Giles Snyder

Our Big Dog Rodney is happier these days. The weather has been cooler here in my corner of West Virginia. We've even gotten a little bit of rain. Before I know it, Rodney's fur coat will start making much better sense and I'll be able to take him all the way around the neighborhood without giving him (and me) heat stroke. For much of August, Rodney has spent his days camped atop the air conditioning vent in our bedroom, venturing outside only in the mornings and evenings when my wife collects him for a walk. I generally take him in the afternoon, but August has been so brutal, our walks are limited to what amounts to a quick trip to the porta potty. Rodney would much rather occupy his time engaging in barking matches with the neighbor dog on the other side of the backyard fence. Or outside standing sentinel as evening approaches, keeping an anxious eye out for my wife's arrival back home from work. He's never happier than when he's with my wife. Those

The morning after my wife and I moved our daughter into her college dorm room, I stepped out to the stoop with a hot mug of coffee and watched the neighbor dog across the street throw up. That was last Saturday, our first full day of being empty nest parents. And that dog's queasy stomach might as well have been my own. In fact, watching her heave made my gut curdle ... AGAIN. Desperate hugs were shared when we left our daughter to find her own way in a new and unfamiliar place. Tears were shed. And now that she has left home to join her older brother at West Virginia University in Morgantown, I'm left to confront an uneasy truth: I can't use the kids anymore as an excuse to put off household chores. Actually, I haven't really been able to do that for quite some time. Ever since our son and then our daughter got their driver's licenses, they've been getting more and more independent. In fact, our daughter was barely home her senior year in high school.

If you liked my last post about my daughter crashing into the garage door , you'll love this. The only thing I ask is that you share it, whether or not you find my latest misadventure amusing. I'm that hard up for readers. A couple of months ago, my wife started complaining about the clothes dryer. It wasn't doing its job very well. A load of towels took FOREVER to dry. They just kept tumbling around and tumbling around until we got tired of them TUMBLING AROUND and put them away somewhat damp. The dryer itself seemed to be working properly. I mean, it wasn't having any trouble tumbling, right? So I figured its ability to actually dry our stuff was being affected by lint clogged inside the dryer duct. After considering my options, I drove over to the big box home improvement store and bought one of those LintEater kits. Those kits come with a brush that attaches to a flexible rod that you can connect to another flexible rod and yet another flexible rod and yet ano

When I got out of my car at the dealership Thursday morning, I joked with my service adviser that "it wouldn't be long before we became best friends." She laughed, but there was some truth to that jest. The nearly 190-mile round trip from my home in West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle to my job in Washington, D.C. means I put a lot of miles on my car.  And that means lots of oil changes. And plenty of opportunities for the dealer to drain my wallet.     For better or worse, my service adviser and I are going to get to know each other quite well.  For now, though, it's probably too soon in our relationship to start complaining about the kids. Otherwise, I would have pulled out my phone, shown her a picture of my seemingly innocent 17-year-old daughter and then swiped over to a picture of the garage door she mangled this week.  I had just settled into my favorite chair with a fresh cup of coffee Tuesday evening when my daughter rushed into