Mild Amusement

Every now and then, some random TV show will have a fight between a man and a woman because the toilet seat was left in an inconvenient position for one of the characters. Everyone immediately recognizes the argument, because it's one of those silly little arguments that pops up all over the place. It's not all that important in the long run, but there is a surprising amount of thought that goes in to this debate (for example, look at how many hits " toilet seat up or down " returns). In my case, however, I deal with a slightly different version of the same argument. Well, to be fair, it's not really an argument. Despite growing up with both men and women in the house, I can't remember this ever boiling over in to an argument. If a guy found the toilet seat down and he didn't need it that way, he flipped it up and did his business. If a woman found the toilet seat up, she flipped it down and did her business. No one whined, and everyone proved they were...

First of all, if you don't know what burpees are, consider yourself lucky. Burpees are a form of exercise, where a single repetition involves transitioning from a push up to a jump. The motion involves both a strength component (the push up) and an aerobic condition component (going from flat on the ground to jumping in the air), so doing a bunch of these gets tiring, very quickly. I know a guy who owns a CrossFit gym that gives these out as punishments. Yeah, they're no fun. These days, I don't do as many  CrossFit workouts   so I don't do as many burpees. Still, there are two things about me that you should keep in mind: 1) habits die really hard in my case, and 2) I do things the hard way . So, when I felt like I'd been slacking off on exercising as a whole recently, I woke up one Saturday morning and made myself do burpees. One hundred of them, to be exact. I remember someone telling me she could do that in less than ten minutes once, so I tried to hit that t...

A while back, one of the Mild Exes and I broke up. It was messier than I would have liked, but them's the breaks. It was actually a pretty amusing story (a juicer figured prominently), but in keeping with the "don't air dirty laundry" rule, I'll refrain from telling it here. However, people's reactions to the story are fair game, since I'm not divulging state secrets in the process. More importantly, they were freaking hilarious. Remember, all of these came off the cuff pretty much immediately after hearing what had gone down: Friend 1: "You're right, it's a fun story, though I think it needs a little less profanity" Friend 2: "Really? Because I think it needs MORE" I couldn't help but burst out laughing at this. I'm not going to lie; I felt like high-fiving that second friend immediately afterward and declaring her my best friend for the week. Friend 1: "Where do you find these women?!" Friend 2: ...

Every now and then, I like to jokingly complain that this whole adulthood thing sucks. Usually, this happens when I have to do something boring at work or when I have to pass on something fun in favor of taking care of an errand. There is a grain of truth in this; being a functional adult means accepting responsibility, and responsibility occasionally means having to do things you don't like. Still, it comes with the territory, so I accept it and move on with whatever it is I have to do. Obviously, this is not a unique view. There are literally billions of others on this planet who intuitively know and understand this. However, there are times when this can be applied in very creative, and very amusing, ways. The simplest, and most obvious, example of this comes with little kids who have been taught to share. Even if you've never seen it in person, you instinctively know that most little kids don't like to share. They eventually get over that, but the first few times that...