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By way of a story, of course.
Happy 2026 to you and yours. Stress eating an entire bag of harvest cheddar Sun chips and drinking a Cherry Coke-style Poppi in the parking lot of my local Aldi, in case you would like a window into where I’m at.
This article ends with a preview of Illinois State-Montana State, but it’s going to include an infant fever, computer failure, and me talking on the phone with a QuantumFiber representative while shirtless, for some reason.
I hope you enjoy it.
We went to the cabin on New Year’s Day. It was the first time I had been there since July, though my family had been there three other times, and I stayed back each time due to illnesses, either for myself or for Wildkit #2. So, while spending four straight days with my in-laws does grate at the one remaining nerve I have left—and my undiagnosed issues with alcohol—it was a welcome respite from, well, everything.
And it was delightful! We began shoveling off a skating rink and flooding it, contra to all our vows that our daughters would not be interested in skating or hockey because we don’t need that smell in our lives. We made a bonfire, and Wildkit #1 got s’mores. Even my mother-in-law’s food, which is chronically underseasoned but lovingly made, was hitting the spot.
And then we came in, on Saturday afternoon, from that heavenly bonfire.
Wildkit #2 had been napping more than usual, and now she had a temperature. Of 103.5.
So that was it for the cabin — we packed up and headed home. Her temp did not abate, and while we were able to get her to sleep in her crib for a couple hours, we spent most of Saturday evening into Sunday alternating sitting up with her while she slept. That was in part because she vomited a tremendous amount all over the wife while they were sleeping! We called the triage line, and apparently you’re not supposed to bring an 8-month-old to the urgent care unless her temp is over 105. Her temp was 104.1. But it’s likely she had influenza A, the very helpful triage nurse told us!
Amid all this, my work laptop decided it would be a lot of fun if the wireless adapters just up and deleted themselves. Whatever has happened, they are no longer there. I put a ticket into IT, because I cannot download and fix the adapters on my own without admin permissions, but I am down to teaching an intensive, 15-day winterim course off my aging and undersized Chromebook, while I wait for IT to get back to me today.
Today is also a very momentous day in the MNW household: it is the first official day of my wife’s paid leave under the new Minnesota paid leave law, because she is grandfathered in up until our second daughter’s first birthday. She is taking her 3 months paid leave, which is great. However, a side effect of her days off is that I am not allowed to disappear to the basement to do my job, because “could you just watch the kids for a minute?” or “Wouldn’t it be fun if we ____?”. She has acknowledged my feelings on this, and, God love her, tries to respect that boundary.
Reader, you know where this is going.
Because I need to fix my work laptop in order to get anything done today, I plan to pick up a ethernet to USB C adapter at Target.
Is it as easy as that? No. Of course, upon mentioning that I was leaving the house for that, we then needed some special kind of yogurt for the flu-ridden kid, pens, click top dry erase markers, and about 20 other small sundry items, in addition to an entire grocery store run, because even though all of this is happening, Mrs MNW—decidedly the baker but not the cook of the household—is making an industrial-sized vat of chicken mushroom soup based on nothing other than “I saw it on and it looked good!” (Did you check if the recipe made sense? What are we going to make for our daughter who won’t eat mushroom freaking soup? Do we have time to do this with a sick kid? are some of the questions a sane person with a death wish would’ve asked, but she was hell-bent on this soup.) Oh, and we left things at the daycare that our girls will not attend for 3 months, so could I stop there and pick things up as well?
Target does not have the yogurt, but Aldi does. But Aldi does not have the peas or ice cream, so it’s a run to Hy-Vee too!
At this point, you think I would be eating those Sunchips in the Aldi parking lot. Reader, you are wrong, and you know what that means for later in this story.
The wife took Wildkit #2 to the doctor — influenza A confirmed! Hooray! Tamiflu prescription sent, but to a 24/7 Walgreens for…reasons?…that include ours just randomly closing for days at a time with no warning. But that’s not ready yet, so I dodge about 10 different Senior Citizen Incidents* and head home.
* What I am proposing is similar to a purge, except it is an approximately 2-hour window exactly once a week in which senior citizens over 70 are allowed out of their homes and on to the roads. At this time, no other citizens will be encouraged to leave their homes except those in essential industries. Senior citizens have those two hours to, as I have seen today, get their haircut at Great Clips and not leave a tip during Senior Mondays, berate the manager at Hy-Vee for their own inability to clearly not understand how the hot food bar works, and drive 10 miles under the speed limit in the left lane, and impressive feat because the speed limit is only 35 and it’s a city street. After the two-hour senior window, all those citizens will be rounded up and put in a home. I have no idea how Bill Belichick will continue coaching UNC football, but I wish him all the best.
The older daughter is seated on the couch, watching Moana 2. The younger Wildkit is screaming in the bedroom because, having now spent two nights contact sleeping on us, she appears to think she will never have to sleep on her crib, LIKE A PEASANT, again.
Ascertaining that Wildkit #1 is in fact okay, I head downstairs to fix my laptop. Part of that involves plugging my work laptop in via ethernet, and to do that, I have to move the quantum fiber modem ever so slightly. The modem unplugs, and when I plug it back in, it begins to cycle from red to green to blue, back to red, back to green flashing, back to blue, back to red. That is, decidedly, not good.
From upstairs, I hear Wildkit #1 screaming: the Wi-Fi has cut out, and she can no longer watch Moana. Wildkit #2 is screaming, because flu. Mrs MNW is gamely trying to reassure both that it’s okay, but she has one eye on making her ******* mushroom soup.
I cannot turn the modem back on. It continues to cycle through those colors. I call Quantum Fiber and am put on hold. At this point, having moved some furniture in order to clear a path to that modem, and said modem being near our furnace, I have begun sweating profusely. Still wearing jeans and a sweatshirt from when I was running errands earlier, I resolved to change into cooler clothes, and the first step to making that happen is taking off my sweatshirt.
Hearing something crash upstairs, I run to the foot of the stairs to make sure everyone is okay. Learning that everyone is, I then hear the Quantum Fiber representative asking, via speaker, if I’m there.
I run back to the phone. At this point, I realize I have become Bert Kreischer: fat, shirtless, sweating, drunk, chronically unfunny.
The Quantum Fiber rep tries to connect to my modem remotely. He cannot. He checks the status of our external receiver. It is down. I ask how I possibly could’ve done that by accidentally unplugging my modem. He explains it was likely coincidental, just awful luck. A tech will be out tomorrow to fix this.
While this is happening, two Winterim course students have emailed me: they do not understand what I mean by “Read this document (an excerpt of How the Other Half Lives) and explain its main idea — what problems does the author see in Gilded Age America?” Of course, I can get back to them on my Chromebook, but it reminds me that I need to download this adapter and get my work laptop up and running. And I can’t without an Ethernet connection.
My two immediate options: my parents, or my in-laws, both about 30-35 minutes away. I cycle through both options:
- My parents are home, but that’s because my dad was hospitalized over the weekend for a heart episode. He’s okay but will be on meds and getting an ablation soon.
- My in-laws are home, but if I try to fix my computer with them hovering over me trying to make small talk, I’m going to have a heart episode faster than my family history and Kreischeresque physique dictates.
It is now noon. I resolve to check in with my wife, make sure Wildkit #1 is occupied by a book or a finger trap device, and then drive to my in-laws.
“The recipe called got two pounds of mushrooms — you only bought one pound.”
“You want to try that again?”
Reader, this was the Wrong Thing to Say.
Out the door I go, back to Aldi. Acquire those mushrooms, as well as gallon ziploc baggies—we’re out. It is at this point that I was eating those Sunchips. Here it was, the payoff.
That’s where this stupid article was supposed to end.
Reader, I am now writing to you from a Home Depot parking lot, where I’m eating a Snickers in the front seat of my car. This is lunch. More on that in a minute.
I was prepared to go home, get the laptops, head to my in-laws, get the adapter fixed, stop at the Walgreens, and get home. We would have the soup, everything would be okay, we would go to bed tonight exhausted but having survived. Tomorrow, the internet would be fixed. Was it ridiculous that my wife was making mushroom soup with Wildkit #2 in a Baby Bjorn and we were just preparing to let Wildkit #1 watch whatever Disney DVDs we had as a holdover from our childhoods because the Wi-Fi was out? Sure. But it worked, kid contact napping in the Baby Bjorn and all.
I was in the living room, explaining to Wildkit #1 that I would be taking off for a little bit and could she please behave for Mom? when I heard my wife from the bathroom: “Oh no…”
Reader, the toilet had been running a little longer than usual for the last couple days. Not ideal, but something we could afford to table. We had, in fact, agreed on that! Mrs MNW, with her boundless energy and patience for these tasks, would tackle the toilet float in a couple days. It would be fine.
So why she decided, with Wildkit #2 in a Baby Bjorn on her person, to remove the toilet tank cover—why, reader, she did that with soup simmering on the stove and a literal baby SLEEPING ON HER CHEST—is so far beyond me that I can’t comprehend, and she can’t explain other than her own compulsion to fix everything immediately even if it’s just a minor inconvenience.
The tank cracked, from top to bottom. Water was drip-drip-dripping steadily out of it onto our bathroom floor. It was unsalvageable.
“Get out,” I say. “I was just trying to fix it!” she protests. “YEAH I SEE THAT!” I snap.
Reader, you know that was a bad idea. But I am pretty beside myself at this point.
A third student email comes in: “Sorry [first name]*, I forgot this class started last week, and I’ve already missed two assignments, but can I still take the class anyway? And will there be any late penalties for me not having done the work?”
* It is so petty but it drives me nuts. I’m your professor. Part of my class is you reading a small blog post called “How to Email Your Professor Without Being Annoying AF” — not because I think the world of myself but because just knowing how to send a professional email to whomever is something students should learn! That’s the career readiness ******** my administrators cream their slacks over!
I close my phone. This too can keep.
I turn the water off. I get all the water out of the toilet. I disconnect it. Towels everywhere. Water contained. I have never done this before, but so far, so good.
Because we have a 1951 house, of course we have a 10-inch rough-in for our toilet. Of course we need a round seat, not an elongated seat. And of course only one Home Depot—no Menards or Lowe’s options, not that it matters, they’re all the same—in a 10-mile radius has one. It’s just that it’s 8 miles in the opposite direction of the Walgreens.
No matter. The Walgreens has the medicine. No one’s in line in front of me.
So why wouldn’t the barcode on the label have “not printed properly,” requiring them to go to the back three different times, then ask me for my insurance card (???), then decide “Oh no, wait, you can just pay”? It’s only Tamiflu, and don’t worry, Walgreens—I go to CVS when I’m smurfing the NyQuil I need for my lean and/or crystal meth.
Ten minutes later—obtained. Off to Home Depot.
Walk into Home Depot. Pass by another senior citizen—in my Purge? he’d be executed—who is very loudly complaining to an employee. I hear “I’m not saying it’s because of that, but it was a Black guy who wasn’t—“
I am by now out of earshot. I am not going to fix a racist old piece of crap. I am here for a toilet. Aisle 12, Bay 11. $209. There it is.
I go to the self-check. The Snickers scans perfectly. The toilet does not. A nice woman who’s monitoring comes over and helps me. She wishes me a pleasant day. I reciprocate, snap a picture of the cart for posterity—and this post—and schlep the toilet into my car. Lunch time.
Those 30 seconds hungrily wolfing down the Snickers are the first time today I’ve felt in control of a single ******* thing in my life.
My phone buzzes. It’s my wife: “I’ve finally got Wildkit #2 down, and Wildkit #1 is on quiet time—could you please not bring the toilet in yet?”
FCS Championship Game
#2 Montana State Bobcats vs. [NR] Illinois State Redbirds
6:30pm | ESPN | MTSt -10.5 | O/U 57.5 | at Nissan Stadium (Nashville, TN)
The Bobcats, having a historic season, have taken the traditional route: win the Big Sky, thump a lesser Dakota or Texas team after a first-round bye (this year: Stephen F. Austin), handle your business in the 2-3 game (excitingly: a rematch of the de facto Big Sky title game against Montana), advance to play North Dakota Sta—
—[/record scratch]
THEM BIZON LOST, Y’ALL
No, it’s the Illinois State Redbirds—the pride of Normal, Illinois!
The ‘Birds—the Big Red Machine, the Pummelers of the Prairie, the Terrific Teachers, the Brawlers of Bloomington—did it the hard way: they played a first-round game all the way down in Nachitoches or Tchoupitoulas or wherever the fudge Southeast Louisiana is (I’m thinking now that it’s Hammond and that neither of those other two cities are in Louisiana, which, who cares) and beat the Lions, 21-3.
That’s not the hard way—that’s just their first-round game. The HARD way was going into Fargo—the FargoDome, home of the #1 Bizon—and beating North Dakota State in their house, in the playoffs, on a late comeback and 2-point conversion, 29-28, in a game in which the Redbirds somehow out-possessed the Bizon 42:01 to 17:59, gaining 422 yards to NDSU’s 179 and running 91 plays to their 46, but needing that late conversion from QB Tommy Rittenhouse because oh yeah, Rittenhouse had also thrown 5 interceptions in the game.
NONETHELESS! YOUR Illinois State Redbirds advanced, this article is now 2780 words, and I am tired.
Eighth-seeded UC Davis? Easy. 42-31. Rittenhouse tosses another 3 TDs, just one pick, bellcow back Victor Dawson ran for 148 yards, and what I can only assume is a converted 220-pound fullback from Joliet or Effingham or something named Seth Glatz ran for two touchdowns. Something called Daniel Sobkowicz has now caught like 10 TD passes in the playoffs. Don’t fact check it, there are no facts here, there is only Brock Spack’s mustache.
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From there? An easy win over #12 seed Villanova, and the Redbirds were into the finals.
They are big underdogs. Montana State has a stout defense and a fearsome offense behind dual-threat QB Justin Lamson, a pair of 1,000-yard rushers in Adam Jones and Julius Davis, and an elite named WR in Taco Dowler. You can only contain the Bobcats; you can’t stop them.
And yet. If there’s one thing I’ve learned today, it’s how to replace a toilet by myself.
Prediction: Illinois State, 9-7. Something about that score makes me want to hurl beer cans at a wall.
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