I’ve misplaced my half-finished coffee and my wife chose a better scone than I did. So yes, I’ve known pain.

One of my favorite things is opening the door to a solicitor and then bonding with him about how mean my neighbors are to solicitors.

Told four-year-old it was time for him to start helping by rinsing his plate in the sink. Failed to specify which sink. Now have horrifying mess in bathroom.

Last night at dinner, Erin told her 3rd grade Valentine’s Day story. All the kids listened intently and clearly identified with it. So I told my 5th grade Valentine’s Day story. They sat in silence for a moment, then the youngest told me “I never want to hear that again.”

Now all I need is a Crabbe and a Goyle.

Dreamed of unexpected quintuplet newborns and their copious meconium. Never been so happy to wake to my son intentionally logrolling up my body and my daughter unintentionally holding the cat’s ass in my face.

I’m not sure what’s worse – the fact that my kids were using a rope tied to a pull-up bar to swing onto and off of our massage table, or the fact that they didn’t warn me before I walked in the room and stepped in the lava.

It turns out, if you call it “our 2014 household budget initiative”, it goes nowhere. But if you rename it something awesome like “Operation Financial Fortress”, it practically implements itself.

Feel excited about your basement cleaning project. Run out and buy brand new Shop Vac. Bring it home and learn that there are forty-nine steps and several different tools required to assemble your new brand Shop Vac. Feel less excited about your basement cleaning project.

You haven’t lived until you’ve vacuumed out a spider-infested closet under the stairs of a 1926 basement. And after you do, you’re not sure if you want to keep living.

I thought it was bad when my four-year-old would use “your face” as the punchline to his lame jokes. But now he doesn’t even bother to set up a joke – he just says “your face!” and laughs at me.

Xanadu isn’t available for streaming? Gawd! Why do I even pay for Netflix?

You haven’t seen him in twenty years, and he’s in town for a work thing, and you meet for a beer and a taco, and it’s as if no time has passed. And as you drive away, happy at the unexpected bonus of seeing an old friend, you realize that you didn’t take a single picture. And now you’ve failed Facebook.

Night club attire to see the latest Coen brothers. Because respect.

Men of vision routinely face skepticism when presenting their ideas to the world, yet they persevere. So I remain resolute in the face of the lukewarm if not skeptical reception which has thus far greeted the launch of my new “All Bed Head, All The Time” initiative.

Look kids, if you would just stop complaining long enough to watch it, you’d see that The Christmas Story is actually an amazing movie. Even if it is about “old stuff”.

Thank God it’s the thought that counts, and not the ability to competently gift wrap that thought.

Listening to the Wham version of Last Christmas followed by the Taylor Swift version is like drinking fine wine and then swallowing the corkscrew.

Starting a support group for non-Christians who nevertheless say “Merry Christmas”.

Apparently, the concept of a “dirty Santa gift exchange” is open to multiple interpretations. And my own interpretation seems to be decidedly in the minority.

So many hot moms, so few Christmas cards featuring pics other than kids and pets.

I’d really like to find the person who came up with workplace instant messaging so I could send them an instant message, while I call them on the phone, while I smack them over the head with the phone that is ringing.

Here’s our Theatrical Release version of The Two Towers DVD, but I can’t find our Special Extended Edition version. Why isn’t anyone else freaking out about this?!?

For this morning’s performance, the role of Father will be played by a catatonic grizzly bear making a noise that sounds like he’s moaning the word ibuprofen.

Ye though I walk through the valley of the shadow of family portraits, I shall fear no evil, for thy wine and thy booze, they comfort me.

Am I above wearing vanity eyeglasses to a lunch date with my wife to keep her off balance? No. No I am not.

Wife working at hospital all night; oldest daughter away at a sleepover; oldest son away at a sleepover; youngest daughter away at a sleepover; youngest son . . . right here giving me Hell. So close to greatness, and yet so far.

My fellow Texans, we face a winter storm, not the arrival of Galactus. Comport yourselves accordingly.

Bittersweet shall be the day when, before dropping my son off at his pre-school, he consents to listen to a song other than Tennessee Ernie Ford’s Sixteen Tons.