It’s 4 in the morning when I hear your sweet voice
But the sweetness is fading, which leaves me no choice.
I stumble through darkness as I head to your room
Stopping first for the bottle you cry to consume.

I open the door and you’re standing up now
With tears flowing madly, a scowl on your brow.
I give you the bottle, that gives you some peace
You finish it quickly, and your worries release

With your head on my shoulder, you’re where you belong
So I sway side to side and I sing you a song
It’s a song that…

There are a few places from my childhood for which I can remember so much vivid detail that I’m fairly certain I could work with an architect and set dresser to effectively recreate these locales when they inevitably turn my life into a major motion picture.

One of these sacred spaces is Glenview’s Playdium Roller Rink — a Catholic school’s gymnasium that served as the site of my gymnasium-less Catholic school’s monthly roller-skating parties throughout my primary, middle school and junior high years in the 1980s and 1990s.

The Skating Party was a big deal. Aside from raising some funds…

*This first appeared in my Tips from Dad newsletter. Why don’t you go ahead and subscribe?*

Hello, dear readers! It’s been a while, but I’m back this week with some more tips for living your best life. And by best life, I mean curling up in front of your television for a couple of hours to learn about someone else’s life.

There is nothing quite like the experience of watching a well-made documentary, and the documentaries on this list run the gamut from a few that I just discovered on one of our numerous streaming services, to docs that I…

Well, we made it! 2021. And while hanging up a new calendar might not solve all (er, any) of the world’s current problems, it at least gives each of us an annual opportunity for some self-reflection that hopefully leads to some self-improvement during our next trip around the sun.

So regardless of your New Year’s resolution (or lack thereof), here are a few tricks I’m using in the new year to keep myself better organized and hold myself accountable for building good habits and eradicating bad ones. Maybe some of these will work for you, too!

This post first appeared…

Now that we’ve entered that gloriously festive period between Christmas and New Year’s in a year when we shouldn’t really be going anywhere anyway, it’s the perfect opportunity to spend some time curled up in front of your TV watching classic Christmas movies. But what if you finish all of the classics and you still want some more Christmas cheer? Well, here’s a list of 6 Christmas movies you might not be that familiar with. Have yourself a merry little watch party!

This post first appeared in my newsletter Tips From Dad. …

I don’t often write poetry, but this one just popped into my head as I looked back on this year that was difficult for so many. Despite the challenges, I still found myself incredibly blessed in a multitude of ways. As we head into 2021, I hope you can find those blessings as well.

Spare a prayer for all the people
who have suffered more than you.
For those whose lives were caving in
before this monstrous flu.

Spare a prayer for all the people
who will die alone tonight. …

You know what goes well with Christmas and Christmas music? Hot chocolate!

Yes…but also? Animation!

So here’s a list of some festive animated music videos that will hopefully make your season even brighter. Grab a cup of your favorite chocolatey goodness and click below to enjoy a festive playlist for the ears and the eyes.

This post first appeared in my Tips From Dad newsletter. Subscribe here!

Sleigh Ride — Relient K

We’ll start things off with a light-and-breezy take on this classic carol. Aside from Relient K offering a unique cover of this song, the fun animated short that accompanies it plays a little…

One of Google’s newest AI research experiments is Verse By Verse, a tool that gives you the power to collaborate with AI versions of history’s greatest poets to produce a work of staggering genius consisting of parts both original and artificially fabricated by data and algorithms. To seed its suggestions, Google fed its AI bard all the classic poetry you pretended to have read in high school and college.

After choosing the poet(s) with whom you wish to jam and the style of the poem you will create (form, syllables, rhyme scheme), it’s time to kick things off with a…