondered if possibly, just perhaps, the evil marketing genius sat in a meeting one day and proposed that if they just angled their drive-thru lanes just so, they could entrap some tiny percentage of customers who weren’t even trying to go to McDonald’s.

I’ll never look at a wretched fly struggling in a spider’s web the same way again.

A good example of an unexpected quirky event would be back in October when I had my photo taken with Count Chocula.  Another example would be the time I visited a prison as part of my former job.  I should stress that my presence at the prison was requested and not court-ordered.  I visited to discuss electric utility sorts of issues, and ended up eating lunch in the prison kitchen where my hamburger and fries were prepared by a friendly prison cook.  Let’s just say when he finished his shift in the kitchen he did not have a long commute home.

Last night our family was preparing to sit down and enjoy the Pixar movie Ratatouille.  I love Pixar movies and was eager to get started.  Shelby wandered into the room carrying a pencil and a napkin.  Apparently during dinner she had started doing a little math in her head.  For lack of a better description, she was going through doubles (two plus two is four, four plus four is eight, etc).  She had gotten all the way up to 64 plus 64 is 128 in her head.

(This is where I hope you remember she’s in second grade because I’m not going to mention it so it won’t sound like I’m bragging).

Shelby had taken her napkin to figure out what came next by writing it down.  She’d added 128 and 128 to get 256.  She’d added 256 and 256 to get 512.  By the time she ran out of napkin she’d made it all the way to 131072 plus 131072 equals 262144.  (Don’t bother checking the progression yourself; I just did using a spreadsheet).  Here’s the napkin:

I didn’t even know she could do that kind of math yet.  Her teacher had recently taught the all-important skill of “carrying the one.”  Shelby asked me to make up a few more addition problems for her to try, and I did.  And then big brother Jacob got in the act.  Modesty prevents me from saying that Jacob is himself an excellent math student.  Jacob threw a couple of tricks at her and even introduced the subtraction concept of borrowing from your neighbor only to learn that your neighbor is a loser zero and can’t offer much help on his own, but might be willing to discuss the situation with his neighbor.

They were having a grand time.  And then it happened.  So fast I didn’t even realize what I was doing until the words were out of my mouth.

“OK,” I said.  “Just one more problem and then you’ve got to stop so we can start the movie.”

Yes.  I am the dad who stopped his children from voluntarily doing math problems during Christmas vacation so they would watch TV with him.  By next year I’ll be putting cigarettes under the tree.

Now don’t misunderstand me to be saying I think I’ve been an overall negative influence on my children.  But this incident did make me think.  George Bailey’s Christmas lesson was that Bedford Falls would have been a mess without him.  My Christmas lesson this year is that the days of leading my kids are numbered, because all too soon I’ll only be getting in their way if I try.

Bah humbling.

Shelby:  Mom!  My leg bruise is changing to a different color!

Laura:  What color is it changing to?

Shelby (pauses to inspect bruise closely):  Vermillion.

So this week we’re driving to school and have the following conversation:

Shelby:  Dad, do you know what would be a waste of hair gel?

Me (pause):  Um, no.  What would be a waste of hair gel?

Shelby:  Sculpting your hair so that it looks like a chicken is sitting on top of your head.

It has been a while since our last visit.  I have not been suffering from writer’s block.  I have been suffering from a lack of interest.  I might very well have had lots to write about, but I just didn’t feel like writing anything at all.

How are you?  I am fine.

Since our last visit I have been on an adventure.  And I mean a real adventure that would qualify as an adventure in the general sense, and not just in the watered-down sense that applies just to me.  For example, anything that requires standing in line pretty much qualifies as an adventure for me.

I seek and enjoy a quiet life.

On Friday my dad flew into town in his very own airplane to pick me up.  We then jetted (or more accurately, propellered) down to Charlotte to visit my sister, Cheri.  Cheri loves NASCAR and has some friends with connections.  I would love to thank those friends by name, but they might rather not have their names listed publicly as doing such favors.

Plus also this blog probably needs more readers to even qualify as “public.”

So here’s what we did on Saturday.  Around lunchtime we went on a tour of the Hendrick Motorsports complex.  Besides the normal tourist areas, we got to see places where NO PHOTOGRAPHY IS ALLOWED.  I probably shouldn’t say too much about those particular areas lest large guys in jackets festooned with corporate logos show up and ring our doorbell with a tire iron.  Let’s just say that the race shop of the leading teams in NASCAR (Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Mark Martin, and Dale Earnhardt, Jr.) are a notch or two above Cooter’s garage in The Dukes of Hazzard.  You could eat off the floor of Hendrick’s garage, but you’d feel guilty about getting crumbs on it.

After the tour we went to Lowe’s Motor Speedway well before the race  We got to walk up and down pit road and right by the open garages where engines were loudly being checked out.  Christian music star Toby Mac was doing a live concert in turn 4.  We strolled by driver Bobby Labonte sitting in a golf cart with his wife as they watched the concert on the track apron.

Oh, and the actual race on this unseasonably chilly October night?  We watched it from a heated suite.  I told you Cheri’s friends have connections.  But what I really need to tell you about is the pre-race drivers’ meeting.

We got to go to the pre-race drivers’ meeting.

Have you ever felt like you had walked into a book or movie and were no longer in the real world?  That’s what the driver’s meeting was like.  I’ve been watching NASCAR since 1997 so all the drivers and crew chiefs seem like TV characters and not real people.  And there I was milling around with maybe 200 Joe Shmoes like me while the drivers sat and listened to a few instructions about the upcoming race.  (“Fellas, we’re going to stick with counter-clockwise again this week”).

Don’t believe me?  Here’s a poor quality photo I took of Dale Earnhardt, Jr. his own self:

Seeing all these guys was simply surreal.  Richard Petty was there with his big hat and sunglasses.  Richard Petty should not exist in flesh and blood.  My brain processed seeing Richard Petty in person similarly to how it would process being in the same room as Batman.  It just didn’t feel right.

Some say one’s true character is revealed in a high pressure situation.  If so, I’m not quite happy about what transpired next.

After the meeting we were making our way to the door after most of the drivers had gone.  I looked over and something caught my eye.  There, in her gleaming white fire suit, was Miss Sprint Cup.  For those of you not into NASCAR culture, I should explain that Sprint sponsors NASCAR’s top racing series.  The trophy is called the Sprint Cup.  Miss Sprint Cup is an attractive young lady who stands behind the race winner each week on TV in her Sprint fire suit and smiles.  And smiles some more.

So there she was.  Another character in the movie into which I was currently trespassing.  I joked to Cheri that I should mimic the scene in Say Anything when Lloyd Dobler pauses briefly behind Diane Court so that a friend can snap a photo that makes it look like he was hanging out with her.  I really wanted that picture.  It’s not that I’m obsessed with Miss Sprint Cup (I already have dozens of photos of me next to my beautiful wife), it’s just that Miss Sprint Cup is so recognizable and I’m so uncool that it would be objectively funny for a picture of me beside her to exist.

Cheri said I should just go ask her to take a picture with me.  She was just standing there talking to people like us.  I hesitated.  Then another dorky guy just walked up and asked her if he could get a picture with her.  She smiled the TV smile and happily went along.  Cheri all but pushed me forward.  All I needed to do was say, “Excuse me, would you mind having another quick picture taken?”  The poor girl is probably contractually obligated to be friendly, after all.

But I choked.  Wouldn’t do it.  Didn’t want to impose.  So I went online and found Miss Sprint Cup on Facebook and grabbed a picture of her standing next to some other random guy that could have been me.  You’ll have to use your imagination:

Miss Sprint Cup and a Random Guy

I regretted my lack of intestinal fortitude before we’d even left the room.  I knew that next time such a unique opportunity arose, I could not fall short.  I would come through.  Who would’ve guessed that in less than sixty seconds I would happen across another well-known figure, even more recognizable than Miss Sprint Cup?

This time, I did not crumble under the pressure:

Mark and Count Chocula

So I ended up with a picture of me standing next to Count Chocula instead of Miss Sprint Cup.  Upon reviewing the photo and noticing the angular features and prominent chin, this was probably a better match anyway.

Shelby named her Cornelia.  The braided ponytail you see is pinned to the back of her (Cornelia’s) head.  Rather than try to create realistic-looking eyes, Shelby decided it made more sense to assume her eyes were closed and go for the green eyeshadow.

Cornelia watched a football game with me Saturday night, which was a little creepy.  (I suppose I should point out that the football game was on TV.  I did not take Cornelia out of the house.  That would be a lot creepy).

Shelby went on a second-grade field trip with her class on Monday.  They went to a place that features a miniature layout of the city of Lexington with sidewalks, working stoplights, drivable mini cars, etc.  Sounds pretty neat.  (Jacob was quick to give her some inside scoop and told her that five years ago when his class went, the red car was the fastest).  Uniformed police officers taught the kids about general safety and situational awareness.  At some point during the trip Shelby was running around and fell and scraped her knee.  She managed to come home with an injury and bandages from a field trip to a place called “Safety City.”

It reminded me of the time I almost rear-ended a car because I was distracted trying to read a road sign that was alternately flashing “Warning!” and then “Slow Traffic Ahead!”

In somewhat of a coincidence, like Shelby I also spent part of my Monday in a heightened state of situational awareness.  Some co-workers and I attended a retirement lunch for a colleague at a Japanese restaurant.  Perhaps I should clarify that he wasn’t a colleague AT a Japanese restaurant.  He was a colleague at OUR workplace and we went to the Japanese restaurant to celebrate.  Anyway, we all sat around one of those open Hibachi grills manned by a chef with a flair for the dramatic.  (Presumably the less flamboyant chefs are relegated to steaming rice back in the kitchen).

We were enjoying the cooking performance as he brandished and twirled his knife and spatula (contrary to popular opinion, it is indeed possible to brandish a spatula).  Have you ever wondered what might add an unanticipated degree of excitement to watching a Japanese chef cook right in front of you?  I can tell you.  Try noticing that the chef’s index finger is covered in a heavy bandage.

Well, then.

I thought about his finger injury while watching him cut and chop about thirty inches from my eyeballs, which I happen to hold in high regard.  Just what circumstances led him to cut his finger, and wouldn’t a similar loss of utensil control be even more likely to recur now that he had a heavy bandage getting in the way?

I tried not to flinch while contemplating.  This is the bane of the introspective person.  Fortunately one of my co-workers is much less socially inept than I, and simply asked, “Hey, what did you do to your finger, there?”

The chef smiled knowingly and assured us that it was not an on-the-job injury.  We all shared a good laugh, relieved to learn that he hadn’t cut his finger extracting a wayward Ginsu from the abdomen of a patron.  He went on to explain that what happened to his finger was that he watched an NFL game with some buddies on Sunday.  One of them said something like, “Hey, you’re a chef!  Why don’t you make something for us to eat during the game?”  He smiled sheepishly and explained that he did prepare some food for the group but it “didn’t turn out too well.”

So we customers didn’t have anything to worry about because he didn’t hurt himself cooking at work, he only hurt himself cooking at home.  I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume there is a nuance in his argument that I have simply yet to grasp.  Everybody knows a nuanced argument can be harder to grasp than a spatula.