Feb 15 - 21

Teenagers are such wonderful creatures. My daughter will be so kind and loving. I mean it literally will melt your heart. She will say, “I love you dad”, and then she will ask how my day went. Then she will say, “Dad, can we go to Taylors and get an ice cream?" in the sweetest and kindness voice. All the way there she will just be so sweet.

As soon as she is served her ice cream cone or shake she becomes a TEENAGER. She now says, “Don’t talk to me, can’t you see I am on the phone." "Are you looking at me, because if you are, stop."

Teenagers are such wonderful creatures. The word creature fits better now, doesn’t it?

My wife and I got our second vaccine shot on Monday. She had no effects at all and I had a mild fever the day after. Overall, it was well worth it.

Feb 8 - 14

For more than 20 years, my best friend Tom McGill has suffered excruciating back pain. He was a very funny smart guy who could insult you so profoundly that you usually didn’t catch on that he was insulting you. I should know because he started insulting me back at Mira Loma in the 60’s. He and I would go back and forth, him being the benevolent Democrat and me being the sleazy Republican. He used to always come over for dinner and hang out with our family where he would continue to insult me. Anyway this pain in his back limited him so much that he was not able to make it over to our house anymore. I would talk to him when I could reach him and he would explain dealing with the pain meant he had to get prescription painkillers. Well in the last few years it became more and more difficult to get these so Tom started having an extremely difficult time. When he would go in the doctors would only address the same thing and nothing else. Well yesterday he finally thought he needed some help and he decided to go to a care facility. I called someone he knew and she came and got him last night and brought him to her house. Soon after she had to call 911, and she called me at 4:00 AM telling me he was in critical condition. His sister then called me at 7:00 to tell me they had found what appeared to be advanced cancer. He died by 4:00 PM today. To me it is so sad that he lived with this pain that he had to plead doctors for care and if they had really listened they just might have found the real problem and my friend would still be coming over for dinner.

Feb 1 - 7

The one thing that is consistent about special needs kids is they cannot control their emotions. So, today I asked them to help me in the yard. My neighbor’s 100 foot tree broke in half and fell in our yard during that storm the other night and made a huge mess. Well I was cutting up the tree with a chain saw and the kids were sorting the wood and cleaning up the branches. Well my children are very competitive and even though my son is 6ft 6in tall and a foot taller than my daughter, she thinks they are equal in all regards. So he tells her how strong he is. She says, “well I am strong too”. And he makes the mistake of saying, Yes, but I am even stronger.” OK, so now the world comes to an end. She yells at him and tells him she is strong too, and he can’t stand being yelled at and so he goes ballistic and now I have the two of them going after each other like some big prize fight. I am totally useless at this point because me not being very bright, I try to explain to my daughter that my son is very strong. This of course was the wrong thing to do, and my smarter half was nowhere to be found. I tried everything my simple little mind could think of to resolve this situation, but only seemed to make things worse. Finally my wife arrived and explained to my daughter how unintelligent boys and men were and that of course she was as strong as my son, and reminded her how she should never listen to her father.

Folks, we are going to start serving inside a little. We almost have no choice but we will be very careful. We have added virus killing UV lights to our central air conditioning systems at all three places and I have installed sliding windows at Taylors and have ordered them for Country waffles and Flapjacks. This will give us better air circulation, mind you only if the weather isn’t too cold or hot.

Please be careful folks. We are nearing the final stretch and don’t want to crash on the last turn.

Jan 25 - 31

Ok, these conspiracy theories are getting out of hand so I was thinking of going onto the Waffle Web and starting my own.

Aliens from outer space have been slowly taking the form of human bodies all over the world. They have learned our languages and our mannerisms and are slowly trying to take over the fried chicken take-out business. That is why they came up with COVID-19, because it is good for take-out businesses. Also, they hate chickens, because where they come from chickens ruthlessly rule their planet and eat their friends. So where does it leave us who serve flapjacks and waffles? I don’t know, but their fried chicken is really good, so I think we should just stop selling chicken strips and let it go at that. However, if you see someone dressed up like a chicken, I would stay clear, it may not be a costume.