Stuff You Gotta Watch

Some obsess over celebrities and pop culture, but I'm all about sunscreen and the UV index.

You should have seen that coming. I've written one post begging my son to lather up, at least two others about the killing powers of that big yellow Death Star and, via Twitter, lectured Shamelessly Sassy on the best sunscreens for sensitive skin available to those in the United States with (wink, wink) Canadian supply ties.

This is what happens when too much sunshine can spark a nasty flare of your daughter's autoimmune disease. You overprotect. You overanalyze. You imagine things that aren't there.

(Such was the case in this little incident with her and her bike that you can read about on DadCentric.)

Anyway, I'm online yesterday, looking up the local UV index. Oh, I'll check personally, too, with my trusty UV Hawk sunlight meter (Honey! Quick! Come look! They now have a waterproof model!) but I always like to get a baseline before I take the kids over to the local swim and tennis club. So, I'm looking and this is what I find on my faithful AccuWeather forecast:

Dog walking index?

What the weimaraner is the meaning of this?

If I venture out, are my chances good of being trampled by a herd of leashed Pekingese followed periods of mixed breeds and the occasional Rhondesian Ridgeback? Should I fear stepping in a poodle or some one's Shih-Tsu?

(Which reminds me that I'll have a new post, right here on this blog, for you very soon about my local travels with Murphy. Uh, that's my dog. I know, I haven't written much about him lately. He's even gotten his breeder to start hounding me by e-mail me asking for more Tales from the Tail.)

But none of this matters anyway because the skies darken and it starts thundering and raining something fierce. The wind picks up and I'm running around the house shutting windows, arms flailing, unplugging appliances, searching for batteries and beef jerky, barking about Doomsday and Horseman and that someone better eat that last banana before it rots into a blackish pool of gunk and who left their underwear in the kitchen again ... and heck, since swim time is canceled and the world is ending, I log on to Twitter.

That's when I find out I made Blogs.com's list of Top 10 Deliberate Dad Blogs. Right smack at the top, too.

OK, the list was in alphabetical order.

"Deliberate," hmm, it's not quite "definitive," is it? But I was deliberately trying to knock up My Love both times my armed forces succeeded in invading her fertile shores so I'll settle for technical accuracy.

Little victories. Thanks for the nod, Backpacking Dad. And to all of you, too.