Trial and Error

She's gone and done it again.  After a good six months or so since our dog, Lexi, had her last meltdown.  Typically it's loud noises and storms that send her into a panic.  I sure didn't hear thunder yesterday, so what set her off?

It's something about the holidays that cranks up the level of emotion in everyone to 11.  Happy people become jolly.  Angry people become miserable.  Teenagers become... well, teenager is as bad a term as I can think of there.

It's hard enough to get up in the morning for work without having hurdles put in your way.

I love trick-or-treating with the kids.  Not because I love walking around in the dark with kids wired up on sugar running in and out of cars, but because I don't have to give away candy at the house to ungrateful kids.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the most visually-creative person in the world.  I can make magic through the speakers, but I can't take that creativity and put it on paper... or on a pumpkin, as the case may be.

When you make plans in life, life has a way of changing, altering or downright blowing up your best-laid-out plans.  You don't get many days like I had yesterday with the kids.

As a parent I'm constantly sending my two boys back to the bedroom to try again on their daily fashion choices.  It's a constant struggle that forces me to say, "Do as I say, not as I do", every time I leave the house looking like I dressed in the dark.

We all feel it inside.  Some of us even blurt it out when the kids aren't around.  Kids can suck.  We love them more than anything else in the world, but they're destructive, dirty and (until they learn better) rude.

Maybe this is why you can't have your cake and eat it, too.  In this edition of Trial & Error a man in Cowlitz County, Washington entered the courthouse and promptly stole a few bites of a little girl's birthday cake sitting on a table.

There's nothing like walking into a house on a hot day only to find out it's hotter inside than outside.  That's what I was faced with Tuesday afternoon as I got home.  The A/C was set to 78, but it was 87 in the house.  This edition of Trial & Error looks at making lemonade when life hands you rotten lemons.