Shuffle up and deal

To maintain your sanity, you need to hang out with other adults. Baby talk and cartoons can drive you bonkers if you don't mix in some adult comradery.

Times are tough but we can still have fun. And when I say fun, I mean the manly kind of fun. Time to play Texas Clip'em, otherwise known as Texas Hold'em stay at home dad style.

Tell your other stay-at-home-parent friends to start clipping grocery coupons. $50.00 in coupons is a very easy goal to reach especially if you download and print em from sites like couponcabin.com. One tip; clip coupons you think the other players might want. Your $3.00 off diaper coupon might be worth $5 to the right player. For instance, I'd gladly agree that a $3 off jerky coupon meets my $10 off baby formula bet because I love jerky and no longer need formula.

If you don't know how to play Texas Hold'em, take a minute to look up the rules and print or write the most valuable hands in their ranking order. For what it's worth, you can play any kind of poker with coupons. The nice thing about hold'em is you can have lots of players in one game with a single deck of cards. And it's a hugely popular game right now.

Anyway, you can play this game almost any time. You could even play while the kids watch "Wall-E" or "Nemo" or whatever they're into these days. You don't have to play until there's a single winner - but you can. Just make sure at the end of the game to ask if anyone wants to trade coupons. That way everyone can walk away a winner.