​We all have many opportunities to meet new people. That can occur through day-to-day experiences, randomly, through business, meetings, introductions by others, at our place of worship, and a multitude of other ways. The point being: we can put ourself into new situations or stick to our current relationships.
 
I’m going to throw a statistic out there. For those regular readers of this column, you know I referee basketball. As a basketball official, I’m thrown in with new partners over and over and over. To me, that’s a good thing. It’s a learning experience to work with someone new, and they almost always teach you something (which could be good or bad). And, you may make a new friend (wasn’t it Roy Rogers who said something to the effect of, “A stranger is just a friend I haven’t met yet.”).
 
Here’s the stat. Over the past three years, I’ve tracked my basketball officiating partners. During that time, I have reffed with 147 new individuals. Breathe that in.
 
Now, step back. Think about your work situation or your neighbors. Have you met someone new in either of these venues in the past few years (or weeks or months)? No value judgment about this. Just an interesting exercise to consider who has entered your life during this time period in any significant way (doesn’t mean you must have an ongoing relationship; just someone who you’ve hung out with or done something with, worked on a project together, things like that).
 
If you have new people you’ve met and engaged with, have you picked up something new from any of them? Have your grown through those meetings?
 
Back to my basketball partners. The fascinating thing to me, first of all, is the large number of new officials I’ve been introduced to the past three years. That’s about 50 individuals a year. I must work with them closely. I must trust them. I must get to know them (at least in a perfunctory way because we’re going to be making high intensity decisions in a very emotional environment over the next 75 minutes or so in a high school varsity game).
Beyond trust and getting to know each individual, secondly, I pick up something from every new official. They may explain something verbally during our pregame that prepares me for the upcoming contest. They may step forward on a play during the game that we discuss afterwards and it helps me understand a rule better. They may handle an explosive coach with a special phrase, and I add that to my repertoire afterwards.
 
Third, and this gets into aging a bit, as I get older, there seem to be fewer situations where you are introduced to new people. The basketball court gives me those opportunities.
 
I also learn things not to do, like not adopting a bullying or know-it-all tone of voice with my partners or coaches. I recognize situations where I need to hold back or step forward based on what I see and hear from my partners.
 
Finally, you develop new friends through meeting others and the relationships that ensue. You may find someone you hang out with for years and years.

It’s important to keep meeting people throughout life. They help us grow and develop. Sports officiating is a great venue to experience this.

​Hard to believe it’s 2026. As like 2024, in 2025 I kept a Jar of Positivity, writing down good things that have happened in my life. It helps identify what’s important in the day to day, and with focus on enjoying those things important to you. The list follows. As like last year’s column, it is interesting to note that almost all these involve relationships, experiences and being with friends.  In no particular order:
1.Visiting two friends in Peshtigo, WI, playing trivia night and going to the Wisconsin Girls High School Basketball semi-finals in Green Bay.
2.Long-term friend came up to visit from Chicago after joining our senior baseball team. Hanging out with him for the night and going to indoor practice to introduce him to his new teammates.
3.Our two nephews’ weddings. Went to NASA, got some great barbecue, wild man dancing, saw a childhood friend for drinks, drank some great coffee, caught up with some cousins and friends from Dallas. Explored downtown Chicago, hung out behind the band watching the drummer and lead singer. Super.
4.Golf with my younger brother on a nearly empty course near Harvard, IL, temps around 55 degrees, cloudy. We scrambled to one-over par with two mulligans. I hit the crap out of the ball.
5.Trip to Maine and seeing my wife’s side of the family, along with two of our kids. Two rounds of golf at a scenic seaside course, shooting 7-under in a 4-person scramble, ferrying to an island for an e-bike tour; great dinners, sights, companionship and smells of the ocean.
6.Annual Wisconsin Security Association golf outing.
7.Annual reunion of our Kankakee, IL Traitor softball team at Oak Springs Golf Course.
8.Shooting 80 on the golf course with two buddies. A thunderstorm forced us off the course while I was playing great. Two of us waited it out, went back to play the last five holes and I missed a 17-footer for a 79 on the last hole.
9.Went from a 46 on the front nine to a 39 on the back nine at the Mayville Golf Course and had back-to-back birdies.
10.Ran the 800, 400 and 200 for the sixth year in the Wisconsin Masters Games, bettering my time in each event from the previous year. Training helps.
11.Boat trip down the Chicago River for our younger daughter’s birthday.
12.U.S. Women’s Open with my two daughters, and seeing the Comedian Nikki Glaser along with a good dinner out for a father-daughters weekend.
13.Summerfest with my younger brother and his wife. One of Milwaukee’s fun events on the lakefront. Riding the gondola, food, beer, bands.
14.Serving as a clinician in Pennsylvania for basketball officials seeking to move up to the collegiate level.
15.Annual golf, eating, drinking, storytelling, campfire reunion with my two brothers and our three sons.
16.Reunion in Chicago with college friends from our freshman-sophomore year, along with some golf. Cruised out to Lake Michigan.
17.Continuing quest to break 80 on the golf course, shot 82 at Mayville again, with three tap-in birdies. No wind, no clouds, 50 degrees out. Played in two hours.
18.Going to the NCAA golf tournament with two friends in Urbana, IL.
19.Multiple coffee chats with a good friend. It’s like therapy.
20.Morning catch-ups with three guys at the fitness facility where I work out. More therapy. Great conversations.
21.A friend of mine from Chicago who I interviewed years ago for a story who has since written a book, and said my writing inspired him. Wow. Never expected that one.
22.Officiating South Milwaukee High School on the road, and they get blown out in the basketball game, and the coach chases myself and my two partners out of the gym to shake our hands and tell us what a great job we did.
23.Younger bro and wife driving up from Illinois for my birthday.
24.Officiating the annual Badger basketball games, where 5th-8th grade teams from all over the state bring teams down to the Milwaukee metro area to compete for the state championship.
25.Hanging out with a long-term officiating buddy at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee basketball game.
26.Reunion with three college buddies from the University of Illinois, doing some bowling, having them watch me referee, and the four of us continuing our jinx of making sure Illinois loses the football game against Wisconsin that Saturday.
 
If you don’t keep a Jar of Positivity, I suggest you start in 2026. Write things down. Put them in a jar. Reread them at the end of the year. Your life will be enhanced.

​Have you heard of the Exploding Head Syndrome (EHS)? It is rampant in modern society.
 
Older people are particularly susceptible. You may have had EHS and not even known it, because the symptoms are confusing and insidious.
 
Me? I’ve been infected many times. It hurts. Feels like you’re going nuts.
 
And, of course, because your head pulsates and throbs, it feels like it’s going to explode. EHS is similar to PABVIYF disease (popping a blood vessel in your forehead).
 
How do you get it? The answer to that is easy. Is there a cure? The answer to that is no because EHS is complicated by many variables.
 
The symptoms start slowly, typically on a day that seems normal. You’ve gone online to take care of business. While you haven’t explored a new app that you must now use to get paid for services you’ve performed, you’ve been assured it’s simple, quick, easy to download and apply. Yup, sure thing. Is your forehead sizzling an egg yet? Mine was.
 
First step was to access the system. This, for some odd reason, didn’t happen. I’d used this site many times before, but “access denied” came up the first two times I clicked it on. Through my massive powers of deductive reasoning, I figured out you had to go to the bottom of the page to click on “About” and then go to the top of the page to hit “My Account.” Okay, only a slight pounding in the forehead so far. Irritation.
 
To step back for one second, you have to know that I thought I’d already set up the payment system, which is designed to electronically transfer a check to this site, where you then transfer their payment to your bank. I’d successfully – so I thought – set this up a couple of months back. Getting on to transfer the funds, I found out I hadn’t so successfully inputted my bank information so I could complete the electronic transfer. My brain started to feel fuzzy.
 
From there, the onslaught of EHS symptoms grew exponentially. Where do I input my bank information? No matter what or where I clicked, nothing came up that allowed that data upload. Try this, try that. No way.
 
I click on the video, which demonstrates how to put in the bank info. The person talks so fast that I can’t process the information and go back and forth from the video to the site to make the changes. You can’t pause the video, so I start to become a crazy man.
 
I look for other directions, tapping the keyboard, sending it to confusing drop-down menus into the dark mineshaft. Nothing there.
 
Twice I send emails asking for help, once to the direct address they list, and a second time in response to the video when it asks “was this helpful” and I wrote, “hell f….cking no.” Of course there is no quick response to either of these emails.
 
I attempt to calm down. That’s no help. I yell up to my wife, “I’m very angry. I’m raising my voice and it has nothing to do with you, please understand. I’m raging.” My blood pressure continues ascending.
 
Breathe deeply. Focus. Think about where you haven’t gone yet on the site. There must be a way.
 
After almost an hour (that may not sound like much, but with EHS it feels like 3-4 hours), TADA!, there it is. I could not replicate how I got there, but I got there. Put in the banking information. Downloaded in seconds. Yahoo. Transferred the funds to my banking account. So dang easy.
 
It really was. You just needed to know how to get there. It is simple to use. It’s just not a simple process to get there. That’s the indication you could face EHS. Then you flush the return email from the website three days later asking if you still need help resolving your problem. Thanks for that excellent customer service.

​I’m a believer in the responsiveness of our elected officials in the United States. Maybe I shouldn’t be. We vote. They should represent us and respond to our concerns.
 
It becomes clearer each year that is less and less likely. Case in point is a recent personal situation.
 
My Medicare premium tripled this month. When I saw that my payments would escalate exponentially, I almost toppled over. WTF!?!?
 
It did not make sense. Congress had just come out of its budgetary nightmare of non-decision-making and it seemed to me that maybe my increase was due to their inaction on this issue.

So, I wrote to my U.S. Senators in Wisconsin, Tammy Baldwin (D) and Ron Johnson (R), asking for an explanation. Please note, I did not ask them to resolve or fix anything. Instead, please, I would just like to know what’s going on. And I added a line about leaving politics out of it. Just explain to me why my Medicare premium went up the elevator to the third floor.
 
Let the record reflect, I also attempted to contact my Congressman, Mark Fitzgerald (R), and his website was so utterly useless that there was no way to send him an email or other electronic message. I guess he does not like to be reached.
 
We all have preconceptions about what we’ll hear back from elected officials, how quickly they will respond and will they say anything helpful. I’ve written to my elected local, state and federal officials many times during my years on this planet with differing results, mostly obfuscated responses to the issue I raised.
 
So, here goes. Johnson’s staff got back to me within days. Good. I was asked for additional information. I sent it, and was then immediately connected to another staff person who works the issue. She took my info and quickly sent a form I had to fill out that would go over to the Social Security office. I figured that would be the black hole.
 
Actually, I was surprised and in a reasonable timeframe (1-2 weeks) they got back to me with a full explanation and offered to go over my change and see if something could be reworked. Because I understood their explanation and why my premium had gone up, I didn’t need to have that meeting, but thanked them, and Johnson’s staff members who worked on the issue for me.
 
Baldwin’s staff took much longer to get back to me (2-3 weeks longer than Johnson’s staff). They offered no help. Instead, they sent a classic, “We work had to keep premiums down and will keep working for you.” They didn’t answer my questions. They didn’t give me any help. Their note was classic “write-around” language, putting things in such a way that it sounded like they were doing something for their constituents, but you didn’t really know what it was.

I write this column because I expect more. I don’t expect some immediate change to my life. But, I think it’s fair that those who represent us are responsive and open to concerns that we raise, and egads, maybe even take steps to address issues occasionally.
 
Everyone who votes deserves this connection to the people who represent them. It’s a small thing to ask: response to my question, explain what’s going on, offer a step or solution that might help. We all deserve that respect.

​I waited to write this column. If the name above doesn’t register with you, there should be no compulsion to read on. Except, there’s an underlying issue that goes beyond college football coaching (which is Kiffin’s profession) that will emerge in the paragraphs to follow.
 
Three, maybe four weeks ago, Kiffin’s name was repeatedly in the headlines. Because he was so short-term famous, I waited to write about him until his moment in the news evaporated.
 
During his two-week (more or less) stay in the limelight, the sports news media, and the media at large to a lesser extent, wrote and reported story after story after story about him. Not news. Speculation.
 
Where’s he gonna go? Which schools are trying to hire his services. For backdrop, at the time, Kiffin was the head football coach at the University of Mississippi, and had a great record. He was sought after.

The speculation was the story. His name, based on sources who could say whatever they wanted, associated him with various college football coaching openings. “He’s going here. No, he’s going to this other school.” No one really knew, but the talking heads all wanted to speculate.

Beyond trying to predict where he’d go, there was the underlying prognosticating on why he would go to one university or another. “What’s the best fit? Who needs him the most? Who’s willing to pay the multiple millions of dollars to reel him in?”
 
Will it be Florida? Oh, we need to do that story. How about Penn State? Someone better put together that article.
 
What do the players think? Oh boy, that’s another angle. Let’s interview them.
 
All the pre-hire stories are based on who has the inside scoop. Who appears to have the most accurate information on which to base an opinion?
 
Over the course of his hiring (by Louisiana State University – LSU), there were easily 25 stories that came up on my news feed, probably more. And the pre-hiring stories were not the end of it.
 
No, then we had to read after his hiring about how LSU reeled him in, why he made that choice, what that meant to his former players at Mississippi. Who cares?
 
Who the heck is Lane Kiffin? Why is he so important?
 
The onslaught is indicative of how the media currently seem to define news. They decide what to report on. As news consumers, we react to that. We can ignore these types of stories (something I typically do) or you have to roll with what they put out. In the grand scheme of things, Lane Kiffin is not important. He was made important by the media for a couple of weeks.
 
This is big time sports. This is about money, exposure, publicity, speculation. Who cares?
 
This is our culture today. You can escape though. Ignore the stories is the best step. Beyond that, I suggest shoveling snow. Read a book. Go fishing. Mow the grass. Rake some leaves. Chop wood. Plant a tree. You’ll feel better not just because those are productive activities, but also because you are engaged in an activity rather than being led around by air-brushed talking heads pontificating and trying to show just how important their voice is.

​There is probably one of those books, “Microwaves for Dummies,” already written. If not, someone needs to quickly put it together, and perhaps add a caveat – “Microwaves for Seniors.” Or, “Microwaves for Seniors Who Can’t Read the Fine Print of the Instructions.”
 
These is a problem for those of us heading down the Old Codgerville path. Appliances which should be simple, isn’t.
 
Why isn’t it?  For one, whoever develops microwaves makes their use non-intuitive. While this applies to a lot of newer electronic technologies, the microwave developers seem to hold a special place in their heart for coming up with ways to confuse you in terms of how to operate the machine.

For example, shouldn’t there be a quick turn on/off function.?This button starts it. This button turns it off. This button allows you to set the timing.
 
No, this does not seem to be the case with many microwaves. If you happen to travel and encounter a hotel microwave in the breakfast area, one in the room, or one in the kitchen of your VRBO home, trying to put 40 seconds on the timer to warm your coffee can turn into a disaster. This shouldn’t be the case.
 
Instead, you should see an icon that says, “if you press this button, it will allow you to determine the number of seconds you want to warm your dish.” I guess the problem is that’s too much language. Forget I wrote that.
 
I can remember many, many times going up to a foreign microwave and turning a button or tapping the screen in seven, eight, nine or more places and in different combinations and only getting the the word “bacon” to show up on the screen. Does everyone want bacon? Is bacon a default cookie cutter item that can also encompass asparagus, green beans, peas, corn and leftover hash? I doubt it.

You can, of course, keep hitting that bacon button until it warms your coffee (something I’ve done on more than one frustrated occasion). But that drives me crazy, too.
 
Complicated appliance directions written in small print is not limited to microwaves. I have a good friend who is baffled by his washing machine and wants a top loader with a warm/cold, on/off switch. No beeping allowed. No little singsong noise that tells you the door is either shut or still open. No blinking lights. Click, crank, start.
 
Yeah, he is on the Old Codgerville path, too, and a bit of a curmudgeon. He, like me, would like to eliminate the bells and whistles. We’d both probably go back to hand rolling the windows in our cars if the automobile manufacturers would oblige our age set with that nostalgia factor.

Sigh, but no, that’s not going to happen. We must embrace the future. We must battle and absorb technological innovation, to a certain degree at a minimum if we are to function in our current world.
 
That means reading the small print in directions, making sure your reading glasses are nearby so you’re always prepared for those situations. It means experimentation – playing with all the dials like a scientist to see what results. This works. Sometimes.
 
More often than not, we’re left frustrated, looking like dummies, which is why they write those books. Maybe the next round of those best sellers if to change “dummy” to “curmudgeon.” Might be a best seller.

​If you are like most modern first world humans, at some point you’ve misplaced your cell phone and achieved a level of paranoia when you can’t find it in a reasonable time period. Several weeks back, I reached a near manic level going through every option imaginable to find mine.
 
Here’s what happened. Obviously, number one, I tried to find my phone because I wanted to use it. This began the usual innocuous and successful search.

Where did I last remember having it? Where did I put it?
 
Thus began the exploratory process leading to exploding blood pressure levels and sweat trickling down my armpits. Secondly, I absolutely knew it was in the house because I remembered where I used it.

Third step was to begin looking at that location – the couch. Check the table, behind and under the cushions, underneath the couch if it fell on the ground. Nope.
 
Okay, where did I stroll in the house after that? Bedroom?  Perhaps. Check there, move the bed sheets, get down on knees and look underneath. Then, “oh yeah, maybe I went to the bathroom and laid it on the sink.” Check there. Negatory.
 
Step four, always look in my workspace, where I often place and forget it before wandering off. I go downstairs and move all my papers, foraging underneath and any open spaces, as well as underneath the table and in the chair (where it could fall or slip out of the pocket). Unsuccessful.
 
This led to step five, go to the easy chair where I watch TV and multiple crevices invite your phone to slide from your pocket as you lean back, and then fall deep down inside the seams. I stuck my hands in every conceivable crack, moved the couch out from its normal position, picking up the 19 stray M&Ms. Nothing.
 
I’m getting anxious. I know it’s in the house.

But, still, I go to step six, which is the car, where again, it easily slides from the pants pockets and deposits next to the driver’s seat. Extensive rummaging there reveals nothing.
 
Ah yes, why not call the cell? I have it on silent, that’s why. What a dummy. There’s got to be a workaround on that. My wife is not available. I text our kids.
 
I reach our younger daughter first. We talk it through as sweat trickles down my forehead after more than 30 minutes of manic meandering. How can you make the phone ring when the silencer is on?
 
She, like most of her generation, has the answer, figuring out the next steps and giving me a call. I hear the sound upstairs in the bedroom. Hmmmmmmmmm?
 
My jeans are hanging on my closet door. For some totally unexplainable reason, that afternoon I’d decided to change pants – which I never do – and left the phone in the pants’ pocket of the ones I changed out of.  Whew. Blood pressure de-escalates. I feel stupid. Usually it’s me finding stuff for other people. Now I’m the scatterbrained one.
 
Even when you retrace your steps, look in all the usual places, drive your brain into inconceivable (sanity-wise) scenarios, it doesn’t appear. Even with logic prevailing – “it absolutely has to be in the house” – your disbelieving reality mindset takes over and panic creeps in. I’m not sure we can ever stop that.
 
So, keep an eye on your cell phone. Commit to memory when you place it outside your normal parameters. I guess that’s my big advice. But, still, that’s predicated on you thinking about where you place it when you put it down, which is hard to do because the cell phone as become so routine in our life. So, I guess my other piece of advice is to keep the ringer on. That’s doable. But, when it rings it might interrupt your nap.

​With winter here in Wisconsin, preparations for the onslaught began recently. That included chopping wood to occasionally fuel a fire for household warmth. I recommend chopping for all.
 
Our son Kirby, who frequently is home for Thanksgiving and the Christmas season, enjoys doing the honors. Splitting logs is a visceral thing.

You center it on a huge stump. Bring the axe back. Hammer it home. The resounding THOCK sound as the sharp blade contacts the carbon-based former tree resonates up through your body. You feel it, like an immersion of power, success, and release.
 
If you chop well, you split the logs in one hit. Though this is not a goal, when you accomplish a split on the first try, it’s a magnificent feeling. Kind of the like opposite of bowling when the split makes you feel like you didn’t get perfect contact.
 
Yes, that’s the feel – perfection. You can’t beat it. You may start whistling a tune. Coming from Kirby, that wouldn’t be surprising.
 
I’ve chopped wood for many years. I took an internship in Florida back when I was a youngster to work for a woman promoting her alternative economy public television show. While staying at her house, she introduced to the joys of wood chopping.

She didn’t split logs. Instead, she kept an axe stuck in a huge tree stump in her backyard. When stressed, she went outside and slammed the stump for 15-20 minutes. Coming inside, she felt better, relaxed, as if her worries were left behind.
 
Splitting logs does this for you – releases endomorphins. You feel better.
 
This type of exercise could be put to good use in our violent society, and as an anger management tool. You may have read up on anger management rooms that have been around for years where anyone can come in, pay a fee, get a sledgehammer, then destroy various objects – television sets, microwaves (things that go crash or boom), chairs, tables -- for a period of time, say half an hour (you don’t need much). The idea is to get the bad juices out of your body by destroying inanimate objects.
 
Slamming objects with your total body/mind immersion gets your anger out. These anger management rooms have figured out a way to monetize the release of your anger.

Chopping wood does the same thing, is free, and you actually do something good for society by splitting logs to provide fuel. It’s available to almost anyone if you purchase an axe and find some local wood you can bring to your yard to annihilate.
 
Years ago I read a book, “Chop Wood, Carry Water.” It was about Zen. The book covered a number of things in our daily lives that we do that can capture a oneness of feeling, helping you relax and be more in-tune with the world. Chopping wood was one of those things the authors said helped you achieve a more Zen-like state.
 
I believe it. I’ve seen the results for myself. Kirby looks forward to the exercise to get his chops in.
 
Pick up an axe this holiday season. Become one with the world. You’ll feel better.

​This past weekend, I had several college buddies visit and we went to the University of Illinois football game against Wisconsin in Madison. We had a great time despite losing the game.
 
After returning from the game, I noticed how quickly my mind had to shift from the excitement of the game and socializing with friends back to the focus required for daily responsibilities. This transition wasn't always seamless, but it made me reflect on how mental flexibility is essential not only in sports but in everyday life as well.
 
Rooting for the Illinois team can be hard. After decades of mediocrity and below-mediocrity, we’ve seen signs of light the past three years. That is good, but also brings increased expectations with it. You believe improvement will continue.
 
Improvement implies many things. One major component is the ability to learn from mistakes, to take lessons, defeat and failure and build on it so you don’t lose in the same way down the road.
 
To do so requires a mindset of determining want went wrong, identifying what should be different, then getting your brain to switch gears. You must think, absorb, contemplate and execute.
 
In the football game this past Saturday, it seemed to the four of us old men that the Illinois football team wasn’t doing that very well. Their play patterned repetitiously. They did the same things without gaining additional yardage on offense and failed to stop Wisconsin by trying different things on defense. The coaches and players didn’t shift gears.

Daily I play Connections, a game designed for you to find four categories of four to associate 16 words given to you in the puzzle. This is a game that forces you to switch gears.
 
When you are stymied, if you continue attacking it in a patterned way, you frequently fail. Somehow you must get outside the box. The question is: how do you do that?
 
For Connections, and other situations where you must shift to succeed, I’ve found some helpful tactics. One, for example, in the case of Connections, is to step back and look at alternative meanings for the words. This is where the game often stumps you.

They set up the categories to get you thinking about a TV show or types of hats or ways to cross a body of water. Those could be the early connections you see and think are evident.

After stumbling multiple times, if you don’t switch gears, you’re stuck and will fail. Maybe, instead of the three connections noted in the above paragraph, you instead need to think of definitions for laziness or types of makeup or facial features.

The point is you must group the words differently, find a different connection. You won’t solve it otherwise.
 
Whether playing Connections or football, the concept comes into play. When blocked, step back. Imagine something new. Go against the grain. Take a chance.
 
If you keep slamming your head against the wall, you get nowhere and frustration grows, which also serves to block your ability to solve problems. Taking risks is part of the solution.

When you step outside your normal framework of thinking, you encounter new terrain. That may scare or irritate you, a reason you don’t typically go that way.
 
It’s situations like the football game where one type of play gets blocked over and over or in Connections where you can’t figure out the thread to tie the words together that you become forced to adapt. My two cents is: switch gears earlier, before you are forced to.
 
Don’t wait until the final quarter of the football game to shake off your game plan and introduce new plays or tactics. Don’t wait in Connections until you’ve used all your choices to consider alternative categories.
Break out. Get ahead of the ball.

​For those of you who follow this column, you might remember previous entries on El Klutzo, a stumbling, bumbling quality in our family handed down by our dad, Herm, and inherited by myself and my two brothers. In short, El Klutzo refers to our ability to bungle, bang, slip, twist, fall, slam, trip in ways seemingly impossible to duplicate if you tried your best.
 
All three of us demonstrate master skill at El Klutzo. It rears its head when unexpected, which is probably a major reason for its occurrence: not paying attention.
 
Recently, with my wife out of town, I assumed full control of our animal household. That includes a senile dog that can’t hear or see anymore, two new kittens and two aging cats, one which must be administered a needle injection twice a day for diabetes.
 
That’s a lot when the two of us both are home, and my wife administers most of those additional necessary actions when she is here. In her absence, I fully take over.
 
As part of her reminder to me, one chore was to ensure the cat litter is kept clean. To prep you, understand that one of these new kittens is a Maine Coon cat. For the unenlightened,  this is a cat that will grow to huge proportions.

To give you a sense of scale, when he plays with the other kitten (more or less the same age), he (Magneto) dwarfs the smaller guy (Xavier). Magneto will leap from the couch, bound towards Xavier and pounce on him, completely engulfing Xavier with his wiry body. Xavier cries uncle, but Magneto ignores him.
 
The consumption of food by both kittens are titanic. They chow and chow and chow, then meow for more.

This results in more visits to the litter box. Suffice to say, Magneto is magnificent in the size and bulk he deposits on a more than one-a-day routine. He piles it in. Xavier drops in a few of his own, as do our two mature cats.
 
When my wife headed out, she mentioned I should shovel the litter boxes daily so as not to have to completely empty the litter box as frequently. Good advice. Makes sense.
 
Not with El Klutzo! Nope.
 
To shovel the logs out of the litter box, we have a plastic spatula-like device that allows the litter to sift through back into the box while keeping the turds on top for you to dump in the toilet and flush down. This worked well. I’m feeling pretty good, humming some J. Geils Band tune to myself, “Pack Fair and Square.” You should listen to it.
 
We have two litter boxes. I move from litter box one to litter box two, prepared to dominate.
 
That, of course, is when El Klutzo rears its head unexpectedly. I scoop up multiple Lincoln logs, head to our toilet, push the lid up and lift the hand shovel of excrement to drop it in, when the toilet seat, rather than staying put, drops back down, hits the tip of the hand shovel, causing the entire mess to flip in the air, onto the toilet seat, behind the back of the seat, and on the ground, pebbles and cat refuse combined. New curse words ensued (always a component of El Klutzo events).
 
None of the expected deposit made it into the bowl. In fact, not only was the entire mess scattered, but by getting behind the seat and under the seat on the rim, it was not only a pain to clean up, but also extremely difficult.
 
El Klutzo has no cure. I can only advise you to be careful when depositing cat litter in the toilet bowl because you never know, the toilet bowl may have a notion of its own.