Текст книги "Daddy, Stop Talking! And Other Things My Kids Want but Won't Be Getting"

Автор книги: Adam Carolla

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My problem is that coming home with makeup on and complaining about the satellite delay to The O’Reilly Factor doesn’t garner me much sympathy. I nearly killed myself doing construction before show business, but the fact is that I’m killing myself now, too. It sucks sometimes, and I need my family to know this.

An example of the disconnect between my kids’ lifestyle and how I provide it for them came this year when I was filming my show, Catch a Contractor. For those who haven’t seen the series, the premise is that I go to houses that have been destroyed by shoddy/shady/shitty contractors who show up just long enough to get the people’s money and then leave them in a death trap. Me and my co-host, a talented licensed contractor, Skip, lure the contractor into a sting house, present him with the evidence of his hack work and make him fix it under our supervision. It’s a good premise and unlike many of my prior TV projects is executed very well. But it’s also filmed in the middle of fucking nowhere. The commutes to and from these dumps are many, many hours in Southern California traffic. I then have the pleasure of confronting sociopaths and comforting destroyed families. It’s a real drain. I literally had to break up a fight between two ex-Marines, one being a contractor who screwed over an old service buddy, leaving him with fire-hazard wiring and his ten-month-old daughter crawling around on asbestos-covered floors.

The one that took the cake was in Watts. That’s the section of South Central Los Angeles that was destroyed by riots in 1965, and looks like it still hasn’t recovered. This is not a place you want to be. And the place you least want to be in Watts is crammed in a poorly renovated six-by-eight windowless bathroom with two cameramen, blazing hot lights, stuck between an angry Mexican contractor and an even angrier black homeowner. I’m standing there yelling at a contractor, “Look at this open sewage pipe, these people have been breathing this,” and then realizing I’m breathing it in myself.

The only thing that could make my day worse was knowing where my kids were at that moment. The night before, I checked my schedule, and saw that it was time for the Watts bathroom shoot. I was complaining to Lynette about having to go back there and asked her what her plan was for the day. She told me it was Presidents’ Day so the kids were off school. That meant big plans. “Natalia, her friend Cami, Cami’s mom, Sonny and I are taking a helicopter to Catalina to go zip-lining.” You literally couldn’t be doing something more opposite from what I was doing. Zip-lining in the open air on a Pacific island, versus a bathroom in Watts as spacious as an MRI tube.

I guess I must have been so busy I missed the Evite. I don’t begrudge them enjoying their time; I just want acknowledgment for my part in making it possible for them. I’ve always said when people ask me about career goals that I would like to be successful enough to enjoy the life my wife and kids have.

So my kids will eventually get their wish and Daddy will stop talking, due to the massive coronary I suffer from busting ass to provide for them. With that in mind I’d like to use this book to also lay down some fatherly wisdom they’ll need when hitting those big life events – specifically buying your first car, buying your first house, and hitting puberty – since I won’t be around to dispense it. Think of it as mediocre parenting from beyond the grave. The sections specifically for Sonny and Natalia to read at those milestones will be marked with this graphic.

And you, dear reader, may also see these graphics.

This is to let not just Sonny and Natalia, but all of you, know to strap in and prepare to get hit with some serious pearls and nuggets of truth. The Aceman is about to say something heavy and lay down a great concept that you need to dig.

And…

This is to signify my ideas: all the apps, gadgets, products and systems that I’ve come up with to make parenting, or just life in general, better.

I hope that all you readers dig these concepts and inventions because again I’m sure when it comes to Sonny and Natalia all of this wisdom will fall on four deaf ears. I tried to drop some knowledge on Natalia not so long ago and she shot back, “I don’t have to listen to you. I’m not one of your assistants.”

CHAPTER 2
Your Home Is Not Your Castle

THE HOUSE THAT the kids were first brought back to from the hospital was a 1929 Spanish-style home. It was more than a fixer-upper. I did a meticulous, total nut-and-bolt restoration of that place. I painstakingly turned it into a centerfold for Architectural Digest. It was a museum to my cars and monument to my craftsmanship. It even had a name: Vista del Lago. When your house has a name, you know you’ve arrived. But when the twins came along, all that shit went out the window. When you have children the idea that a man’s home is his castle no longer applies. Your home just becomes a place to store their crap.

When you have kids, your castle becomes their bouncy castle. In my case, this is literally true. Jimmy Kimmel bought Sonny and Natalia this inflatable castle in 2012. It’s the real deal. At first, I thought he had rented it. No, he bought it.

It’s nice having rich friends who can blow a bunch of money on great gifts for your kids, but it really makes you look like a loser. I’m positive that my kids are secretly planning a Menendez-style killing so that they can live with their rich Uncle Jimmy and get lavished with bouncy castles and audioanimatronic ponies (an actual Kimmel Christmas gift in ’08).

I didn’t have the space for the bouncy castle, and, in order to simultaneously go for the World’s Coolest and World’s Worst Dad title, I moored it to the pool. Before you call child protective services, the fan was off to the side, so they wouldn’t get electrocuted. I’m not a monster.

Technically, you can’t have an orgasm at age six, but when he saw this setup, Sonny was close. They were sliding down that thing for weeks. This kind of luxury would have been unimaginable for a young Adam Carolla. It is not just that my parents were cheap. These kinds of things didn’t even exist back then. Why not? Did we not have fans and burlap in the 1970s? Sonny has spent more time in bouncy houses than I did in my regular house when I was his age. I was out on the streets trying to get away from my family as much as possible. He’s so used to being in bouncy castles that I wouldn’t be surprised if he showed up at his first job interview not wearing shoes and complaining that the carpet didn’t have enough spring to it. It’s going to be an issue later in life, I’m convinced. Sonny is going to off himself at twenty because his pleasure center will be burned out like someone who did too much coke in the 1970s.

This thing literally covered my pool for a month, but at least I knew where it was. Usually, I find my kids’ crap by stepping on it in the middle of the night.

Ugh. Legos. I’m happy Sonny is into building stuff, but if I step on one more fucking Lego I’m gonna go loco. I remember thinking when I was a kid that Legos would never last. Who knew they’d be the biggest thing ever and that every movie would also have a Lego version that my kids would need to buy the toy version of? It’s a great scam. Iron Man comes out and you need to take the kids to see it and get the Iron Man figure. Then Lego does an animated “Lego Iron Man” DVD and you have to buy that and the Lego set that goes with it. I should come out with a Lego version of this book and make some extra cash.

Sonny is into the Ninjago Legos, which are particularly awful to step on in the middle of the night. As if the eight corners of your standard Lego block weren’t enough to puncture your heel, these fuckers are carrying spears and throwing stars. I was walking down the hall one night carrying a glass of red wine, and one of these Ninjago spears went into my bare foot and I ended up dumping the whole glass of wine on the carpet.

Not only did I think Legos would go the way of dodos, I can’t believe how long ninjas have hung on. Once the gun was invented, shouldn’t our fascination with the ninja have ended? Yes, you have a black belt. But is that belt thick enough to stop this bullet, bitch? Sonny is crazy for ninjas. I don’t know why. I think it’s a waste of time. What are the chances he’s going to grow up to become a ninja? Seriously, how many kids are going to parlay that fascination into a thriving career in ninja-ing? I’m going to show him a picture of Larry Flynt and tell him “this guy could take out ten ninjas if he had a gun on his lap so quit giving them so much credit.”

If it’s not Ninjago spears piercing the soles of my feet, it’s a fake spider or rattlesnake freaking me out when I stumble around half-drunk in the middle of the night. What happened to robots and rocket ships? I’m not going to head downstairs for my third tumbler of Mangria and think a miniature robot broke into the house. But if I see the fake rattlesnake in the dark through my boozy filter, I’m going to attack it with a mop handle.

Sonny’s Legos did provide a cute moment one day, though. He had a new Lego set, and the box said “Ages 5–8.” So he came up to me and asked, “Dad, are you the right age to help me put this together?” I laughed. It was really cute how he thought that once you were past eight you couldn’t build with Legos anymore. Of course, I told him I was too old and went to take a nap.

So finding the kids’ stuff is very easy when they lose it. Just take off your shoes and walk around in the dark, and you’ll find every Ninjago spear and fake tarantula you’ve ever paid for. But you know what I can’t find? My shit.

As a parent, you can fill your house with toys, as I have, and the kids will still go for every item you want them to leave alone. Their favorite toy when they were two was my alarm clock. They were constantly messing with it. They’d take it down, pull the plug, remove the batteries, take a leak on it and beat it with bats like Joe Pesci and his brother at the end of Casino. My house looked like a Gymboree, but they were still attracted to the only thing that I needed them to not screw with. It was either the alarm clock or the universal remote. (Which I still think should come with a button that you hold for four seconds to put in lock mode. That way kids can’t go monkeying with it.) The twins’ hit list of shit to mess with when they were terribly two was: #1 my alarm clock, #2 my universal remote, #3 the wrapper from my wife’s protein bars, #4–#9 anything I didn’t want them to play with and #10 their toys.

The worst is when in addition to playing with your stuff, they hide it. A few years back, Lynette lost her iPhone. The kids must have been five or six at the time. We searched high and low for a week, and couldn’t find it anywhere. Eventually, we gave in and spent the four hundred bucks to replace it. Of course, twenty-four hours after we spent that four hundred bucks it magically turned up. Natalia brought it down from the upstairs bathroom, saying that she found it underneath the rug.

Now, mind you, this is the shared bathroom at my previous abode, which had double doors and the Jack and Jill sinks. (By the way, I put the jack in that Jack and Jill bathroom.) This was the family bathroom, the one everyone brushed their teeth in, the one that the kids took baths in. It got the most traffic. Natalia claimed that after a week of looking for and not finding the iPhone, she simply stumbled across it sticking out from underneath the corner of the three-by-two bathmat. There is absolutely no way that with everyone in and out brushing their teeth and bathing not one of us spotted it. I think there was foul play involved. Natalia did get a twenty-dollar finder’s fee.

When something gets lost, I want to either never find it again or, at a minimum, find it a week later, twenty-eight miles away washed up on a beach. The part where you find it in your own home a day after you pay to replace it is a cosmic fuck you, on top of the underhanded behavior of your children.

I’m Sick of My Kids Being Sick

Plus kids are always sick and that means a mess. If it’s not piles of snotty tissues, it’s puke. I’m not sure why, but my son was yakking all over the house the other day and the cleanup job was going to be massive. You know it’s bad when you skip right over paper towels and go for something to scoop it up instead. On those days, you end up creating a makeshift excavator out of the Pennysaver and a flip-flop.

Vomit is the worst thing you can ever clean up. There’s snot rockets, wizz and loogies, but puke is the worst thing the human body can produce to remove from a rug. But the people who do the vomiting, especially when they’re children, don’t have to clean it up. When they’re kids, they’re sick and just collapse back into bed and moan while Mommy and Daddy bust out the Lysol wipes. When they’re adults, they’re passed out in the back of your car while you head to the gas station to put a quarter in the vacuum. If you vomit at school, the janitor has to throw down that sawdust and scoop it up. Even if you vomit in a restaurant because you ate too much, some poor Mexican has to mop it up. I vomited in an icemaker in Tijuana and I sure as shit didn’t clean that up. But if you knock over a cup of coffee, you clean it up. Why not the vile substance that you actually produce?

I’d like to watch a never-ending reel of people trying to get adults who vomited to clean it up themselves. Forcing drunks to sop up their own sick while their head is still throbbing and they can’t stand would be a viral video sensation, I’m convinced.

Vomit really tells you where you stand in life. There is a sweet spot when it comes to vomiting or seeing someone vomit. You don’t want people constantly puking around you, but if you haven’t seen someone vomit in the last twelve years, you probably aren’t experiencing life to the fullest. The optimal position is not having yakked in a long time yourself, but having seen a buddy puking into a trash can at a ball game or a concert in the past five months. I’m proud to say that I haven’t upchucked in several years. I have a good constitution, and I’m a heavyweight when it comes to drinking.

Plus, I hate it so much. Even worse than the vomiting itself is that moment when you think you’re done puking and the nausea creeps up again. You know, that moment when you’ve been puking all night, you’ve burst the blood vessels in your eyes and you’ve been laying on the filthy tile floor of a frat-house bathroom and you feel like you’ve finally evacuated everything… and then that queasy feeling comes back again.

There are too many question marks about hell to really be scared of it: how hot is it really going to be, who’s going to be there and so on. Because, when you think about it, there’s probably going to be a lot of cool dudes and whores in hell. It might be a good time. But the nausea that breaks the blissfully ignorant feeling that the vomit storm has passed, that queasy moment when you know the yack is back, if you told me that was hell I would straighten up and fly right for the rest of my life. I’d be the second coming of Mother Teresa.

Anyway, the cleanup. Sonny, you’re on notice. Next vomit, you’re cleaning up. Then later when you’re older and Dad is drunker, I’m going to puke and guess who’s cleaning it up? Get the dustpan, boy, and don’t go asking the maid for help. Speaking of…

Maids and Nannies

Hillary Clinton wrote that book saying that it takes a village to raise a child. She was right. That village was in Guatemala, but now it’s in my house. (By the way, my next book will be about gay parents and called It Takes the Village People.)

We had hired help from day one. We had to. When Sonny and Natalia were born, I was working my morning radio show while shooting my first independent movie, The Hammer, at the same time. So I would have to get up at four forty-five, roll into the studio, do four hours of unscripted comedy and interviews, then head out for several more hours of shooting (and essentially directing) an indie movie. With that schedule, there was no way I was going to physically be able to get up at three, feed and burp the kids and go back to bed. So the first thing we did was hire a night nurse. Again, throw money at the problem. When my kids were first born, I was just going around with a T-shirt cannon stuffed with twenties, firing it at people to get them to change, burp and nurse the kids while I went out and earned said money.

And who cares. The kids didn’t know at the time and it’s not like they’re going to sit me down when they’re older and say, “How come you didn’t have the guts to sit in my room when I was three weeks old and watch me shit myself?”

Let me start with a fuck you to all the people who are reading this and thinking, “Quit complaining about how hard raising kids is, rich guy. You’ve got a nanny and a maid.” Yes. But I didn’t wait in some magical line and get them assigned to me by the government. I pay for them.

And I pay them well. Here’s a great rich-guy move that says something about who I am. Two years ago, I heard my kids saying goodbye to Olga for the day, shouting, “Happy Birthday, Olgai!” (When they were first learning to talk, they couldn’t say her name correctly, so the mispronunciation just stuck.) I didn’t know that it was Olga’s birthday, so I asked Lynette what we got her. She told me Olga had been having issues with her car, and that we paid three hundred dollars to get it fixed. So I grabbed Olga before she left and asked her what was wrong with the car, what the year and model was – all those dude questions. I was impressed that she knew the mileage. Most people, and sadly most straight guys today, couldn’t tell you the mileage on their car. It was a 2002 Camry with 123,000 miles on it. I asked her how much it cost, and she said she didn’t know. I was curious how she could remember the mileage, but not how much she paid for it. She said, “You bought it for me.”

I had no recollection of buying her a car. Apparently in ’06 when the kids were born, I purchased her said ’02 Camry to drive them around in. After this revelation, I asked Dr. Drew what it said about me that I had zero recall of buying her a car and the hugs and thanks she swore she gave me at the time. He thinks my lack of self-esteem doesn’t allow me to register things that feel good. That’s probably pretty accurate, because I’m now about to list all the things that piss me off about having maids and nannies running around my house, instead of all the good things they do for me and my family.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Olga. I love what she’s doing for my kids. I have almost no complaints. She’s helping them learn Spanish, which will be very handy in Los Angeles – which by the time they’re in high school will be referred to as North Tijuana. But one issue I do have with Olga is how she calls Natalia “Mama.” I know this is a Latino thing, but I don’t like it. I don’t understand the deal with calling eight-year-olds “Mama.” It’s always the kids and the elderly that get this name. They don’t call anyone “Mama” who can actually be a mother. The ones who haven’t sprouted their first pube, and the ones whose eggs are powdered are “Mamas,” but the actual mamas not so much. I know that this can’t be helping the teen pregnancy rate in the Latin community. When you start calling a kid “Mama” at age four, you’re pretty much prepping them to become actual mamas by age twelve.

The second issue I have is what I have termed the Nan-boree. Every couple of weeks, I’ll come home to find that my driveway is full and my house is a swarm of wealthy white kids all brought over by Olga’s underground nanny network. They have big nanny parties where they get all the kids together and essentially let them roam free while they drink my coffee and chat. I’m fine with that, it’s just that it always seems to happen during the very rare opportunities I have to be home in between gigs trying to grab a nap or do some work from home, like calling into radio shows to promote the podcast or writing books like this one.

Interruption is a constant theme in my house, and it is not just caused by my kids. I had a run-in with our maid just the other day. It was eight-thirty in the morning, and I was sitting at the computer in my bathrobe, letting gas pass with my first cup of coffee, as I do loud and proud when I’m in my own home. Then she did the simultaneous knock and enter.

What is that all about? What does that accomplish? The point of knocking is to warn the person who’s farting or beating off that you’re about to catch them in the act. If you do the simultaneous knock and enter, you don’t give them enough time to holster their junk, only enough time to look horrified as you catch them dick in hand. You’re supposed to knock and wait for a response or just barge in, but not both. Now I have the humiliation of you catching me in the act and the horrible moment right before that, when I know it’s going to happen. If you’re going to shoot me, just put a bullet in me while I sleep. Don’t wake me up and let me see the gun in my face first.

So a couple of hours later, my maid was cleaning the bathroom and I innocently turned the corner. She then did what I believe to be the greatest contribution by Latin women to our nation… the screaming of “AIIIEEE!” It was startling. It sounded like she got her tit caught in the slide mechanism of the drawer she was cleaning. How frightened can you possibly be? It’s my house and you saw me earlier. I’d understand if you saw me pop up behind you in your bathroom on a Sunday, but once you’re in my house don’t be surprised when you see me. What am I supposed to do, phone you ten minutes before and tell you that I’m going to be entering my kitchen? Her scared reaction then got me scared. I ended up being more startled by her reaction than she was by my entering the room. It was a chain reaction of unnecessary fear.

As a side note, Hispanic women, you shouldn’t be as jumpy as you are. You come from a land where finding a duffel bag full of heads is a common occurrence. Why do you leap out of your skin when I step into my own kitchen to top off my coffee?

Then Olga got me a few weeks later. This time I was on the shitter. You’re supposed to knock and then wait for a response like “Excuse you!” “Wait a second” or “My anus is dilated” (okay, maybe that last one is a little wordy and personal). Again, there was no pause between the knock and her entering the room. Of course she found me on the shitter, because there was nothing I could do in the three-tenths of a second she gave me to react. So why bother knocking at all? Why not just kick the door in and do a shoulder roll like a SWAT team if you have no intention of actually pausing long enough to hear if a noise comes from the other side of the door?

And to you assholes who feel the need to point out that I could lock my bathroom door: One should not have to lock one’s bathroom door while in one’s home making a number two.

So Long, Sex Life

While we’re on locks, let’s discuss the well-known but tragic fact that having kids also means that your sex life is pretty much over. This is why there’s so much fucking in hotels. When parents actually do manage to get away from the kids for a weekend, that hotel room becomes Sodom and Gomorrah because there have been so many thwarted boning opportunities at home.

I’ve always recommended getting a barrel bolt on the bedroom door, so if Mommy and Daddy are humping, the kids can’t just bust in and ruin it. Unless you’re a perv and are into that.

As a builder, I can tell you that there are three kinds of knobs: the dummy knob that you have on the hall closet door or the pantry, it’s only on one side and doesn’t turn. Then there’s the passage knob, which does turn and has two sides, but doesn’t lock. This is the kind you have on your bedroom closet or den. Then there’s the privacy knob. This locks on the back side so people can’t just stroll into the room. It’s not going to stop a gangbanger who’s throwing a shoulder into it, but will ensure the kids don’t walk in, traumatize themselves and ruin one of your infrequent hump-ortunities.

The kiddie interruption thing has happened to us. Lynette and I have been going at it when the kids started banging on the door while we were banging on the bed. When I shout, “Come back in a minute!” Sonny usually walks away, but Natalia keeps knocking and giving her list of demands. I think she’s more aware of Mommy and Daddy’s special time. Once, when she was just a little under five, I told her to go play because Mommy and Daddy needed some “private time.” She replied, “Mommy’s gonna look at Daddy’s privates?” I thought, “Damn, she figured it out.”

At the same time, I’ve got to admit as a guy you can use this to your advantage. If you know the kids are home and awake you can tell the wife, “Hey, we just have time for a quickie. I mean, usually I’m Sting with the hours-long tantric sex. There’s some sitar, a lot of oral. But the kids are in the other room watching Dora, so I’m not going to take my shoes off and I’ll just put my TV dinner on your back. Cool?”

I’ve tinkered with the idea of an app that creates the sound of a child knocking on the door so guys can go into hyper-drive and just finish up quick. Just set it on the nightstand before hitting the sheets and set the countdown clock.

Of course, when it comes to sex, there is a big difference between men and women. Women care about circumstance and atmosphere. Men don’t. We’re mechanical. There are sex dolls for guys. There’s no version of that for women. Women need to be in the mood. The wife can’t get into it when she can hear the kids downstairs. For guys, having the kids downstairs watching Barney just lets us know that it’s game on. That’s a half hour we know we’re able to bang.

Having kids has messed with the most intimate relationship I have, with my own hand. Not in quantity, but in quality. I always thought that when I got married and had kids I would cut back on the beating off. I assumed having a wife to have sex with and kids running around, especially a daughter, would throw a wet blanket on the whole activity. Not so. In fact, I’ve probably doubled down on the jacking off.

As I said, my house is a beehive of activity with nannies chasing kids, gardeners blowing leaves and maids running vacuums. But every once in a while I find myself alone and have the following conversation: “Hey, dick?” “Yeah, Adam?” “You ready to party?” “Let me check with the balls. But they’re like lunchmeat, they’re always ready.” I should rename my dick Andy Dick, because it’s always down to party.

So I’m alone with a magical box containing two hundred and thirty-five thousand hours of pornography from across the globe and throughout time. I could spend the rest of my life looking at it, and believe me I’m trying, and still not see it all. It’s a wonderwall of debauchery – anal, interracial, vintage, German-stump porn – whatever you’re into, it’s there for you.

Sorry, fellas, for outing us, but ladies, if you ever get this call on your cell phone, you know your guy is ready to have at himself. “Hey, honey, just checking in. Where are you?” We usually don’t give a shit. But now we want the GPS coordinates and approximate travel speed. We’re triangulating your position to maximize beat-off time. “At the mall? Huh. Nearby mall or the faraway mall? Just curious. Just curious… oh, you just got there? Good. Take your time. Relax. Try out that massaging chair at the Brookstone. You deserve it. Don’t rush home. But when you do leave, just give me a call… so I know you’re safe. In fact, just let it ring once and then hang up. And then as you’re pulling up the driveway just give a toot-toot on the horn so I know you’re home.” We actually want to know when you’re pulling in the driveway so we can finish pulling on our penis and pull up our pants.

So alone with the porn-u-copia, you start having at yourself and god does the time fly. Seasons are changing outside the window. Fall turns to winter, like in a movie where calendar pages are flying away. Your pubes go gray.

When I finish with this spirited session, I’m immediately disgusted with myself. I’m in my refractory period, thinking, “Never again. What’s wrong with you? You could have invented something in that two hours! You’ll never get that time back! And that girl is probably a runaway. That’s somebody’s daughter. You sicken me.” So I angrily grab the mouse, click the browser closed and pow!

This is my computer. My desktop background picture used to be one of my cars, but when I wasn’t paying attention my wife swapped it for a picture of the kids.

Believe me, she knew what she was doing. I’m sure this shot was staged. I can hear Lynette coaching them, “Natalia, could you look a little more disgusted? And, Sonny, go ahead and laugh a little bit harder at what a loser Daddy is.” It’s as if they’re trying to say, “It’s a miracle we’re even here with all the beating off you do. What did Mommy do, go to the hamper and squeeze out a tube sock?”

Let me try to end on a more positive note. This one involves another bathroom interruption but, this time, there was a nice ending. I had gotten up early one morning to do a bunch of radio interviews. In between, I sipped on my coffee and munched on a fiber bar. Well, of course, the bowels got moving, so I plopped down on the toilet. I didn’t bother to close the door, as it was just me and the kids at home, no nannies or maids to bust in.

The bathroom I’m referring to is small and windowless. Thinking I was alone, and just popping in for a quickie, I left the door ajar about a foot and a half. Partway through my deuce dropping, boom-boom, out goes the light. (Bonus points to anyone who got the Pat Travers reference there.)

Someone had walked past the bathroom, flipped off the light and kept walking, wordless. I quickly did the math and yelled out, “Sonny, did you shut off the light?” He said, “Oh, were you in there? I’m sorry.” I did a quick wipe, stood up and walked out of the bathroom. I reached for him, choking up a bit, “Don’t you ever apologize to me for that,” and squeezed him like he was a tube of toothpaste. I’m constantly railing about the wasted electricity in my home and he had proven, with one flip of a switch, that he actually listens to me. It was a great moment. I’ve never been so proud of him or so happy to have my rare alone time on the throne of my castle interrupted.