I write stuff like this all the time:

“My 6-year-old reminded my wife at Trader Joe’s today to ‘get the goat wine for the risotto.’ Fancy, right? Now she’s kneeling in front of the toilet, crying that she’s going to throw up, because she spent the last 20 minutes spinning around our living room as a ‘living tornado.'”

I post it on Facebook. Or maybe Twitter. Or I just write it down on a scrap of paper.

On Facebook, people “like” it and tell me I should compile all these funny things into a book. On Twitter, nothing much happens. The scraps of paper fall behind shelves and get buried under dust bunnies or go through the laundry and turn into tough little lumps. Sometimes I find receipts with scribbles on the back that I must have thought were enough of a hasty shorthand to later trigger the memory of a whole conversation: “Me: Wha doing w/ the beaer? Her: Thisis your!”

I have no idea.

A little more than two years ago, I started this blog. By “started,” I mean just that: started. It’s why the timestamp on this says it was published on “Sep 27, 2011 @ 6:12.” I never even posted anything. Because shortly after I started Standing in the Shallows, I impregnated my wife with our third kid, and then I sort of stopped doing stuff. My wife had to hire someone to pump my chest for me so I’d breathe. This person also moistened my unblinking eyes.

But now the littlest one is a little more than a year old, and having three kids isn’t so bad—especially if your scale of badness includes things like asteroids made of bubonic plague crashing into your house.

Compared to that, this fatherhood deal is easy-great-fun, and I have plenty of time to blog! Regularly! With quality posts!