Phat Phreddy

Last night was awful

2011-10-29T08:34:00.000-07:00

I don't know if I've told you, but I've not been feeling well this week, since Tuesday. Tummy issues. I know I told you yesterday about my super amazing deuce in the morning. I was hoping that was the end of it.

So after having dinner with Heather last night and being served by a hot dwarf (seriously, Adrian was taller than him), we got back home and my stomach started hurting again. Then my head started throbbing, then I started getting dizzy. I told everyone goodnight (at 830) and went to bed.

I'm not sure when it all started, but at some point Jed came to bed. When he opened the door, Jack bounced like a jackalope right onto my stomach and the on my head. I sent him airborne, but he bounced right back and did it again. He started licking all over me (Jack, not Jed), and I sent him airborne again. He came back and laid down and was as still as a fucking chihuahua can be for more than 45 seconds at a time.

Soon after, I sharted. At first I thought I was safe, but it was like a thick lava flow. It started sliding very slowly, but once it rounded my ass cheek it picked up momentum and I could feel it really feel it starting to move. I got up and ran to the bathroom and let out a horrendous tsunami of liquishit that took almost an entire roll of paper to clean up. I went back to bed thinking I was in the clear, but the second I laid down I felt the cold wetness in my drawers. Apparently that lava flow was faster than I thought. I took off my shit stained undies and tossed them to the floor. Too tired to do anything else, I fell back asleep for a whopping hour...before I sharted AGAIN.

The second time I hopped up immediately and ran to the bathroom to take care of business. I finished off the roll of paper and went back to bed. Keeping in mind I had already chucked my undies to the floor, I laid back down and was just getting ready to fall back asleep when Jack started licking my ass. I threw him to the floor again, thoroughly disgusted.

For the rest of the night there were two more gassy explosions, but I wasn't taking any more chances. Each time I felt the need to fart I got up and went to the bathroom. Honestly, I don't know how there is anything left in me. I have shat twice my body weight in the last 22 hours and still don't feel any better.

Of course, I'm still proud of the fact that I look and feel as bad as I do and I still managed to get hit on by a little person.

We are family

2010-10-09T20:13:00.001-07:00

Tonight I had the great pleasure of reuniting with the most influential people in my young adult life.

Back in 1990, when I moved here to the Austin, Texas, I got job working as a nurse for a little operation called NurseFinders. During my orientation I met a woman named Karen who thought I looked amazing in my Daisey Dukes and tank-top. She, admittedly, had a gigantic crush on me...until she heard me speak. We became fast and quick friends. Soon, we both started working for a hospital here in town, St. David's Medical Center, on the spinal cord injury/head injury rehab unit.

Here on the unit I met the people who I would consider my family for close to 9 years.

There was Big Daddy David, who functioned as, not only the charge nurse, but everybody's big daddy. He was the brain of the unit. He advised us all professionally and personally at some point during our time spent there. He really was my dad-away-from-dad. One of my first exposures to David was on Halloween, when he and Anne (Anna-banana) dressed up as Wayne & Garth from Wayne's World.

Anne was another one of the nurses in charge on the unit. She was smart, no nonsense (unless she was dressed as Garth), and one of the most serious go-getter nurses I ever met. If I ever had a question about anything related to nursing, she was glad to help out. She also taught me how to balance my checkbook (as she pointed out tonight!). Apparently she didn't like my method of journaling my checks written in whole dollar amounts regardless of the actual amount written!

I mentioned Karen above. She was like a hybrid cross between my mother and my older sister. She's typical Austin...laid back, cool, carefree, bra-free. She and I made each other laugh (and cry) like no other people I knew.

Jan came around a couple of years after I had started. She started when Anne went on one of her 15 or 17 maternity leaves (I swear, Anne was ALWAYS having babies). She quickly became part of our family and became my mother-away-from-mom. I can't begin to tell you how amazing of a woman Jan was back then. She battled non-hodkins lymphoma while working full time and never once lost her smile or her cool. I always wanted her and her husband, Jeff, to adopt me so I could be part of their family forever.

David Abel was our unit clerk and my older gay sister. We had a love-hate-love relationship and the two of us often brought lots of drama (and laughter) to the unit.

Leah started many years after I had been there. When she originally started, she worked the evening shifts. It wasn't long before she transferred to the day shift and wedged her way in to our family and hearts. She quickly became my older, much prettier sister. (A few years after I left the hospital I talked her into joining me at the law firm I worked for. She came...for three days...before she decided she just wasn't cut-throat enough for the legal field!)

Yoli was a contract nurse that worked with us almost every single day. I have no idea why, as often as she worked, she never joined us full time. She was my heart, my soul, and my travel companion. She made me laugh with everything she said (and I did the same for her). And while she truly enjoyed my craziness, she, more than anyone, encouraged me to cool my shit and become a more "normal" person. She never once let me get away with an injustice and would make me apologize to people that she knew I owed an apology to. My most favorite memory of Yoli is the week we spent together in Galveston in a house on the beach.

Colleen was the unit's therapist. I knew her during my time at SDMC, but we've become closer since I've left. In fact, she's even babysat the boys for us!

I loved these people for all of my 20's. All of them, really, molded me into the person I am today. I owe each of them a debt of gratitude. I left the hospital in the late 90's. While I'm positive I wasn't the catalyst for change, almost all of them left to pursue other opportunities soon after I did.

Colleen ran into Anne at the grocery store a few weeks ago and said, "We should all get together." She called Karen, who ran to town with it and made it all happen. It was so amazing to see all these people tonight. It was almost like it was just yesterday. I love you, my SDMC family.

Plumber's Cracked

2010-10-06T19:42:00.000-07:00

I've had a drippy faucet in my kitchen for a couple of months now. It started off as a slow, annoying drip, drip, drip, but now it pretty much runs all the time. I'm certain I'm wasting hundreds of gallons of water a week. Last night I finally went to the Home Depot to pick up a new faucet for the kitchen to replace. DANG replacement faucets are expensive.

So last night I had a typical case of the insomnias and decided 1 a.m. would be a good time to start replacing the faucet. I went to the street, to the water shut-off valve, to shut the water off and made a startling discovery. The last plumber that came to my house, about 6 years ago, to replace a section of pipe that had burst during a freeze, apparently, broke the top off the cock seal so that there's no effing way I can emergently turn the water off to my house if/when I need to.

So my faucet still drips, and now I think I may need a plumber...and a million dollars.

It's the Great Pumpkin, Chuck

2010-10-05T18:13:00.000-07:00

I recently came across this blog called, "I'm Remembering" and have become an instant fan. It's a tad off my generation, it recalls the 80's and 90's, but I still relate to (and had) many of the things that Hillary remembers on her blog. Last night, in particular, I almost shat myself when I saw a post for these fantastic looking pies from McDonald's. Pumpkin PIE, bitches. For reals. (FYI: One of the things I love the most about Hillary's rememberings are the tags she assigns to each post...they're almost as hysterical as the things she remembers from the 80's!) If you're not reading I'm Remembering, run, don't walk, and subscribe to the RSS feed. (You can also become a fan of the I'm Remembering Facebook Page!)

I couldn't stop obsessing about McDonald's Pies today. At one point my next husband posted a status update that read, "now where did I put my Pumpkin Spice Latte?...oh that's right...Starbucks," and it got me thinking about that god damn fabulous Pumpkin Pie from McDonald's again. So I got on the McDonald's website and almost shat myself a second time when I saw that they had JUST POSTED, TODAY, an update to their nutritional calendar (dated TODAY!) with PUMPKIN PIE back on the menu. I did what any self-respecting queer would do.

I called TJ, my McDonald's fix, and promised him a blow-job if he would bring me a dozen of them when he came over to watch Project Runway tonight. He declined the blow-job (damn straight men), but didn't show up to mi casa empty handed tonight. And so, I give you...

The shittiest tasting pie I've ever had in my life. Honestly, don't get me wrong. I'm sure they're delicious when they're fresh. But TJ admitted that these aren't McDonald's "top sellers" and the pie(s) he brought me had all been sitting there since 1983, the last time McDonald's had them. I almost broke a tooth on the first one. He suggested I try one fresh...and I will, I promise.

Oh, by the way. I'll be 40 in 40 days. I'll try to give you a post a day until then. I know you're thrilled.

Not gay as in "happy", but queer as in fuck you - J.E.M.

2010-05-24T14:12:00.000-07:00

***NOTE: This blog will more than likely be offensive to many people racially, sexually, and otherwise. If you're the sensitive type, feel free to stop reading now. If you disagree, feel free to comment. These are FREDDY'S thoughts, and not necessarily the thoughts of every faggot out there.

Homosexuals have adopted a rainbow colored flag to represent their position of diversity and acceptance. As a gay man, I'm here to tell you that the umbrella of inclusiveness is total horseshit. In society there is a mix of racial and ethnic backgrounds, and in the gay culture it's broken down even further by type. There are many different types of gays. The whole reason I'm writing this is because of a seminar that Jed and I attended a few months ago put on by Equality Texas that was supposed to be about gay parenting in the media. In my opinion, the seminar was anything but.

One of the presenters of this seminar was a member of ALLGRO here in Austin, which is basically a social network for gay and lesbian Latino/Latina business people...I THINK. Note the use of "Latino/Latina", not Mexican, not Hispanic. This will be very important in a few minutes. The seminar ended up being very divisive and pointed out some flaws within the gay community itself. You see, we, the gay community, can't even get along with ourselves. There was a dear sweet woman from PFLAG at this seminar who was chastised by the presenters for daring use the word Hispanic. Apparently it’s no longer P.C. to use this term. Now they want to be labeled Latino/Latina. This is the problem with labels. Nobody hands out a memo that says, "Uh, hey. You can't call us that any more. Now you must call us (fill in the blank)."

I get crap all the time for calling myself a faggot. You know what? Fuck you. I'll call myself what I want. To me, calling myself a faggot has the same effect that black people learned a long time ago. It takes away the power from the word and makes it less offensive. However I'm not sure what you’re supposed to call black people any more. We all know to stay away from the dreadful "N". But now when I say African American I get chastised by friends and am told that's not correct any longer, because they aren't African. Part of the problem with society in general is that nobody can make up their minds what THEY want to be called. Pick a label and stick with it. But don't get offended if I call you something that I’ve been programmed to call you. I don't call somebody something to intentionally be offensive, but if I've called you a particular label, it's because at some point in my process of learning, this is what I've been told by one of your people that this is what you want to be called. When I first realized my gayness back in the early 80s, our community was called GLT or Gay, Lesbian, Transgendered. A few years later the bisexuals (don't EVEN get me started) pitched a fit because they didn't fit into any of those categories, so it was changed to GLBT. I found out a few months ago at this seminar that it’s now called GLBTQQ, because the people who hadn't decided what the fuck they were wanted to be included so the wanted "queer questioning" added to it. This, in and of itself is contradictory, because are we gay, or queer? So who are we?

Leather Daddies/S&M Queens/Bears: You've all seen them. These are the folks that the media opts to choose to portray every time there’s a gay pride parade in your neighborhood. These are the fags that parade around in chaps, leather harnesses, stylish leather caps, and lead their partners around by a leash. These are the people that the media would like you to believe we all are. I have news for you readers. Freddy has never accepted anyone's fist into his anus. We are not all, nor are all leather daddies, freaks like that. Yes, they're out there. But their numbers are small. I have never led Jed around by a leash. I have never strapped him down in 4 point restraints and placed a ball gag in his mouth. And as far as I know, he has never worn a leather hood with a zipper over his mouth.

Drag Queens/Cross-Dressers/Entertainers: This is the second largest group of people who hog the media attention at the parades. If middle-America doesn't already believe that every homo is a leather stud, then they think we all put on a dress so we can look like Celine Dion and lip sync to bad music. Freddy, again, has never worn a dress or make-up. I have, however sang along to Madonna and a few other female singers. This does not make me an entertainer, this just makes me a Karaoke whore. Don't make the mistake of assuming or calling DQs Trannies, because this is a whole separate category.

Trannies/Transexuals/Transgendered: These are the folks that feel that they were born the wrong gender and choose to do something about it. My heart goes out to these people. I've met some wonderful trannies in my life and they have all of my respect. What I don't get are the sub-culture of trannies that undergo so much to become the opposite sex, and THEN decide to become a homosexual. Yes. There are men who have become women only to become a lesbian. WTF?

Gym Bunny/Steroid Queens: These are the queers that try their bestest to look like mainstream America, pumping iron in the gym 6 hours/day, 9 days/week. We all know the truth about these queers, the only reason they spend so much time at the gym is they have the personality of a lettuce leaf, and the gym is the best place to look at half-naked men (or fully naked men if they're hanging out in the shower...no pun intended). Tragically, these men look FABULOUS from a distance, but then they speak and a purse falls out of their mouth. Must be the steroids.

Abercrombie/Pretty Boys: This is actually representative of the largest segment of our population. Who doesn't want to look good, smell good, taste good? Me. That's who. I’m an Old Navy kind of queer. I hate ironing, and I enjoy feeling comfortable. I am the anti-Abercrombie. I'm the queer that Abercrombie queers take on as their "ugly friend". Eyebrow waxing is painful to me. I just want to be me.

Effeminant/Flamboyant Queers: Everybody has an idea of what these people are. It's Robin Williams in The Birdcage; it's that queer in the pink shirt that was on Deal or No Deal this last Tuesday night. I've got a news flash for you people. I can't arrange flowers. I'm not exactly sure what Flan is. Yeah, I can cook, and yes, I do own Caphalon, but I am NOT a effeminate man. I change my own oil. I change my own tire. I've never had a mani/pedi (though I do know what they are). I drink shitty beer from a can. I can burn meat on the grill like nobody’s business.

"A" Gays: These guys are just assholes and not even worth talking about. They're the ones who think they're better than everyone else and are the lowest form of homosexual you can imagine.

What's my point? I don’t know that I've got one. I'll be the first to admit that I don't have any friends in any of the sub-categories I've mentioned above. It's not that I don't like these people. Call me "gayicst" if you will. I just don't find that I have anything in common with any of them. I don't think dick is enough of a commonality for me to want to hang out with these people on a regular basis. However, I fully realize that in order for us to gain acceptance with the general population, we must first work on organizing and appreciating the differences that make us unique. In that regard, I'm going to start opening up my mind to my own people. Only when we can accept our own group will we find acceptance with everyone else. It's going to take all of us working together to make a change. Just please, for the love of God, don't add any more letters to what we want to be called. It's confusing enough as it is. Everyone out there can call me what they wish. Queer, fag, faggot, gay, homo. I don't really care. As long as you just call me, you can even call me (F)reddy.

Give me an "8"...Give me an "0"...

2010-04-09T23:37:00.001-07:00

Today marks an important anniversary for us. It was 5 years ago today that Adrian was born into our lives. Five years ago today we created our forever family. For those of you who have been stalking me since my MySpace days, I forgive the repost below. The story that follows is not necessarily all about the very day Adrian came into our hearts, rather the entire process of making him a part of our family. The picture, below, is the very first picture we took of our sweet, sweet boy. It was taken, literally, the second the social worker brought him into our house and handed him to Jed. It is my all time favorite picture of Adrian (with the exception of his picture with his first bout of pink eye!)

Today closed the last chapter in a long story of our quest to become parents, and starts a whole new sequel to the story that has yet to unfolded. My baby daddy officially inked his adoption of our son today making it official that Adrian now has TWO daddies. I mentioned a few days ago that I would talk about the process, and now that he's done, I can tell the story. Some details will have to wait 16 years to come out, because most of the story is his to tell. But this, my readers, is our story.

There is a television station here in Austin called News 8 Austin. It's one of those CNNesque television news stations that repeats the daily news in an endless loop 24 hours a day. On Sundays they run a segment called Forever Families which showcases "hard-to-place" children available in the Texas CPS system. One Sunday in about August of 2004 they showcased a sibling group of three adorable little African American girls ages 2, 8, and 14. They were about to sever the child group because it was too difficult to not only place three children together, much less when one of them was a teenager. It broke my heart to know that these three girls; whom had already lost their parents were about to be split up. Having wanted children myself since my 20s, and also wanted to have had them by the time I turned 35, I told Jed, Now is the time. I want these kids.

We contacted CPS in September and attended their orientation meeting that is required of all new prospective foster/adoptive parents. In the meeting they talked about the "damaged children" they had available and how it was almost impossible to ever get these kids to bond with adoptive parents. They were all physically abuse, sexually abused, chemically abused, or emotionally abused. Almost all of them had learning disabilities or some time of physical abnormality due to abuse and neglect. Jed and I decided to forge forward. We were told almost immediately that the chances of the sisters being available by the time we completed the process would be slim to none. We were also told that a majority of people who start the process rarely finish, and some of those would never have children placed with them. We decided to take our chances and do it anyway.

From the second we started the process, our families, while for adopting children, were against adopting children from CPS. Many of them cited the same difficulties of parenting a child in the child welfare system as the agency itself did. We got many offers from relatives to give us money to go to another country to adopt a child from another place, but we stood our ground. Jed and I firmly believed that a child in our own backyard, one that had no family of his or her own was just as deserving of a home as a child in Russia or Guatemala. We decided to take a chance and see where we landed.

We got home from the meeting on the first Tuesday in September and filled out the 20 page application to enter the program. Unlike any "normal" couple that can get drunk and fuck in the back of a Chevy pickup truck and have a happy accident, we had to fill out questions about our family, our health, our prior sexual experiences, and our reasons for wanting children in the first place. What normally should have taken a week to fill out and mail back in, took as about 5 hours to fill out into the wee hours of the morning. We weren't about to delay the process any longer. I mailed the forms the following morning and waited just a few weeks before getting a letter stating that we were approved to start the mandatory 30 hours of parenting classes in October.

Mid-October we started attending weekly 3-hour classes to learn how to parent a child that was in protective custody. In all honesty, these classes taught nothing about parenting. Rather each week focused on a different type of abusive situation that would normally land a child in CPS custody and the unique circumstances with which to deal with them. "How to teach your 3 year old to cope with gonorrhea" or "How to tell your 5 year old that no means no" were some of the delightful topics covered. It was, at times, mind-numbing and discouraging to say the least. We completed the classes a week before Christmas and were told, "Congratulations, you've completed the classes and we'll be in touch with you soon to let you know if you've been approved". The entire time I had been under the false impression that just by being accepted into the program and completing the classes that we were, in fact, already approved. I couldn't have been more wrong.

Towards the end of January we were contacted by a social worker who needed to meet with us to start our interview process. We each needed to meet with her separately to answer identical questions. We each had to draft a 20 page biography answering many very intrusive questions about our families mental, emotional, physical status; our own sexual histories including names, addresses and phone numbers of everyone we have had sex with; our own current mental state of mind; our desires to become parents fully explained. None of the things, mind you, that "normal" people have to do. As if writing these things down for anonymous strangers wasn't bad enough, we actually had to sit in front of a woman we had never met before and give a partner-by-partner run down of every person we had been with sexually, why it didn't work out; and whether or not we were still in contact. We had to basically regurgitate verbally everything that we had written down. We had to discuss hypothetical scenarios about how we would each parent, discipline, raise a child. We had to, without having the benefit of discussing it together, match our answers to be sure we were on the same page. Fortunately, Jed and I know each other well enough that we may as well have been sitting next to each other the whole time.

After the verbal quizzing, we had to complete a round of home inspections. We had to have a home health/safety inspection, wherein the city health department came in and inspected multiple aspects of our home. We had to have a city fire marshal come to the house for a fire safety inspection ensuring there were smoke detectors in every room of the house. He also wanted to see a documented fire escape route, which I spent HOURS doing a power point presentation on (that he never bothered to look at). We had to have full physicals completed by our family physician to determine whether or not we were healthy enough to raise children. We had to have THE DOGS inspected by a veterinarian to determine whether or not they were suitable to be around children. We had to have criminal background checks completed by both the local authorities AND the FBI. We had to sit down and discuss with our social worker what types of children we were interested in; what types of physical, emotional, sexual dysfunctions we would be willing to parent; chose a race, gender, and age of a child we would be willing to accept. We had to create a family photo album of pictures of ourselves, our home, our family, and our friends to be given to any potential child and/or child social worker to show them what type of home environment that child would be going to. In short, we were put under a microscope, stripped naked, and taken through an emotional ringer. AND, after all this was done, we were told ONCE AGAIN, that we would soon be notified whether or not we had been approved by the agency.

Around the first week of March our social worker called us to let us know that we were OFFICIALLY LICENSED Foster/Adoptive parents. Yes, I can proudly say, I AM A LICENSED PARENT MOTHER FUCKER. She then told us that she was going to start looking for a child for us and to not contact her, she would contact us when she found a child. Towards the end of March I started losing my patience. I pretty much told Jed that I was over the whole process and wanted to call our Social Worker and tell her to just withdraw us as potential parents. Jed encouraged me to be patient and not to worry about it.

April 7, 2005 my phone rang at 1030 pm. Anybody who knows me knows that if you would like to maintain a healthy friendship with me you should not bother calling me after 9. Knowing that some member of my immediate family or close friend must be in dire straights, I answered the phone. It was our social worker and she was calling to give us the real birthing experience. She had just located the perfect child for us. His name was Adrian; he was 9 months old; he had been in foster care since he was 2 months old; he had food allergies, but was otherwise in good health; he had black hair and "fat cheeks". This was all the information we were given. We were told to think about it, discuss it, and call her back in the morning if we were interested in this child. We couldn't sleep. We called our parents and told them the same tiny bits of information about the child that we had received. We talked it over between the two of us, and we decided to jump on this chance. We conference called her the next morning and told her we were interested in taking Adrian, and she immediately forwarded a picture of our sweet little boy via email and said, well then let me introduce you to your new son. He had the sweetest little face and we both fell in love with him immediately. We were to spend the afternoon with him on Saturday and Sunday, and then placement was to occur on Monday. I sent the word around my office to tell them effective immediately I would be on maternity leave and took the next 8 weeks off. Saturday came, our social worker brought Adrian to the house. He immediately nestled into Jed's arms and looked like he had been there for the previous 9 months. It's still one of my favorite pictures of him. The way things turned out, we didn't even have to wait until Monday for the official placement, Adrian came to live with us the following afternoon.

We knew going into placement with Adrian that he was a legal risk placement. Meaning that his mother had already terminated her parental rights, but they were trying to locate the father to terminate his. There was a slim chance that he would be reunited with his biological father. We had three months to wait before we would be in the clear. It was a very anxious time trying to bond with a loving child, yet trying not to get to attached because of the possibility that he may be removed at any moment. Our three months passed and we were given the green light to transition from a foster placement to an adoptive placement. Our families, who had once been so dead set against adopting a child from CPS, instantly fell in love with this beautiful, perfect child. To hear my older sister tell it, my parents don't even realize they already have 7 other grand-kids.

November 17, 2005 the three of us took a trip to the Courthouse to participate in National Adoption Day. As the primary adoptive parent, I was getting my day in court to finalize our "Forever Family", giving Adrian the loving family that every child deserves to have. It was a bitter sweet day for me personally. While I was able to fulfill my dream of having a child, I was sad for Jed because he was essentially treated like a bystander through the entire process, even though he had been a fully participating active parent in Adrian's life. It was a wonderful day for me and Adrian knowing that he would forever be tangled in my web of life. Since fags cant marry in Texas, nor can they adopt as a couple (unlike married couples), we had to make other arrangements for Jed's parental rights. It has been a long legal struggle for us to complete this. I immediately consulted with an attorney and updated my Will to name Jed successor to myself in the event of my death. We also started the wheels in motion to petition the court for second parent adoption for Jed to be legally named a parent of Adrian. While we couldnt adopt together, or on the same day, we could name Jed as a second parent legally. It just took a little effort.

So today, May 2, 2006, my child officially has two parents. My child finally has his complete forever family. My partner has the same legal rights under the law as I do to care for our child; enroll our child in school; take our child to the doctor; and travel about the country with our child. Society has made it so completely difficult for us to be a family, but we have persevered and like it or not, WE ARE A FAMILY.

Whether a child has one mother and one father; or two mothers; or two fathers; or one loving parent, or two separated parents, a family is a family. What makes the family is the love that is shared between the parties, and not the gender make up of the family. You can bet that none of the repugnants out there that are trying to ban gay parent adoptions have gone through a quarter of the battle that Jed and I, and so many other gay families, have had to go through just to be loving parents to a very deserving child. To everyone out there that thinks my family is sick, all I have to say is Thank you. I thank you for having the children that continuously get lost in our system so that we can show them what real love is all about. If it wasn't for sick bastards like you; beating your children; sexually abusing them; cutting off their limbs; drowning them in the trunks of your car; setting them on fire; and every other sick thing you people can think to do with your children, we wouldn't have the opportunities to set the world straight. Absolutely no pun intended.

365 Challenge

2010-03-23T09:32:00.001-07:00

I decided last night to start a brand-spanking-new self-imposed challenge. I have decided I’m going to cut “chain food” cold turkey for an entire year. I’m tired of the squirts, yo. For real. But then practical thinking Walt had to throw in some questions about the “rules” of my chain-food ban. I hadn’t thought such a ban would need rules. But, alas, he was right.

Like, for example, he knows of Jed’s addiction to Starbuck’s and Sonic beverages (which he get 3-4 of each, each week). So he wanted to know if Sonic was included in the ban. For me, this is a simple “yes”, cuz I’m not much of a beverage man anyway, unless the beverage makes me loopy. I’m just not a huge fan of the sodas. But Jed, on the other hand, may die if he doesn’t get his two Sonic Route 44 drinks/day. So since I said “chain-food”, I’m going to allow my boo to continue rotting his gut with artificial sweeteners, I’ll just abstain. I cut that fucking whore, Starbuck’s, out of my life almost two years ago, so this won’t be an issue for me. I will, however, have to insist that Jed get his coffee beverages from other sources, because there’s plenty of other coffee shops along the way to his office.

What about LOCAL “chains”? For you in the know, Austin has a great little sammich shop, “Thundercloud Subs”. BUT, Thundercloud has SEVERAL DOZEN locations in the Austin area. Amy’s Ice Cream…also another Austin favorite, BUT with multiple Austin locations AND NOW they’re branching into other Texas markets. County Line BBQ, yes folks, it started here, but everyone and their dog has one in their location now. Where do I draw the line with LOCAL CHAIN-FOOD? This is simple for me. Thundercloud, not a chain. Amy’s, not a chain. County Line, shitty chain. I will allow for “local chains” as long as they don’t cross state lines. PLEASE.DON’T.ANYONE.TELL.ME.THEY.HAVE.AMY’S.IN.ANOTHER.STATE.

The obvious chains, Taco Bell, McDonald’s, CiCi’s (vomit) will be easy for me to avoid. There are so many better local alternatives. I’m also going to insist that the ban on chain-food expand to while traveling. This will put a huge dent in our rush-to-get-out-of-town grabbing a bite to eat in the car…but, I’m serious about supporting my local merchants and eating better (tasting) food.

So all y’all bitches reading this outside of Austin (and Texas, for that matter), shoot me off some of your local favorites. You never know when I may pop in for a visit.

I am "The Biggest Loser" and true confessions

2010-01-18T18:42:00.001-08:00

Folks, I’ve got some good news and some bad news.

So…after my amazing 40 pound weight loss, I took a wee bit of a break. Okay, I’ve taken a month and a half off. I haven’t Wii’d since January 6^th. Feeling a bit lethargic lately, I told Jed that I wanted to get back into it on Friday. “Why Friday,” he asked? I said, “Because that’d give me Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to really get back into it.”

But what game to play next? EA Sports Active completely reshaped my body, mind, and spirit. I had energy. I had dropped down 6 inches in my pants (no pun intended). What would I do? My choices: EA Sports Active, More Workouts; The Biggest Loser; Jillian Michaels: Ultimate Fitness 2010 (and something else I can’t see from the couch right now).

I decided on The Biggest Loser. It makes me feel good when I watch it on TV. Bob makes me want to snuggle with him and lick his spleen. Jillian wants me to teach her how to tuck her wee wee properly as to not be quite so bitchy. (Being friends with drag queens, I’ve learned a little over the years.)

So I bust out my Wii Fitness Board, pop in The Biggest Loser, erase my previously stored profile and start afresh. And I’ll be go to mother fucking hell if I hadn’t gained SEVEN POINT THREE POUNDS in the last 6 weeks! WHAT.THE.FUCK!?! Tell me, honestly. Are enchiladas really THAT bad?

I reset my profile to start the program over…okay, I’ll be honest. I reset my profile to start the program. And it was hard, yo. Seriously, at one point Jed asked me if I wanted him to call a bambulance. (And I would have let him if my new insurance paid for it!).

By the end of the 30-minute session I was crying. I had to Windex my television because I, not once, but thrice, shat on the screen while doing lunge-squat-pelvic-thrusts.

(And as I’m typing this, Jed’s doing his first 30 minute program since the first week of December AND he’s crying and…hold on…he just shit on the tv. I gotta run.)

When is a good deal not such a good deal?

2010-01-14T12:33:00.000-08:00

I got a wee bit excited when I checked my email yesterday. I had gotten an email from Disneyworld touting their most current “promotional deal” that, at first glance, caused me to instantly change our plans of waiting to take the boys to the land of Dis until they were a bit older. We’ve discussed waiting at least another year, until the boys were old enough to *get* it, but this deal was so shitastic that I would be a fool to pass it up.

The *deal* included airfare, hotel, multi-day ‘park-hopper’ tickets for each person to all Disney properties AND (THE BEST PART) “a $750 Disney Giftcard” that could be used for Disney merchandise and/or food at any Disney property and/or merchant. HELLS YEAH, I’ll sell my soul to Uncle Walt (not to be confused with the boys’ UNCLE WALT!) for a free $750.

I log onto SWA’s website to book my travel. And I notice, in the fine print, that in order to get *the deal*, you must book a room that is clearly marked “sale” or “Free $750 Gift Card Promotion” in order to secure *the deal*.

If you’ve ever tried to book a vacation package on Southwest Airline’s website, or any other travel site’s website, you already know that finding the specific items you need to book in order to get *the deal* takes a PHD in bullshit and linguistics. I was able to book any room at any Disney property, but none of the rooms were marked “sale” or “Free $750 Gift Card Promotion”. It took me a good hour and fully-charged battery before I FINALLY figured out that you had to first book the resort you wanted and then choose “upgrade room” to find the rooms that were marked as directed to actually get *the deal*. Imagine my shock when I learned that the “sale rooms” were EIGHT HUNDRED AND FORTY THREE DOLLARS MORE than the “regularly priced rooms”. In other words, I wouldn’t be getting a “free” $750 gift card, I would actually be paying for the gift card myself, in advance, for $93 MORE than the value of the gift card.

Seriously? Do people actually do that? Do they actually fool themselves into believing they’re getting a “great deal” and book this vacation package? I’d just assume take the room/package at the regular price and pocket my own $843 cash and be able to spend the money the way (and in place I want to) rather than be forced to pre-pay merchandise/food on a Disney “gift” card. Like, I could stop by a McDonald’s on my way into a Disney property and pay $17 for a crappy breakfast for my entire family with my own money than go to a Disney buffet and pay $47/person using their “gift” card.

Honestly. I’d love to hear from someone who has purchased this *deal*!

For all you lurkers out there, Merry Christmas

2009-12-12T18:54:00.001-08:00

I see in my little tracker that I’m officially an international internet celebrity ala Big Fatty! I see London, I see France. I see some other countries I’ve seen their costumes on the Olympics, but have no idea where they are. Welcome y’all. Or as they say in my country, Howdy.

I don’t want to leave anyone out on the Christmas photo card fun, but I’m also not making as much this year as I was last year and can’t afford to send all 3.6 million of you a hand-stamped card. I’ll get to the cheesy holiday greeting card towards the end to encourage you to keep reading along.

Over the turkey slaughter holiday we road tripped down to G-Town to spend time with the family. While there we stopped by Moody Gardens to hit the Festival of Lights. During the 5 mile loop some woman jumped out of the bushes and snapped our family photo in a no-horse open sleigh.

We were given warning in advance that Adrian was making clown face, so I wasn’t expecting too much from the photo. When I ran into the lobby to check out the picture, I saw the jolly fat man (NOT to be confused with Big Fatty) sitting in his chair, surrounded by his elves, and ABSOLUTELY no line! I ran back outside and grabbed the fam. As you can see in this picture, ADRIAN’S is mostly normal while others in the photo thought it was Halloween.

A few weeks ago Jed comes home and says, “Did you know Nathan’s school had school pictures last week? Of course I didn’t. Jed hands me the form from the school and it’s a flier from some company that specializing these “increasingly popular” style of photos where they dress the kids in old-timey clothes and put them in front of an “attic” type backdrop and take old timey pictures. So I asked Jed what Nathan was wearing that day and he tells me he was in his ACLMF t-shirt. I love being able to plan in advance like that.

We received some information from the school that the company taking pictures was giving free pictures to all families that showed up to view them and hear about their package options. So Jed runs up there and listens to the presentation and gets our free pictures. He brings home the information about the packages and I almost shit my pants. There was actually a package for $360. FOR KINDERGARTEN PICTURES. The cheapest package was $60. Needless to say, we didn’t buy any. Not only because they were hella expensive, but THESE WERE THE PICTURES!

BEFORE I POST IT, what the ever loving fuck? WHO in their right mind thought, “It’ll be cute to put him in a pair of overalls with no shirt on and take a picture of him in front of an attic scene?”

Even worse, apparently they decided to make Christmas cards available as an option (free and for a fee), they gave us 6 of these Christmas cards using the same photo. Because nothing says, “Christmas” like, “Son, you sure got a pretty mouth.”

Happy Holidays, y’all. For real.

3 down, 1 to go!

2009-12-09T23:17:00.000-08:00

So it’s late, I’m ~~tired~~ beat to shit, but I’ve just completed and submitted my third final for this semester. I have one more on Saturday morning that I’ll have to take in person. I actually showed up to my ConLaw class tonight to sit for the final, but Prof. Bradshaw “surprised” everyone by announcing he was giving us our final to take home with us to work on and submit on line. The “good news” was that it was open book, open note, open to calling any Supreme Court Justices you may have in your “Faves” (on your T-Mobile network)…the “bad news” was there were only two questions. So you can either do REALLY REALLY POORLY, or REALLY REALLY POORLY on the final.

The materials that he handed out consisted of three questions. The first two questions were hypothetical scenarios and we had to pick one of the two and discuss how they violated or supported the 14^th Amendment and the due process and equal protection of the law. The scenarios, literally, were 4 pages of information that you had to digest and then write a point/counter-point analysis in support of your argument. (Have I put you to sleep yet? Cuz I’M STILL AWAKE!)

I won’t bore you with my analysis of scenario number 1. Cuz it was mostly serious. Question number 3, however, was mandatory. We were to pick one of the 300 cases we’ve digested and studied in class over the last 16 weeks where we approved or appreciated the Supreme Court’s decision and talk about why. This is, word for word, what I wrote (YES, the items below, in parenthesis, were actually cut and pasted from my submission!): (***A quick side-note about “my credit worthy peeps”. There was a heated debate over the issue of gay rights in one of the classes wherein one of the participants spewed some random “well-known fact” that all gay people have excellent credit” No, seriously, he said that.)

In re Romer v. Evans (and subsequently Plessy v. Ferguson):

I picked this case as the one I “enjoyed” or “liked” because it clearly effects me, my family, and my credit-worthy peeps. As a refresher, R v. E was a 1992 case in which the Colorado voters adopted Amendment 2 to their constitution, a statewide referendum prohibiting any state entity from including sexual orientation in any of their antidiscrimination laws. The TC granted a preliminary injunction to stay enforcement. The decision was appealed to the Supreme Court of Colorado. That court sustained the injunction and it was appealed to the US Supreme Court who upheld the judgment of the lower court.

Justice Kennedy, delivering the opinion, refers to Plessy v. Ferguson:

One century ago, the first Justice Harlan admonished this Court that the Constitution ‘neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens…(dissenting opinion). Unheeded then, those words now are understood to state a commitment to the law’s neutrality where the rights of a person are at stake. The Equal Protection Clause enforces this principle and today requires us to hold invalid a provision of Colorado’s Constitution.

(Premature gay scream)

I wish I could be more optimistic like you, Bradshaw, about the future of my rights. While I still, strongly, disagree with you about our pending “turning point”, it’s cases like these that let me see the proverbial “light at the end of the tunnel”. However, as the proverb goes, “sometimes that light is the front of the train”.

This case was in 1996, and since that time our country, as a whole, has taken 1-step forward, and 2-steps back. The beautifully written opinion, here, gives me (or gave me) hope for a rose-colored future. But the continuation of States adding Constitutional Amendments up for a popular vote and watching my family’s rights get stripped away one-by-one make that rose look a little wilted.

The opinion of the court, in fact, wasn’t at all reflective of the “changing of the guard”. Rather is upheld the lower court’s decision strictly based on the asinine way the Amendment was written. It wasn’t, at all, based on principal, rather it was based on some idiot not having a grammar checker on his damn computer. “The State’s principal argument in defense of Amendment 2 is that it puts gays and lesbians in the same position as all other persons. So, the State says, the measure does no more than deny homosexuals special rights”.

“The Fourteenth Amendment’s promise that no person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws must coexist with the practical necessity that most legislation classifies for one purpose or another, with resulting disadvantage to various groups or persons”. The Court attempted to reconcile that principal with the reality by stating, “if a law neither burdens a fundamental right nor targets a suspect class, [they] would uphold the legislative classification so long as it bears a rational relation to some legitimate end.”

[Gay scream]

Ultimately the Court ruled, a State cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws. Amendment 2 violate[d] the Equal Protection Clause.

[Gay hand clap]

Justice Scalia, writing the dissent (can suck my gay balls) if he firmly believes that Amendment 2 was a “reasonable provision” which did not disfavor homosexuals in a substantive sense, only “merely denying them ‘preferential treatment’. And yes, while I would prefer not to be fired for being gay and I would prefer not to have to worry about what’s going to happen to my partner, house, and children when I die from writing this paper, I don’t really feel like they “got it” with this case. It wasn’t based on changing opinions of a class of people, this case was strictly “won” on a technicality.

Nonetheless, I liked the outcome, only if it confounded and pissed off a bunch of Republicans for 2 years until they could get it back on the ballot.

So, Bradshaw, I do appreciate your enthusiasm for my peeps. IF I’m proven wrong and you’re right about the changes a comin’, you’ll be the first person I call to ask to be in my fabulous gay wedding. Of course you’ll have to wear a leather harness, but I can hook you up. You won’t have to buy one on your own!

Seriously, can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed your class(es). You’re a unique character, and I’m glad to have you on my side.

Gosh, folks. I hope I get an A.

At the end...

2009-11-29T04:18:00.001-08:00

OF NOVEMBER

I had every intention of doing a full-month worth of blogs to prove to Walt that I did, in fact, like to write. I had to give up shortly before Fredmas eve because the folks came to town for a wonderful weekend of birthday celebrations (which included muh mommy’s, mine, Nathans, and Jed’s). I simply couldn’t find a single minute in the day(s) to sit down and jot down a simple thought. Work kept me busy during the day, school and the boys kept me busy in the evenings. The following weekend Yai Yai came to town to celebrate Nathan’s birthday and I, again, found myself trying to find a second to breathe. The visit with Yai Yai was a blast. We got to take the boys to see the Longhorns play some team from up north. Truth be told, I can’t even remember at this point because of the whirlwind of activity. The very next weekend (this past weekend) we found ourselves in the car heading to Galveston for Thanksgiving.

OF I-45

We had a wonderful time in the gulf city, as always. We arrived early Thursday morning, just in time to hop in the car again to head over to Jim and Carol’s for Thanksgiving dinner. There was lots of family and friends. The food was to die for. There was not only turkey, but ham, pork roast, all the trimmings. By my fourth plate of food I had to have Jed help me out of the chair. There was a brief moment of excitement when baby Luke fell into the pool and Derek had to dive in after him. I was just thankful it wasn’t one of my kids, cuz I had my good boots on. We ate so much at lunch on Thursday that we didn’t eat for the rest of the day.

Friday morning Aunt Jan woke up at 4 to go “Black Friday” shopping with me. The shopping excursion started off a bit of a bust…the first place we went to sold out of the main item we went for (I CAN’T TELL YOU, CUZ PEOPLE READ MUH BLOG!) and another item I went for, DESPITE BEING ADVERTISED IN THE HOLIDAY FLIER wasn’t carried by the store because they “don’t support T-Mobile anymore”. I asked why they had it in their flier if they weren’t selling it and I never got a good answer. We went to Wal-Mart next, where some filthy whore stole some items that I had picked up to buy when I set them down BY MY FEET to look through a bin of pajamas to find the right size. Now, mind you, the items weren’t even anything good. It was two board games for the boys. But some lazy, fat, low-income, filthy whore was too fucking lazy to walk her lazy, fat, low-income, filthy whore ass pussy to the toy section and pick up her own games. I fucking hate Wal-Mart and lazy, fat, low-income, filthy fucking, chlamydia dripping pussy, whores.

That morning we hit (in order) Sam’s, Wal-Mart, Game Stop, Best Buy, J.C. Pennys, Lowe’s, Target, Game Stop, Target, and T-Mobile (because Sam’s, DESPITE ADVERSTISING T-MOBILE PRODUCTS NO LONGER SUPPORTS T-MOBILE). We had put in a full-days worth of work by 9 and were ready for a hearty breakfast. We met up with the fam at El Gusto’s for lunch and then I went to Jan’s house to put together/fix everything we had just spent the morning shopping for. Then I went home to Yai Yai’s to take a much needed nap.

That evening we all met up at Gino’s for a delicious dinner before heading over to Moody Gardens to see the Festival of lights and talk to Santa. The boys are hopeful they’ve been good enough to get a visit from the old fat guy this year…but I aizn’t so sure about that!

We wrapped up our visit Saturday morning with breakfast at my favorite Island restaurant, Sunflower before loading up and heading back to Austin.

OF MY ROPE

I woke up at 4 this morning filled with dread and anxiety about the remainder of the year. I have so much to do, yo, and I really don’t know how or even if I’m going to be able to get it all done. I’m awesome and amazing at prioritizing, but everything I have, really, is a priority at this point. In no particular order:

· I have two major projects at work that, really, should have been done last week.

· I have to decorate the house for Christmas with the boys today.

· I have an appointment with all of Nathan’s therapists at school on 12/1.

· I have a final drafting assignment due 12/5.

· I have a birthday party that Adrian has to go to 12/6.

· I have my final exam in Texas State and Local Government due 12/7.

· I have my final exam in another one of my classes due 12/11.

· Two more final exams that same week (now that I think of it).

· I have to do all my effing Christmas shopping.

· I have my work Christmas party.

· I have to make sure my children are happy and well-adjusted.

· I have to figure out what the fuck I’m going to do with them while they’re out of school for the “winter break” which seems like the entire month of December and half of January.

· I have to help plan and facilitate Adrian’s school “winter party”.

· I have to drive to the Oklahomas for the holidays.

· I’ll have to, at some point, pay some bills, do the grocery shopping, mow the yard, exercise, and take Jed’s fucking car to the fucking tire shop and have a fucking nail pulled out of the fucking new tire(s) that I had to fucking by in fucking Galveston this weekend because I had a fucking blow out (I forgot to mention that above, didn’t I?).

I feel like I’m at the end of my rope, but at the same time I love this time of year being reminded of how thankful I am that I have two wonderful kids, a wonderful finger puppet, lots of great family, and two stinky dogs.

I may be silent for the next two weeks (you should be used to it by now!), but I’ll drop in when I can. Hope y’all had an amazing Thanksgiving.

On the twelfth day of Fredmas my true love gave to me

2009-11-12T19:09:00.001-08:00

WEIGHT LOSS

Thursday night can only mean one thing, the weekly weigh in. I hit the scale at 187.6 tonight, which was another 1.6 pound loss. So it appears that I’m slowing down on my weight loss, and that’s okay. My ultimate goal, despite what I jokingly said earlier (that not one of you commented on!), is 175 pounds (NOT 140, as I previously stated!). 175 will be a few ounces over a 50 pound loss, and I thinks that mo plenty.

PROJECT RUNWAY

I want to date Tim Gun. He looks hot in a suit and apron.

WTF?

Can anyone tell me the secret to making soup in the crock pot that has potatoes in it and it cooks for over 8 hours? This is the second time that I’ve made a soup (last night was vegetable beef) that the potatoes aren’t cook, at all. Everything else is cooked, but the taters are hard as a rock. WTF?

MORE, GIMMEE MORE

I wish I could, but the folks are coming tomorrow and I’ve got to get my house clean.

On the eleventh day of Fredmas my true love gave to me

2009-11-11T17:16:00.001-08:00

A BAPTISM BY FIRE

I seriously underestimated the number of things I would be able to get done while going back to work. I think I may need to hire an assistant. Any takers?

WORST FATHER OF THE YEAR AWARD GOES TO…

My baby boy’s 4^th birthday is coming us so very quickly and I have COMPLETELY dropped the ball. I may add this responsibility to my new assistant. My folks are coming down this weekend expecting to celebrate his birthday with him and I have AB.SO.LUTELY nothing planned. I’m a dick.

THE SHORTEST SOCCER SEASON, EVER

I can’t believe we’ve already finished Adrian’s first soccer season. Okay, not technically, yet…but he’s only got two more games before the season is over. He’s done amazingly well. He LOVES soccer. I can’t tell if he actually digs the game or is more into the uniform. But he loves it. Hopefully next season’s practices are later in the afternoon so I can take him again. As it stands right now, I’ve lost the ability to take him. The downside to a later practice is it’s so dark outside by 530 right now. His team, literally, practices in the dark…which may explain why they seem to be so good!

CONSTITUTIONAL LAW

I’m sitting in my Con Law class right now, on break, of course, having just listened to a very brief discussion on the Equal Protection clause as it could potentially “change” the face of gay rights. I’m a bit disappointed, frankly, because we were promised an “extensive” discussion on gay rights and it amounted to a whopping 7 minute discussion. We’ve had a 9-hour discussion on racial inequalities, gay rights get a whopping SEVEN FUCKING MINUTES. Maybe he’ll pick it up again after the break? I’ll report back tomorrow.

On the tenth day of Fredmas my true love gave to me

2009-11-10T19:20:00.001-08:00

OLD HOUSES TRULY DO SUCK BALLS

I’ve always had a pet peeve relating to businesses who take fabulous old houses near the centers of downtowns and turn them into businesses. In hindsight, it may have been a little bit of jealousy that I couldn’t afford one and wished I could be working in one? Now that I’m working in one, I can tell you, they truly do suck balls. And not in a good way.

My second day on the job, and I’m having issue with the location. Not enough of an issue that it’s going to be a deal killer for me, but an issue nonetheless. So my new office is in an old two bedroom one bathroom house smack dab in the middle of downtown. The former living room is now the reception area; the former dining room is now a conference room/office space for the junior associate; one of the bedrooms is one of the “adult” lawyer’s office; the other bedroom is the other adult lawyer’s office. My office is located off the back of the ORIGINAL kitchen of the house, what I imagine, at one time, was the laundry room. The washer and dryer have been removed. My issue is with THE BATHROOM. The firm has the original 1940’s bathroom, it’s been upgraded with new tile and fresh paint over the years. It still has its original (working) tub. It’s clean. It doesn’t look as shitty as MY 1940’s bathroom.

While I have an enormous bladder stem, I have a microscopic bladder. And I’ve had to rethink my coffee intake. My first day on the job I peed no fewer than 20 times in a two hour period. I’m sure I made quite the first impression. And every time I have to go to the bathroom, I have to clomp through the old house, on the hard wood floors, with my big heavy steel-toed boots…basically announcing to EVERYONE in the office, “Hey, Frederick’s going to the can…again.” Heaven help me the day I ever have to pooh.

For those who don’t know, the first year I knew Jed I made him go outside of my house whenever I had to pooh. I have issues. There were days that he said, “But we’re under a tornado watch…” and I just shrugged my shoulders and told him I didn’t care. I had to pooh and couldn’t have anyone in the house while I did it. I’ve lightened up, a bit, since having kids…but I’m trying to think of a polite way to ask my new co-workers if they’d mind stepping outside of the office in the event I have an emergency.

Next time you find yourself bitter about those old houses, count your blessings.

On the ninth day of Fredmas my true love gave to me

2009-11-09T20:10:00.001-08:00

A BIRTHDAY SHOUT OUT

To my mommy. Yes, folks, the woman who spit me out her vajayjay periodically reads my blog from time to time. She says it saves her money on a perm, cuz what she sees and reads periodically curls her hair. Muh mommy had a birthday today, and to quote Adrian, “DAYUHM WOMAN! SIXTY-THREE? That’s Oooooold”. We started the day off with a call to granny, Adrian singing “Happy Birthday to daddy’s mommy” and then counting ALL.THE.WAY. to 63!

A JOB OF THE NON-BLOW VARIETY

Today was the first day on the job, and it was your typical first day at a law firm. The first 3 hours were spent trying to get access to the computra network, mixed in with a little “this is what we expect from ya”, and a little bit of “this is what I expect from the y’all”. I’ve being granted quite a bit of responsibility in my new digs. I’ve even been given a key to the office. After lunch, I was thrown full-on into the fiery pits of hell with a gaggle of tasks, which I barely finished before daycare closed. But it was so nice to be busy, productive, needed, and appreciated again. I don’t like the fact that I’m not getting home until after dark again, and missing out on some quality afternoon kid-time, but we’ll work something out! I may need to adjust the boys sleepy time schedules to accommodate my need for squeals of delight, and crazy mad games of chutes and ladders.

TURKEY CHILI

Knowing full well I wouldn’t be home in time to make dinner for the family, I dusted off my crock pot and pulled out some old favorite recipes so I wouldn’t have to mess with dinner when I got home. I made a delicious pot of turkey chili. It was so good, in fact, I didn’t even have to force feed the kids. Of course that could have had something to do with the fact that it was 2 hours after our “normal” dinner time, but… Dear BESSIE, do I love my crock pot! Got any recipes you care to throw at me?

On the eighth day of Fredmas my true love gave to me

2009-11-08T20:20:00.001-08:00

ASTROBOY (***SPOILER ALERT)

I wanted to give Jed a break today, so he could study, and decided to take the boys to a movie. They’ve been asking to see “Astroboy” sine McDonald’s switched out their toy give-a-ways in their Happy Meals this month. The previews looked cute enough. I felt like it was going to be a modern day version of Pinocchio. The beginning of the movie caught me a little off-guard. Cuz I thought Astroboy was a robot and was surprised to see that he was already a “real boy”…a real boy who dies in a horrible industrial accident while he’s trying to get his workaholic douche nozzle dad’s attention. That was BIG fun explaining to Adrian in the theater. Following the death of his son, douche nozzle feels like a dick and decides to build a robot version of his son to make up for being a shitty father and relieve some of his guilt. Except for the sobbing at the beginning, Adrian actually enjoyed most of the rest of the movie. Nathan never stopped sobbing. Fun times.

KERBEY LANE

We said our farewells to Amy this morning after a delicious breakfast at Kerbey Lane. We ended up having to go to the location on the drag this morning because there was a 3 hour wait at the Kerbey Lane location. The drag location kind of skeeves me out a bit. Perhaps it’s because I obsessively watch KVUE’s “Food For Thought” segment and have seen that location on it twice when they’ve failed their city health inspections.

SLACKER

I have NO idea what to do for Nathan’s birthday this year. My folks are coming down next weekend to celebrate his birthday and may be expecting some time of party…but I’ve not planned anything and have no idea what to do. Suggestions? He’ll be four, so strippers are definitely out this year.

On the seventh day of Fredmas my true love gave to me

2009-11-07T19:51:00.000-08:00

WURSTFEST!
We had to skip the fabulous 10-day Salute to beer and sausage last year, but we made up for it this year! Yes, sir! We hit Wurstfest 2009 this weekend and had a super fantastic time.

For starters, when planning our little weekend, Jed asked if I had talked to our Amy about going with us. Huh?!? I hadn’t thought about it, but no sooner had the question mark been placed at the end of his sentence I had her on the speed dial asking her if she wanted to join us. She jumped at the chance to see me down a bratwurst and drove all the way up from Houston to play with us for the day.

Amy mentioned on the way into the festival that one of the main reasons she wanted to come with us is that she “so loved the picture of me deep-throating a bratwurst” from Wurstfest 2007 and she wanted to be part of that magic. I had to oblige.

And she returned the favor…

We had so much fabulous food (in no particular order)…

The Wurstcone

The funnel Cake

The beer

Did I mention the beer?

Amy and I danced like mad fiends to “Roll Out The Barrell”

SERIOUSLY.MAD.FIENDS

Adrian and daddy got to ride the Ferris wheel while Nathan, Poppa, and Amy got to ride the carousel. Amy even found someone she wanted to date!

It was such a super fantastic family fun day.

Both Amy and I even found some Wurstfest schwag!!!

I HAD to have this!

It even looks better from behind!

The weather was great, the food and beer was delicious, and we couldn’t have asked for better company. More pictures of the day follow, hope you enjoy.

On the sixth day of Fredmas my true love gave to me

2009-11-06T17:14:00.001-08:00

A POWER NAP

I took my last nap of unemployment today and woke up feeling refreshed and anxious about the amount of things that I could have gotten done over the last 7 months, but didn’t. The good news is, now I’m making money again and can afford to pay someone to do it for me!

DINNER AT SAGO

One of our new favorite places to eat here in town is Sago. DELICIOUS “modern Mexican”. We went tonight for a celebratory dinner of margaritas, brisket quesadillas, shrimp salad, and hot dogs. I love the fact that, before 8, everything on the menu is so dirt cheap. For all we got tonight, we didn’t spend a whole lot. It was worth every.single.penny.

FAMILY

I’m reminded tonight of how truly grateful I am for my wonderful family, and my friends who are my family. We’ve had a tremendous amount of support over the last 7 months from so many people that I couldn’t possibly thank everyone enough for all they mean to me. When you come from having so much to having “nothing”, you realize how much you really do have in life and how little you really need to maintain a wonderful quality of life when you have so many awesome people to share your life with you. Take a moment to sit back and count your many blessings. (And that’s not just the two margaritas talking…or maybe it is!)

On the fifth day of Fredmas my true love gave to me

2009-11-05T16:27:00.001-08:00

A JOB!

Looks like my very long, unpaid, vacation is over. I was offered a job today for a small local firm. I’m really thrilled. I feel like it’s going to be a great learning experience for me.

A POUND

So I’ve had better weight loss weeks. I gained a pound this week, and I’m okay with it. I’ve still lost 38 pounds, therefore I’m still better off today than I was in August. Truth be told, I didn’t get nearly as much exercise this week as I have in weeks past. I was a hair lazy this past week, I’ll get back on it next week. I guarantee you I won’t be up again next week.

A PLAN

The folks are coming to AusTex next weekend to have a blow-out family birthday party. My mommy’s birthday is Monday, mine is on the 15^th, Nates is on the 22^nd, and the Boo’s is on the 3^rd of December. Good night, nurse! We have a whole lotta birthdays coming up.

On the fourth day of Fredmas my true love gave to me

2009-11-04T14:45:00.001-08:00

HAIR-PEAZ

This shit’s for the birds man. The tale-tell signs of the itchy lip means the blister is a coming. Nothing builds your self-esteem more than unemployment and mouth herpes. Or “fever blister”, or whatever.

HAIR-PEACE

I got a much needed haircut today. GOOD GOD do I feel human again. It was a bit embarrassing being seen out in public with the weave I had on my head and I grew tired of telling people that it was for our Halloween costume. It was folks. I didn’t make that up! I had to be a young, hot Luke Skywalker. At least I was hot. But the 70’s hair just about killed me. I was really pleased with the clipping I got today. Granted it wasn’t from the BFF, Jimmy, but it was the best I could do in a lurch. The woman who cut my hair, coincidentally, is the mother of one of Adrian’s classmates. It’s a small, small world.

MAINE IS OFF THE TABLE

A sad, sad day for marriage “equality” in Maine. I love that the folks defend “traditional marriage” don’t seem to mind the mockery celebritauntes like Britney and Pamela make out of the institution of marriage. I suppose, as long as your straight, marriage to multiple folks (as long as it’s one at a time) is a’ight and in the vein of “traditionalism”. Whatever. Fuck you, the majority, who would vote on the rights of the minority.

On the third day of Fredmas my true love gave to me

2009-11-03T05:15:00.001-08:00

RITES OF PASSAGE

I don’t know why, but I love this picture, hard. Jed and I discussed a possible retake, but I think we have to keep it. It’s a requirement, right? To have these pictures to look back on when we’re older? It cracks me up, because I know this isn’t his smile, I know this isn’t his hair. I don’t know, exactly, what happened when this picture was taken but I loves it.

RITES OF PASSAGE, PAR DEAUX

While on the subject of Adrian and awkwardness, I had the following conversation with him last week:

ADRIAN: Daddy, I have a girlfriend

Freddy: YOU DO?!? That’s fantastic. Tell me all about her.

ADRIAN: It’s Amanda. You know Amanda.

Freddy: SOLID CHOICE ADRIAN! She’s a looker. What makes her your girlfriend?

ADRIAN: She mouth kisses me.

Freddy: WHAT?!?

ADRIAN: She mouth kisses me.

Freddy: Ummm, what does that mean exactly?

ADRIAN: DADDY! YOU know. She MOUTH KISSES ME.

I’m so not ready for this conversation. The good news is we may have given proof to the whole nurture v. nature debate? I mean, I know there’s a few years left to be certain, but I think we’re on a good roll!

0300

THAT’S WHAT TIME NATHAN GOT UP THIS MORNING. THREE IN THE MORNING. I’m only slightly bitter.

VOTER ID

I’m enrolled in a Texas State and Local Government class this semester and am doing it on-line rather than sitting in class EVERY night of the week. As part of the on-line course, I’m required to participate in a minimum of 2 “discussion groups”. Each week the Prof posts a question relating to Texas politics on-line and the class participants are supposed to discuss it. The directions for the discussion board reads as follows:

“…You must reply in a reasoned way, either in response to the forum question itself or in response to something one of your classmates has posted. ‘Reasoned’ means you’ve thought about the question and present your ideas in a coherent fashion…”

With that in mind, yesterday I logged on to participate in the Unit II discussion on voting history of Texans. This was the question, as posed:

In the most recent Texas Legislative session a bill was considered but not passed to require a photo ID in order to vote. Republicans argued that positive identification was necessary to protect against fraud, especially voting by illegal immigrants. Democrats argued its purpose was to intimidate and discourage voting, especially among the poor, minorities, and the elderly (people least likely to have photo ID's & more likely to vote Democrat). Should it be required that people produce positive identification in order to vote?

It’s a fairly simple question, right? Here’s was my “reasoned” response (agree or disagree, I really don’t give a shit. I’m not putting it out here for a debate):

The issue of voter ID is just another smoke screen being blown up by the legislature to keep from working on real issues. It’s another method of mobilizing their base, nothing more than a scare tactic to get people out to the polls to vote for them and keep them in office so they can keep working on absolutely nothing. Much like “the gays are going to indoctrinate your children if we allow them to legitimize their relationships”, the fear of “aliens” attacking the very nature of our culture and statehood is a brilliant way to get sheep to the voting booths. Where is the evidence of voter fraud? Why is an ID necessary? The Republicans have already seized control and flexed their dominant muscle. They’re certainly not proposing an ID to keep their voting population away from the polls. I’ve not seen any evidence of long lines of “natives” lurking outside of any polling location in recent elections.

The book very clearly states that Texas has an abysmal, shameful, ridiculously low voter turn-out rate to begin with. Are those of you advocating support of a voter ID bill seriously PROUD of a 36.2 – 45.6% voter turn-out rates (p. 74) for our state and national elections? Do you enjoy being SECOND only to Louisiana in THE LOWEST NATIONAL AVERAGE VOTING POPULATION? We do NOT need to further hinder access to the voting booths. We should be ashamed of our legislatures for preying on the fear of the voters of Texas, as well as the scare tactics they’re using to keep legitimate voters away from the polls by clouding the REAL ISSUES with this nonsensical talk about IDs.

Otherwise, I really don’t have an opinion one way or the other.

Here are two of the other “reasoned” responses to the same question that I found humorous (cut n’ pasted with typos and all):

I think that if people take the time to go to the polls and vote they should be allowed to vote. I wonder how low voter turn out would be if the the elderly and immigrants did not vote.All of the registered voters in Texas don't vote so if we take away those that do hit the polls because they don't have I.D. will that make things better? Umm, isn’t this just a restatement of the original question?

And (muh favorite)

It should be required that people produce positive I.D in order to vote. I don't understand how someone would be intimidated to produce an I.D unless they were either hiding from someone, or guilty. It should be required that people produce positive I.D in order to vote. I don't understand how someone would be intimidated to produce an I.D unless they were either hiding from someone, or guilty.

I believe carrying a photo I.D. is a responsible thing to do, and elderly should be very aware of this. This is for the well being of a lot of people. If their is an accident or injury, they can readily be identified. Fantastic. If she’da mentioned the elderly and pre-cog injured should wear clean underwear in the event of an accident, this would be sound and ‘reasoned’ advice.

Perhaps I put too much thought into it?

While on the subject of Texas State & Local Government, there’s a one-sentence statement in the book: “Tolerance of Gay and Lesbian lifestyle in Texas is improving”. On the publisher’s website on their on-line practice tests there is a T/F question, “Gays and Lesbian in Texas are seeing an increase in tolerance”. Knowing the truth, I answered “False” (as I’ve watched my rights to have a legitimized relationship constitutionally stripped away from me) and wasn’t shocked to find I got the answer wrong. With the exception of this one sentence in the book, there’s no other information anywhere in the book that argues the contrary. I’d like to know what study they’re looking at.

Now I’m rambling.

On the second day of Fredmas, my true love gave to me

2009-11-02T16:02:00.001-08:00

Fall

Fall is always a mixed bag for me. I totally dig the temperature change, and love being able to cook my all time favorite meals: Soups, chilis, and chowders. One of the things I hated the most about dating boys from the south was the whole soup thing. They just didn’t *get* it. They didn’t understand the concept of soup. Fortunately, Jed *got* it. I love the traditional Chicken Noodle Soup (muh daddy makes the best) and my all time favorite soup is Split Pea (feel free to gag silently). Since moving to Texas, I’ve become a huge fan of Chicken Tortilla soups (MANY varieties to choose from), and lately I’ve been experimenting with different “baked potato soup” recipes (not heart healthy, of course). I loves me a hearty, meaty bowl of hot delicious soup, and a big old heaping helping of spicy chili, with rice, of course. The rice is a new thing that Jed introduced. I was a bit skeptical, at first, but am whole-heartedly a fan.

So I get to eat my delicious soups, again, but this darn time change has thrown me for a loop. I suppose I should be happy with my “extra hour”, but frankly, I’m not. It takes me forever to get adjusted to it, and I think the kids are totally oblivious to it. Sunday, for example, they still got up at their old standard 630, but in reality it was 530. I tried running around town to work on some of my errands, but nothing opened for a good 4 hours later and I just found the whole morning wasted. My biggest complaint is that it gets so dark so early now. I thought the purpose of daylight savings time was to afford us more daylight hours? It makes no logical sense to me to have the extra daylight so early in the morning when I’m still waking up. What’s wrong with driving to work when it’s dark outside (HAHAHA! I said “driving to work”! As if!) and then having some extra daylight at the end of the day when I’m fully awake? I think the asshats that came up with this plan got it all backwards. I think we should Fall forward and Spring back giving us more daylight at the END of the day when it is more useful and beneficial. As it is now, I’m ready for bed at 6 in the evening when the sun goes down. How can THAT be a good thing?

CRAPPY ELECTRONICS

Has anyone else noticed lately the trend in crappy electronics? I’m thrilled the prices on things are coming down to where things are affordable, but at the cost of dependability? Jed and I were watching a movie on the DVD player this weekend in the living room. A little over 2/3 of the way into the movie the DVD player crapped out, so we moved it to the bedroom. I’ll be go to hell if 10 minutes later the DVD player in the living room crapped out. Seriously? What the hell is wrong with this stuff? It’s not like they’re crappy brands. I mean, Phillips? Didn’t they used to be good? I guess the good news is they only cost us, like, 40 bucks each. But it’s not just the DVD players. Everyone who knows me knows I’m on my 5^th laptop in under two years. I had to buy the one I’m using now at the end of the summer semester because the one I had purchased for the spring semester had started failing (monitor malfunction). Since I needed a computer to finish up my school work, I purchased another one so that I could send the ONLY THREE MONTH OLD ONE back to be fixed and wouldn’t be computerless while they repaired it. I gave the almost new one to Jed to replace his old one when it got back from being repaired, and NOW I’M HAVING ISSUES with my NEW one. I realize I only paid $300 for it, but shouldn’t it last more than SIX MONTHS? Is that the attractiveness to the new lower prices of these things? Disposability?

SUPER TUESDAY

For those of you in states that matter, I wish you the best of luck tomorrow. PLEASE get out there and vote, even if you don’t think the issues apply to you. Don’t sit back and let others vote for you and think that someone else is going to take care of your needs. PLEASE get out there and vote.

On the first day of Fredmas, my true love gave to me...

2009-11-01T17:27:00.001-08:00

I ab.so.lutely cannot believe another month has flown by and there’s only two months left to the year. You know what that means, folks? Yes, Fredmas is coming up quicker than you can say “do me, daddy”.

This may be confusing for those of you who may already think I’m 39, but this will be my last official year of the thirties as I look ahead to the big 40. I really can’t explain why, or how, I started aging myself up on my birthdays, but I’ve done it for longer than I can remember. It drives Jed bonkers, but it’s just how I do. I will officially be 39 this year, though…as always, the day after my birthday I will hold myself out as 40.

I can’t tell you how forward I am looking to my 40’s. The growing older thing doesn’t scare, or bother me, in the slightest. Every decade I survive is better than the previous decade and it gives me nothing but hope for the future decades. I see my life going nowhere but up. Here’s how my decades have compared:

My teens were all about decadence and debauchery. I don’t remember much about it, but I worked crappy jobs for crappy money to eat lots of crappy food and sneak in to my favorite bars with my crappy fake ID.

In my 20’s I began my professional career. I made my money and spent my money like crazy acquiring “stuff”. Stuff I thought I needed, such as music CDs, movies, books, etc., and sensible stuff, such as household furnishings. I wasted my money on apartment rentals and worked to be able to afford happy hours and meals out with friends. Somewhere along the way I stopped wasting money on rent and started buying and fixing up houses.

I spent my 30’s continuing my career, refocusing on it at times. In fact, I’m in a position of clarity in that regard right now. I grew tired of revolving and credit debt and figured out a plan to get rid of all my debt and pay myself, rather than pay credit companies. I watched my savings soar and created my dream family.

I have high expectations for my 40’s. I know I can’t plan out what’s going to happen, but I have feeling of wonder and amazement as I look ahead. Coming up in the next 11 years Adrian will be hitting SIXTEEN YEARS OLD, Nate will be hitting FIFTEEN. Adrian has already started talking about his “girlfriend” and how she likes to “mouth kiss” (something I’m SO not ready to discuss yet!). Big, exciting changes are coming. And I’m ready to embrace whatever life has to throw at me.

So happy first day of Fredmas, I hope it was as good for you as it was for me.

It's the Great Pumpkin, Chuck

2009-10-31T19:35:00.000-07:00

How fun it is the boys are at that age where they can start participating in the fun things in life AND stay awake (and mostly pleasant) while doing it. I love the fact that Adrian decided to make one of his pumpkin’s eyes a rectangle and one a triangle. I wish I had another set of hands so that I could have snapped a picture of their reaction when I pulled off the top of the pumpkins and screamed. It was priceless.

USE THE FORCE, LUKE
We did our annual family dress up for gay Christmas this year. What were we???

Happy Halloween, y’all. For real.

I like to write, truly, I do

2009-10-30T19:30:00.000-07:00

As I found myself commiserating with a dear, sweet, fat friend of mine the other night about an interviewing process that I’ve been going through the past couple of weeks, I said something that, apparently struck him as funny. I said, “I had to have a writing test the other day wherein I was given an assignment to write a 10-minute biography of my professional experience (as “CV”, if you will) and it drove me bonkers because I really hate to write serious stuff about myself AND I hate being given a topic.” Fat Walt said, “For someone who likes to write, your blog sure doesn’t show it. It’s grown cobwebs.” Hateful, huh? God, Walt. It’s not like I’m sitting home all day watching “The View” (YAAAAAY, ELIZABETH’S BACK!!!) Oh wait, I am.

Nothing like being called out on the carpet for laziness to give my readers a gift of a post. I present to you, a recap.

UPDATE ON THE DIET CONTEST
Yes, we’re all still participating. Jed has lost a whopping 27 pounds. Leslie has lost…ummm, well I’ll let her tell you. I’ve lost 37 pounds as of this morning. I’ve been posting updates along the way on my Facebook page, but I realize some of you lurkers aren’t friends of mine on MyFace, so here’s the deets.

Many folks have asked, “GOOD GOD FAT ASS, HOW THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN DOING THIS? Have you been using laxatives? Are you ‘doin’ the Carpenter’? Are you still eating? Have you been exercising? What did you start at? How much further do you want to go? Will you have sex with me now that you can see your penis again? When are you going to post pics?”

So, let me play Dear Abby here for a second.

Good God Fat Ass, how the fuck have you been doing this? This is going to sound AB.SO.LUTELY ridiculous, so go empty your bladder. We bought a Wii and the Wii Fit and started “playing” video games! FOR REALS. I’m not making that up. The first few weeks of the Wii I sweat my balls off. It’s really what started getting me motivated. And while I enjoy the Wii Fit programs, and still do them, I felt that it didn’t provide me with much resistance insofar as toning, etc. (other than using my own body weight in the form of push-ups). So I was looking into the other programs available and found the EA Sports Active and it seriously kicked my ass. It was like having a less-hot version of “Biggest Loser Bob” in my living room. It works you through a standard circuit-style exercise program focusing on each muscle group, and the program itself actually came with a resistance band to simulate lifting weights. And while the band provide resistance, a 3 month old could have stretched it out to its maximum capacity, so we bought stronger resistance bands. All that to say, through video games I’ve been building wee little (or should I say "wii little" muscles and burning fat.

We’ve also been watching what we eat. The funny thing is we’re still eating pretty much the same things, just healthier versions of it and a LOT less. IF we do happen to go out to eat, Jed and I only get one thing and split it between us instead of each ordering our own thing. I’d say, on average, we’re hitting about 2000 calories/day and exercising 30-60 minutes/day. I forgot to mention above, both the Wii Fit and the EA Sports Active have “multi-player” functionality, so we can both exercise together.

Have you been using laxatives? No.

Are you ‘doin’ the Carpenter’? Don’t make fun of the dead. You’ll go to hell.

Are you still eating? See above.

Have you been exercising? See above.

What did you start at? The official start weight was 225.4 pounds.

How much further do you want to go? I’d like to be at 140 by Christmas.

Will you have sex with me now that you can see your penis again? Are you kidding? I’m skinner than you now, and now you repulse me.

When are you going to post pics? You must not have been on Xtube recently.

So for the curiosity seekers, I give you:

Phat Phreddy Before<---------------------------->Phat Phreddy After

UPDATE ON THE JOB
I’ve been enjoying my time off. I have been interviewing recently. In fact, one position that I’m interested in I’ve had three interviews in the last week, and have another one scheduled the day after gay Christmas. Hopefully I’ll be a contributing member of my family again soon.

KIDS
Adrian has a girlfriend.

Nathan is toilet trained.

JED
Is the most awesome and amazing man. Every single one of you should be jealous.

ANYTHING ELSE?
Nah, not tonight. As I’ve taught Adrian, “You git what you git and you don’t throw a fit”.

Downsizing from a double-wide to a single-wide

2009-08-27T05:57:00.000-07:00

Folks, I apologize again for my noticeable absence. I know each of you wait patiently day in and day out to hear from me and that your lives aren’t complete until you do. I’m truly, truly sorry. BUT, I’ve been busy. You’d think being unemployed I’d have nothing but time to sit and write blogs all day. That’s just not the case. I’ll catch y’all up in the next few days with what’s been going on the past few weeks, but I DO have something to say today, so the excitement that is my life will have to wait.

So we recently had a super special guest come stay at the casa for a few days. I’ll write about that in another post. While said guest was here we went out one night and sang karaoke. Besides my obvious lack of talent in the video (below), there’s one more startling aspect of the video. The fact that it looks like I’m in my 5th trimester. Said guest insists that I don’t “look that huge in person” (compliment?), but that the video adds 50 pounds to my navel. You be the judge:

Later in the week, my gal pal Leslie came over to watch Project Runway and had a brilliant idea. She wanted to have a “Shrink my double wide to a single wide” friendly weight loss competition with a cash incentive. She came up with a complicated system of weekly payouts and a ultimate cash prize at the end of the competition with weekly weigh ins over a bowl of queso and “exercise” (watching Project Runway). Having seen my belly jiggle, I’m eager to start!

I’m going to get started (AFTER dinner tonight, of course) with the help of my friend, Chris Lopez, over at Fit and Busy Dad. I have a 51 pound goal by December 31st. That’ll put me right at 340.

So good luck LESLIE and JED! Y’all are going DOWN! And not in a good way.

ENCOURAGING PHOTOS FOLLOW!!!

Clearly Leslie is going to be having issues with snacking.

As will I.

And even Jed!

Advertising FAIL

2009-08-05T07:45:00.000-07:00

You know how you get home some days and people have shoved various leaflets in your door handle? You may get some information about a neighborhood restaurant and their dinner specials; carpet cleaning information; "help find my missing dog/child" leaflets, etc. Usually you just walk them straight to your file 13.

I got home yesterday to find this stuck on my door:

Y'all. I'm all about free enterprise, for sure. BUT, here are some facts:

It hasn't rained in Austin since 1983.
Anyone who has seen any local or national news in the last 13 months knows that ALL OF TEXAS IS UNDER A SEVERE DROUGHT WARNING.
Lake Travis is at it's 3rd ALL TIME lowest level since it was created (Our MAIN SOURCE OF WATER).
It has been >100 degrees for 46 out of the last 49 days.
And THIS is what my front yard (THE YARD YOU HAVE TO WALK THROUGH TO GET TO MY FRONT DOOR) looks like:

Now. It would seem logical, to me, if I were distributing these leaflets, that this would be a house I could skip. Come on people. Use your head.

20, and holding

2009-07-19T09:57:00.000-07:00

Where, oh where, has all the time gone? It certainly doesn’t seem like 20 years ago I was walking across the stage of the Myriad Convention Center in Oklahoma City accepting my high school diploma. It was funny, then, that I was even there. I thought I’d never make it. I’m not saying I was dumb, but my attendance of that last year of school was a little more than questionable. And back then, I never imagined I’d be where I am today.

Going to my 20 year high school reunion wasn’t something I had any interest in doing. I didn’t have (m)any friends in high school. Certainly not by my senior year. Most of the friends that I had in high school graduated the year before me, or went to a new high school that opened up a few miles away the summer of my senior year. Imagine how bad that sucked, a new high school absorbing half of a junior class, separating friends that had gone to school together for four years, making them rivals.

It goes without saying that Jimmy was my absolute best friend in high school. I think I may have blogged about him in the past. I met him my junior year, while he was a senior, and under the strangest of circumstances we became extremely close, best friends in a very short amount of time. To this day I still consider him one of the few people that I could count on in any sort of emergency, or simple vengeance plan. He is my brother, my sexless soul-mate, my confidant, my all. People often wonder(ed) if there was anything between the two of us, but the thought of any such suggestion makes me want to hurl a bit. And I believe if you’d ask him, he’d feel like hurling too.

I met Teresa (no “h”) in 7th grade at Highland West Middle School. This was the pre-gay, and I had a huge, ginormous crush on Teresa. She was everything I wanted to be…smart, beautiful, intelligent beyond her years, more stylish than Molly Ringwald. She was the entire package. I’m thankful, now, that she repeatedly turned down my advances, and instead became one of my closest friends. She helped me through a lot of emotional shit my senior year of high school. I stayed in contact with her for a few years after high school, after I had moved to Austin. She had moved on to the glamorous life of Europe, while I moved on to scraping cow shit off the bottom of my boot. I lost track of her decades ago, but through the magic of Facebook, I reconnected with her a couple of years ago. She sent me an email last week asking if I was coming to the reunion, cuz she wanted to hug me and drink with me. My “undecided” immediately turned to a yes.

There are a few others I’m hoping to see while I’m “home” this week. Jim C., I met in fifth grade. We were better friends in 5th through 8th grade and lost track of each other afterwards. He also contacted me a few years ago (via MyFace) and said hello and that we have A LOT of stuff in common still today (IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!).

I doubt she’ll be there, but another mutual friend of Teresa’s and I, Kristi, was very influential in my life at that time too. While I was going through “the gay” thing, she was going through her own “not gay” things. I lost track of Kristi after I left Oklahoma and, oddly enough, her sister-in-law found me on MyFace a few years ago and put us in touch. I talked to her once on the phone for about an hour, but other than that I’ve not been able to talk to, or keep in touch with her again. I hope to see her…but.

And, sadly (or is it?), that’s it. Those are the people I look forward to seeing the most this week. Like I said, I didn’t have (m)any friends. These were the ones who didn’t bat an eyelash when “the gay” came up. These are the ones that stood by me when everyone else called me names or hurled insults at me. 20 years have come and gone and I still have a little bit of anxiety about walking back through the halls of my former high school. But the one thing that I feel absolutely shitastic about is that I’ve seen MANY pictures of the people I went to highschool with on the message boards of how they look today, and they look like ass on wheat, while I still look fabulous. I can’t wait.

Gay Marriage: Get used to it

2009-07-01T21:09:00.000-07:00

I'd like all the queers out there to please go check out this amazing post by my buddy over at Daddy Files. It's an amazing post from a straight ally in a fight for equal rights and marriage equality. I think it's important to give this man mad props for speaking out for the rights of all human beings. I want everyone to remember, when they're feeling frustrated about the pace of change happening right now that we're not alone in this fight.

Michael Jackson touched me

2009-06-26T07:53:00.001-07:00

I have to admit that I was touched by the passing of Michael Jackson yesterday. I was never really a fan of much of his music, but I recognized his talent. I’m having a hard time reconciling the public outpouring of sympathy and sadness right now. For years the American public has done nothing but ridicule and vilify Michael Jackson. The amount of “shock and sadness” being shown doesn’t seem to match the treatment he’s received from the public over the last 6 year. While I’ve never been a “fan” of Michael Jackson’s music, I’ve also never made any assumptions about the man throughout his life.

When I was 12 I was fortunate to see Michael Jackson perform in Dallas at the Jackson' Victory tour. My oldest sister, Dana, had gotten 4 tickets to the show and gave one of them to me and drove me down to Dallas to see him. I was awwwwwwwed by the spectacle of the show.

RIP Michael. I hope you're finally able to find some peace. I also hope your children are able to have some peace.

I'm adequately prepared for hell

2009-06-25T13:27:00.000-07:00

Folks, it's hotter than shit outside. Or, as my friend David said the other day, "It's hotter than a pygmy goats pussy in a pepper patch". I can't verify that, cuz I've never had a pygmy goat's pussy, but IT'S FUCKING HOT.

I did some screen caps on my idiot box the other night. This first cap is a monthly calendar of the temps, so far, for June. The temps in red indicate "record breaking heat". Keep in mind, these are "actual" temps, not "perceived" temps. Apparently the "perceived" temp, or the "feels like" temp is a good 10 degrees hotter than the actual temps. 105 isn't a temperature. 105 is Fairy Princess Holly's weight!

It's so hot outside that while I was walking home from the park yesterday morning with Adrian, at 1030 am, my flip-flop melted and stuck to the sidewalk. I'm not making that up. IT WAS 102 DEGREES at 1030 AM yesterday. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? It was so hot yesterday that when I got home from school at 10 pm it was STILL 97 degrees. BUT THE HEAT WAVE ISN'T OVER! They projected the temps today to be even higher.

Naturally I've been doing everything possible to keep cool. I've been taking the kids to the park at 3 in the morning so they don't over-heat. We've been in (and out of) the pool by 10 in the morning. We've been taking naps during the hottest part of the day (basically 9am to 11 pm). I've been going through ice so fast that the ice maker in my fridge can't keep up. I've been having to supplement with bags of ice from the market. While I know it's passe to have ceiling fans in your house, I have them in every bedroom and they are all on high blast. In addition to them, I've got "Vornado" fans (2 of them) in my 40 square foot living room blowing the air around. And, seriously, as long as you're sitting or laying in the path of the breeze, it helps.

My clothes have been completely saturated for a week now. I fear I'll be getting a fungal infection from my damp balls, because I just can't seem to stop sweating. BUT...there's a light at the end of this very hot tunnel.

When I opened last month's electric bill I noticed I had started using a bit more electricity from running my a/c a little more. I immediately walked over to my handy dandy programmable thermostat and reset all the "wake, leave, return, sleep" times and temps. I set the morning "leave" temp at 80 degrees and the "sleep" temps at 80 degrees. The wake and return temps were set to 75. I noticed today that I was actually chilly in the house and had to put some long pants on. Yes. When it's 106 (actual) degrees (at 2 pm)...111 (perceived degrees), 80 degrees is actually COLD! That's the good news! I'VE ACCLIMATED TO HELL!!!

GOD how I'm looking forward to the cold front next Wednesday!

Happy gay Fathers Day

2009-06-18T21:54:00.000-07:00

I've posted a shout out to all my gay parenting friends I've met over the intertubes over at my OTHER BLOG! Hope you take a second to check it out...even if you're not gay...or a parent!

I'm #1

2009-06-11T13:49:00.000-07:00

I'm not normally a paranoid person. But...

The other day I was driving around town with Adrian. He was upset at me for some reason. I'm sure it was something reasonable, like I didn't take him to Sonic, or bowling, or swimming, or Schlitterbahn, or some equally heinous act. I glanced over at him as we were driving down the highway and I swear I thought I saw him giving me the finger. But, surely I was mistaken, right? I mean, I don't use the finger. Jed doesn't use the finger. Nobody we know, really, uses the finger. I thought it MUST be the heat. The heat was making me see things.

Today we were driving around again. I looked over at him and he shot me NOT ONE, but TWO fingers. Yes, my son gave me the double-barrel finger-bang. I smiled at him and said, "Ummmm, sweety! What's that all about?" He let me know that some little girl in his class taught him how to do it. So I asked it what it meant. He replied, "It means you go to time-out".

I'm so proud.

(F)reddy got laid

2009-05-28T05:59:00.000-07:00

Holy buckets of lead, Batman. When was the last time I posted??? Writer’s block? No, not so much. I’d like to begin by thanking each of my adoring fans (you know who you ams) for checking in on me to make sure I was still alive. My twitter and FaceSpace activity verify I am! Let’s catch up, shall we?

Since we last spoke, I got laid off. Don’t cry for me Argentina. I say this more as a point of fact more than a cry for sympathy. I was told by my mother decades ago that if I wanted sympathy to grab a dictionary and I could find it between ‘shit’ and ‘syphilis’. I have nothing bad to say about my former employer of 11 years. It was a great experience, I met lots of people that I consider to be “family”, and it was a good run. I considered the loss of a job an opportunity to catch up on all the things I had neglected in my life since Adrian came to live with us. To say it’s impossible to keep up with your house, school, relationship with your finger puppet, and raising happy, well adjusted children while working a full-time job is an understatement. I’ve, seriously, seized the opportunity to reacquaint myself with life.

My totally amazing sister, Dana, came down to San Antonio a few weeks ago for a business trip. While she was living in Oklahoma I got to see her quite often. Since she moved to D.C., I’ve gotten to see her exactly once (until dinner in San Antonio!). And we did it up Guy Fieri style. I’ve had this fantasy of taking over Guy’s job on “Diners, Drive-Ins, & Dives” since I started watching the show. I’ve settled on following in his footsteps and visiting the restaurants he’s featured on his show. So we took my sister to the Tip Top Café and had the biggest, most delicious chicken fried steak I’ve ever eaten in my life.

We’ve spent some time in Galveston visiting family too. Just this last weekend we went down for a “just for the heck of it” trip and had a great time with the fam. We spent an afternoon at the beach picking up seashells and chasing waves and teaching Adrian to swim in Aunt Jan’s pool. He was a regular Michael Phelps…as soon as he grabbed on to the “fun noodle”! Jed and I even drove around looking at some houses.

I wrapped up this spring semester at school with 3-A’s and a B. It was a brutal semester, and while I mourn the loss of my 4.0, I’m proud of my 3.9. I earned it! I’ll be posting a blog in the next few days of some of the experiences, and assignments, from the semester that I didn’t want to write about during the semester (for fear of alienating peeps!).

As mentioned, I’ve been catching up on neglected household chores. Pre-layoff, I hadn’t mowed the yard in several months. The neighbors were starting to stare disapprovingly. Pre-Adrian, Jed and I had busted knuckles trying to fix up the house, replace plumbing, foundation, put color on walls, etc. I had started a remodel on the bathroom…and promptly stopped…midway…the day Adrian came to live with us. Our bedroom had become the lone room in the house that never got any TLC. So I’ve started in the bathroom again (anticipated completion early next week!) and FINALLY got some color up on the walls in the bedroom. I’ve become quite the Susie-homemaker (cleaning, cooking, etc.) since I’ve been home. I’m not quite sure I’m up to being a gay-at-home dad forever, but for the time being it hasn’t been too bad!

I’ve ALSO become quite the homeroom parent for ALL the schools the boys go to. In part because Adrian has been “having problems” with his teacher again and I’ve been wanting to get into his class to see what exactly the interactions between him and his teacher are like. I’ve also been wanting to get into Nathan’s school and see what and how they’re working on things with him.

That’s what I’ve got for today, folks. Nothing witty. Nothing insightful. I just wanted to let you know that I’m still around. While I’ve not been “working”, I’ve been busier than I was when I had a full-time job. I’m not actively looking for anything right now, but I don’t know how long I want to do this home gig. Summer is coming up…QUICKLY…and I’m looking forward to spending quality time with the boys doing fun things. BUT, I’m SURE after spending three months at home with them I’ll be more than ready for them to go back to school and get a job myself! We’ll see. Hope you’ve each been well, and thanks again for checking in on me. It warms me to know that there are so many people that read this blog and cared enough to make sure Jed hadn’t put antifreeze in my Kool-Aid.

Can you hear me now?

2009-03-27T16:31:00.000-07:00

I will make no effort to claim any sort of originality in this post, as I am positive this topic has been touched on by many other bloggers. This, however, is my own take so do with it what you will.

There are a number of places where cell phone conversations are not only inappropriate, but any persons violating the common courtesy rule should be immediately killed. There is a time and a place for a telephone conversation, none of these places are 'the place'.

When you're taking a shit, or any other toileting duties (IE: taking a piss, brushing your teeth, showering, bathing, flossing, exfoliating). I can't tell you how many times I have walked into the bathroom at work and have heard attorneys on the phone while they're popping a squat on the throne. Do you honestly think people want to hear you blowing air out of your ass while youre talking to them on the phone? What's more, is what you have to say so important that you can't wait until youre done washing your hands to have a conversation about what you want for dinner? And don't think you're fooling anyone when you say, "Hold on, I've got another call coming in"...(place phone on mute, flush, return to conversation). We got your number. You know what I like to do while I'M taking a shit and someone is talking on their cell phone??? I flush the toilet. REPEATEDLY. To let the person on the other end of the phone know that the asshole they're talking to is in the bathroom.

At a funeral. You would think this goes without saying, but I was actually at a funeral recently where not only someone's cell phone rang, but the tart actually had the audacity to answer the call. She thought she was being discrete as she said, "I can't really talk right now, I'm at a funeral. Six? Yeah, I can meet you at Chili's at 6." Have some respect for the decedents family people. Leave your cell phone in the car, or at least turn it off. At this same funeral, there were scores of other tarts text messaging through the funeral. This falls under the same category as actual phone calls as far as I'm concerned.

In a car. I've bitched and moaned about this in other blogs so I won't take too much time with it here. Before any of my IRL friends pipe up, I'll also admit that I OCCASSIONALLY break this rule too. But I don't do it while I'm trying to fix my hair while balancing a double cheese burger in my lap and holding onto a soda. If you can't stay within a lane of traffic while you're talking on a phone, or change lanes without clipping the car beside you, STAY OFF YOUR PHONE WHILE YOURE DRIVING.

When you're placing an order at any food place. Look, if you don't know what the person you're ordering for wants before you get there, don't waste the time of every person standing behind you reading off the entire menu to the person on your phone. At least have the courtesy to step back and let those of us who know what we want order before you.

At a movie theater or any type of live theater. Do you honestly think the requests at the beginning of a movie that say, "Please turn off your cell phones now" don't apply to you? I do not pay $10.50/ticket to sit and listen to you tell your friends that you're watching the new Harry Potter film and talk about how cool the special effects are and give them a play-by-play of the movie. Let them pay their own $10.50 to come watch it for themselves.

While some guy is getting ready to blow a load into any of your body openings. I know I'm not the only person who watched in horror as Paris Hilton climbed off her boyfriend's dick to answer her cell phone. If your sex partner has bored you so much that you have to answer your phone, please at least have the courtesy to fake the "O" to let him know you're done and just be done with the act entirely. Don't answer the phone and then climb back on to finish.

And finally, any time you are have a real live conversation with a real live person that happens to be sitting in front of you, have a little respect for that person. I can't tell you how many times I've felt sorry for a person when I'm out and see the person they're with chatting non-stop on the phone. It's rude, it's disrespectful. That person has taken time out of their day to spend time with you. Not sit there and listen to you make plan B.

Here's a newsflash in case you haven't figured it out yet. If someone calls you on your cell phone, there is a little thing called a call log that will let you know who called and when. When it's appropriate you can call that person back and have as much air time with that person as you need. Do it on your own time people, not at the benefit of everyone else around you. Oh, and if you HAVE to have a phone conversation in public, remember, IT'S A CELL PHONE, not a megaphone. YOU DON'T HAVE TO YELL to let people know what youve got to say. 9 times out of 10 its not that important anyway.

The Family Staycation

2009-03-26T06:40:00.000-07:00

The new interwebs buzzword is “staycation”. Due to the economy, it’s not just for poor white trash anymore, it’s for EVERYONE. Including The Phreddy.

We had a super fantabulous spring break family vacation planned. It had something for EVERYONE. With the help of the Food Network’s planning guide, I had mapped out a “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” tour of Texas/Oklahoma. We were going to spend the week staying in ultra-hip retro Tee-Pee Motels and eat our way across America’s homophobic “heartland”. We were going to see family and friends. We were going to have quality family time. We were going to travel parts of Oklahoma and Texas’ Route 66. It was to be the bomb-diggityest-bomb-bomb family vacation E.V.E.R.

BUT…

Due to reasons I can’t exactly get into on my blog JUST YET, we had to scrap “the plan”. We decided we would just stay put in our casa with the boys, since we had already taken the time off of work, and have 9-days of quality family time.

BUT…

After the first day, it became quite clear that the boys were NOT going to stay put for NINE WHOLE DAYS. We HAD to come up with a NEW plan.

Fortunately for us, spring break coincided with a TON of stuff going on in Central Texas at the same time. We decided to take a day trip to Houston on Tuesday to go to the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo. (NOTE: For those living OUTSIDE of Texas those words are pronounced HUE-STUN and ROW-DEE-OHHHHHH respectively. If we meant for y’all to say “HOUSE-TON” and “ROW-DAY-OHHHH”, we woulda asked ya to!) Anyway…

The FP’s mom and bro met us at the livestock show and rodeo, and it was an absolute blast. We had such a good time looking at the animules, and eating the fair fare and riding the rides. It was a tad bit exhausting driving 6 hours (3 there, 3 back) and spending, roughly, 5 hours at the show…but the boys had so much fun that it was ENTIRELY worth it.

The next morning we left for Oklahoma City for a visit with my family and a MUCH needed hair cut. Yeah, yeah…they have places here to get yer hairs done, but I only trust one person with my wig, so we have to go to OKC to git ‘er done. The first night we were there we caught up with my folks and my sister’s fam at a decent “Mexican” restaurant in Norman, Oklahoma. Living in Northern Mexico, it cracks me up to see what other people consider “Mexican food”!

Whilst in OKC I had high hopes of hitting at least one of the “Dives” from the food network, Leo’s BBQ. It didn’t work out for us though. APPARENTLY someone in Leo’s family died earlier in the week and the funeral was on the ONLY day we were able to go and the entire Leo’s BBQ family shut down both of its locations. My folks took us to this place in HELLAFAR north OKC (Arcadia, Oklahoma), which JUST SO HAPPENED to be on Route 66 called Pops. To tell you how amazing this place was, all I have to do is tell you that FOR LUNCH on a Thursday afternoon at 11 there was a TWO HOUR wait for a table (inside) and a 45 minute wait for a table outside (in the 50 degree weather!). Normally I’d spit in the hostesses mouth after she told me a 2 hour wait, but I showed a little restraint and told her we’d take a table outside. I had noticed they had a HUGE play yard in back of the restaurant and figured I could EASILY entertain the kids for 45 minutes. NOT TO MENTION, Pops had FIVE-HUNDRED different bottled sodas to look at in their coolers. We spent the better part of 20 minutes looking at all the options and then found out you could mix-n-match your sodas and create your own six packs. So Adrian went through the coolers picking out all kinds of sodas (by color, not flavor, of course!). After getting our table, I experienced one of the best double grilled onion cheeseburgers, fries, and LEMONADE I’d ever had in muh life. OMG, was that burger tasty! After lunch we took a quick drive down a little further on Route 66 and toured a historic “round barn”. It was surely enough to get me my Route 66 fix that I had originally planned on.

Later Thursday evening we met up with a bunch of our “family” (made-up family and bio family) at Ann’s Chicken Fry, coincidentally ALSO on Route 66! As the name suggests, Ann’s was not “healthy eats”, but HOT DAMN was that chicken fried steak, fried okra, and mashed potatoes T.A.S.T.Y! My only complaint about Ann’s was they didn’t have a space big enough to accommodate ALL of our “family”, so we had to split our group up into two…and I didn’t get to visit with as many folks as I wanted. And what did the boys think about Ann’s??? Adrian is STILL talking about his dinner that came out in a car! (Kid’s meals are served in a paper car!)

After saying goodbye to our created family, we said goodbye to our folks and left to head back to Austin LATE Thursday night. With EVERYONE in the car, except yours truly, falling asleep before hitting the highway, it was a VERY quiet ride home.

Friday we had a fairly lazy day around the house recovering from all the drive-time. But Saturday we managed to pack up a picnic and head downtown to Auditorium shores to catch some of the bands performing for SXSW music fest.

Ya know. I had a TRULY fantastic vacation with my family, even though we didn’t get to follow through with our initial plans. BUT…I can FINALLY answer Joe’s question. I DO NOT EVER want to be a stay-at-home dad! GOOD LORD! I needed to come back to work to recover from my staycation!

Where oh where has my little Phat Phreddy gone, oh where oh where could he be???

2009-03-25T10:14:00.000-07:00

I’m here to report I survived my near death experience and subsequent vacation, and wanted to let you all know HE’S ALIVE!

Rewind about 2 and a half weeks ago, on a Sunday, I woke up from a nap not quite feeling myself. I was clammy, hot, sweaty, hungry, nauseated, dizzy, etc. I ass-u-med it was because it was hot in the house and I was just having trouble waking up from my nap. I spent the better part of that Sunday afternoon/evening on the couch, barely able to move. By bedtime I couldn’t breathe…through my nose…and I, indeed, ended up having a fever of 104. I called it a night…but not before calling in sick to work the next day. Monday was pretty much a fog for me. I remember going to bed at 845 on Sunday and waking up at 530 MONDAY EVENING. I knew I must have been up at some point earlier in the day, because Adrian had made it to school, and Jed insisted he hadn’t taken him.

I woke up long enough to fake and effort to go to my class that evening. By the time I made it from the parking lot to the class room I was as wet as if I had stepped out of a swimming pool. I barely made it 40 minutes into my class before I stood up and stumbled out with my stuff and headed back home to go to bed. Not before checking my temperature, again, 103.2.

Tuesday morning started off much like Monday, however I had a test review for my “math” class that I have on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Since I ain’t the brightest bulb in the tree, I decided to try to go to class. I took my temp, it was 102.4…so I was getting better, right? I loaded up with some Tylenol and drove into town. I made it through class, barely, and on the way home decided to call my used-to-be-hot-before-the-75-pound-weight-gain doctor to see if he could tell me how much longer I had to live.

Tuesday afternoon, after an astoundingly short 2 minutes 27 second office visit, Dr. Former-Hottie informed me that I was, indeed, “sick” and called in a prescription for antibiotics, told me to take Mucinex D twice a day, and Zyrtec once at night. In hindsight, I don’t think he ever really told me WHAT exactly I had, but I figured out later it was a MAJOR sinus infection. As I still hadn’t been able to breath through my nose.

I took all the requisite pills Tuesday evening and went back to bed, apologizing to Jed for making him a single parent. Wednesday morning I woke up hoping to feel better, but I still couldn’t breathe and still had a fever. I called into the office again and told them if I didn’t die overnight I’d try to come in on Thursday. I wasn’t exhausted on Wednesday like I had been the previous three days, so I laid around catching up on The View, Ellen, Oprah, and … General Hospital. One thing I learned was that the Today Show now stretches into, what seems like, a five-hour show. And 5 hours of the Today show is 4 and a half hours too much. I did laugh my ass off though seeing the REAL LIFE version of Kathy Lee and Hodda-what’s-her-name, having only experienced the skit on SNL. If you haven’t seen it, the SNL version isn’t that far of an exaggeration!

Anywhoodle. By Wednesday evening I was feeling human again. I went to my class, and while I was, again, diaphoretic (sweaty!) by the time I got to my class and had to eat some more Tylenol, I knew I was on the upswing.

WARNING: AB-SO-LUTE DISGUST AHEAD

Thursday morning I woke up feeling fantastic. I STILL couldn’t breathe, but I felt like I could do back-flips down the street. I hadn’t felt this good in MONTHS. I dropped the bear off at school and headed into work. Along the way I sneezed, and I felt a little trickle coming down one of my nares. I grabbed my little hanky to blow my nose. I felt something a little odd, but didn’t think anything of it. About a quarter mile down the road I came up to a stop light. I started slapping my thigh to the beat of the music when I looked down. Between the webbing of my index finger and my thumb of my left hand I saw something that almost made me jump out of my car. I, quite literally, scarred the shit out of me. I can only describe it as what it would look like if you took a large red seedless grape and sliced it in half. It had the same texture, consistency, and color, as the inside of a grape, and the outside of it had the same texture, consistency, and color as the outside skin of the same grape. The son-of-a-bitch had been the “odd” thing I felt happen some quarter mile back…this huge mother fucker had come out of my nose. I grossed me the hell out. BUT…I COULD BREATHE!!! …out of the left side of my nose, anyway.

OH WAIT BITCHES! IT AIN’T OVER YET!!!

So I get to the office THRILLED that I can finally breathe through my nose. All that mouth breathing had been KILLING me…drying me out, making it difficult to sleep for 22 hours a day. I had a BANNER morning. BAN.NER.

I left the office to walk up to the school for my test (that I had done the review for on Tuesday). Half-way to the school I felt a trickle down the back of my throat that made me cough/snort a little bit. And when I snorted I could feel the hair from my scalp being pulled inward as a huge suction pulled it down like a toilet plunger as this huge wad of I don’t know what the fuck came down from my sinus cavity pulling everything above it down with it. It more or less was the size and consistency of my fetus in fetu. I spit it out when the mass hit the back of my throat, but I could feel the brittle bone structure as it flew past my teeth. And when it hit the pavement, I swear I heard it cry.

And while it is, I agree, disgusting, the most amazing thing happened. I was able to breathe better than I have ever breathed in MUH LIFE!

The rest of the week went without incident…

Next post, THE FAMILY SPRING STAYCATION!!!

What makes a DILF a DILF?

2009-03-13T11:16:00.000-07:00

Joprah, over at Dadblogs.com posted a blog about what made a MILF a MILF. I HAD to reciprocate, cuz they dig some participation over there, yo! What ARE DILFy qualities? I've been told before by LEGIONS (legions)of folks here in the community that I'm a DILF and I never really understood why people thought so. I mean, don't get me wrong. I AM hot. But am I DILFy hot? Let's begin, shall we?

MY DILFSHAKE BRINGS ALL THE BOYS TO YAAAARD

Fellas, for one, keep up with your physical appearance. Just because you "bought the cow" and are getting all that milk for free now doesn't mean you get to go all John Goodman on us. I'm not saying that yours truly is the ripped muscle stud he was back in the day. I've put on a few pounds, sure. But I can still buy off the rack. Having kids helps in this regard if you teach them hobbies other than Sponge Bob. Get out to the park with them, don't drive, ride your bike or walk if you can. Run around with them at the park and play with the little monsters instead of sitting on the bench talking to other pandas about how much your life sucks now that you have to get up before dawn on Sunday.

ATTITUDE FO' SHIZZLE

Dads who look like Brad Pitt don't need to act like they ARE Brad Pitt. The bottom line is all of our bottom lines stink a little. I'm sure you think you're all that AND the bag of chips, but fellas, come on. We all know what "average" is. You can't bullshit a bullshitter.

FASHION ICON'T:

Just because you're a dad doesn't mean you need to start wearing one piece sanz-a-belt pin-striped jumpers. There is this phenomenon that happens with men when they become dads that is frightening, and MOST ALL MEN DO IT! (Even in the House of (F)reddy ONE of the dads does it...I ain't pointing fingers!) DO.NOT.WEAR.BLACK.SOCKS.WITH.SHORTS.OR.DENIM. For the love of CHRIST, Taffy. Let me take you to Los Angeles, circa 1984. MY lovely father took us on one last family vacation so we could all see the ocean and go to Disneyland. IMAGINE my horror as I was frolicking in my Speedo and skipping through the waves (Yeah, I'm gay, so what!) as I turned to see MY FATHER walking towards me in...wait for it...wait for it...FULL LENGTH BLUE SWEATPANTS, WHITE V-NECK T-SHIRT, and BLACK SOCKS to come swim with me in the ocean. Everyone pounced his ass when I yelled, "MOLESTER, GET AWAY FROM ME YOU CREEPY OLD GUY". Nobody wants to see that walking up to a 14 year old in a Speedo. NOBODY. And it's not like my dad was 70 at the time. He was 44. He was FOUR YEARS OLDER THAN I AM RIGHT NOW. The point of this, if you dress like a freak, I will take your picture with my phone and post it on the internet for the world to see. DON'T dare me.

ONE WORD, MANSCAPE

Just because you CAN look like Wolfman Jack, doesn't mean you should. TRIM.THAT.SHIT.UP. Trim it off your ears. Trim it off your nose. Trim it from your eyebrows. IT DOES NOT MAKE YOU GAY to have the bridge of hair over your nose waxed so that you have TWO functioning eyebrows. Your chest hair should ABSOLUTELY not be longer than a half-inch long. Put on a #2 guard once a week and trim it down. It should also, under NO CIRCUMSTANCE, extend above the neck line of your t-shirt. If it does, remove the guard and clip it back. Those two racing stripes where your haircut ends...you know what I'm talking about??? IT SHOULD NOT EXTEND DOWN THE BACK OF YOR NECK AND DISAPPEAR INTO YOUR SHIRT. Regular grooming is essential. It's what separates men from apes. I won't even go below the belt, except to say...you need to trim that too. Nobody likes Wookiebush, except for other Wookies.

PRODUCT, PRODUCT, PRODUCT

Again, product doesn't make you gay. Don't be afraid of smelling a little spicey, or having your hair held in place with a little product.

THERE IS SUCH A THING AS "TOO BIG"

And I'm not talking about that. We want you to be fit n' trim, but we don't want you spending all your time at the gym trying to look like Mr. Universe. You lose IQ points in equal proportion to the diameter of your bicep. It's okay if you can't bench press a VW.

UNDEROES

Take care of your drawers fellas. If they've got snail trail, trash ‘em. If they've got holes where you can scratch the fellas directly, trash them. If the elastic in the band is wavy because they've been stretched to capacity for the last 3 years, TRASH THEM. It's a good idea to replace your cotton more than once every three years. Think about what you do in them. You fart in them. Occassionally you're in a rush to get out of the bathroom and don't shake the dew off your lily well enough to put ‘em in there dry. You sweat in them. Your underwear are DISGUSTING.

ACCESSORIZE

With your kids. There is nothing sexier on a dad than his hand holding onto his kids. Cut your spouse some slack and get the kids away from him/her once in a while for a peaceful afternoon and go out there and be a dad. Take the kids shopping. Take them to a movie. Trust me, chicks (and some dudes) DIG seeing a dad out by himself with the kids being an actively participating dad.

This certainly isn't an all inclusive list. There's plenty more that makes you DILFable, but we like to hold our cards close to our chest and keep y'all guessing what you're thinking.

An hour of my life I'll never get back

2009-02-28T18:35:00.000-08:00

For those of you who don’t know, the finger puppet doesn’t drink. Ever. Except for those rare occasions he wants a drink. And before I tell you what he drinks, I’d like you take a moment to empty your hands of any liquids that might spill onto your computer and/or small children who could be harmed when you start laughing. When he drinks, the boo loves…Zima. In case you missed that, I said, ZIMA. What can I say, he’s a lady.

So tonight was one of those rare nights that he wanted to get his drink on. I should have known something was up when he was rubbing his ass up against me like a cat on a tree. He said, very sweetly, “Boo Boo Kitty Fuck, would you like to go on a quest for me”? HELL.YEAH! A quest! I’m ALL about a quest. I says, “Sure Kit Kat Patty Whack, whatchoo need”? And he says the one word that sends me into a fetal position…”A Zima”. What.the.ever.loving.fuck? I meet the one self-proclaimed bear with a tiara.

Since I love him so much and will humiliate myself any way possible for him I slip my Crocs on over my socks and head out into the blustery cold night in search of my KKPW’s Zima. Not before, though, checking on the interwebs to verify that the shit is even still being made. Sadly, it is.

STOP 1: Gaysian liquor store near my house: Quick scan of the refrigerated section reveals no Zima. No problem. As I’m about to make my quick ninja like escape the man behind the counter asks, “Can I help you find something”? I whisper “Zima”, cuz there’s a ton of drunk rednecks standing at the cash register. “Excuse me”, he asks? I say, “Zima”, again. “FOR YOU”, he chortles? “NO! NOT FOR ME”. He tells me he hasn’t carried it in years since “the gay stop shopping here”. The ONE GAY in Austin stopped shopping there and now my BBKF can’t have a god damn Zima.

STOP 2: Triangle Liquor Store: SURELY the Triangle Liquor Store will have Zima. They’ve got my people’s fucking symbol in their name for god’s sake. Quick-though-somewhat-lingering scan of the cooler, no Zima. I ask the very sweet woman who works there (who I believe MAY be from India or Pakistan) who is DESPERATELY trying to communicate in English, “Can I help find you something”? I tell her I’m looking for Zima. She asks what it is. I explain to her it’s similar to the Bacardi coolers. She asks me if I can spell it, and it’s at this point that I realize if I have to spell it for her then it’s probably not going to be in her store. So I leave.

STOP 3: Twin Liquors in my HEB Parking lot. I walk in, there’s a very large, loud talking man arguing with the cashier. As I’m approaching the cooler I A) don’t see it immediately, but B) the arguing is getting louder and I have visions of a shoot out resulting with my dead body being found underneath a million shattered, shot out bottles of rum and vodka clutching a six-pack of Zima to my chest. So I don’t bother finishing my search. I walk across the parking lot to my HEB.

STOP 4: I knew the grocery store wasn’t going to have it. I don’t even know why I bothered to check. Nine-times-out-of-ten that fucking grocery store is out of Diet Dr. Pepper and ONIONS! What made me thing TONIGHT of all nights they’d have ZIMA!

STOP 5: I stop by the Texaco (Shell, whatever, sue me) by our house. They used to carry this stuff all the time. About 18 months ago, the last time BBKF scratched his ass up and down my leg, they were out, so I wasn’t too hopeful tonight. They were still out. Probably permanently.

STOP 6: Lastly, I ran to Spec’s. If Spec’s didn’t have it, NOBODY in Central Texas would carry it. Spec’s has EVERYTHING. And I mean…E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. I walked down the quarter mile of refrigerated section looking at every case. NO.FUCKING.ZIMA. A Spec’s employee walks by and he asks if he can help me find anything. I tell him I’ve been sent on a quest to find some Zima. He says, “No problem. I’m zertain we have zome Zima”. I love a clown with a sense of humor. So he walks up and the aisle and we’re not finding it. He walks over to the front counter and LOUDLY announces, “THIS GUY BACK HERE IS LOOKING FOR ZIMA. I THOUGHT ZERTAIN WE HAD ZOME”. The manager assures him they carried it and “zuggested” some places for him to look. He looks in all his suggested places and finally says, “Man, I’m really, really sorry. I can’t believe we’re out. Nobody drinks that ztuff anymore. We should have zome. Iz there something else she would like”? I laugh and say no. I thank him for his time and excuse him before he can make any other clever words by replacing the “s” with a “z”.

I’m crushed. In part because I’ve let my BBKF down, and in part because now I know this means I’m not going to get sprayed by the feral cat tonight. So I call him up and tell him my tale of woe. How hard I’ve tried to make his night of magic happen. I ask him if he would like anything else. He says, “Yeah. Sure. Surprise me”. Fool me once, shame on … well, however the hell that goes. Rather than “surprise him” (because I’m seriously NO GOOD at that game) I start reading off a bunch of different options. “Do you want beer? IPA? Something malt liquorish”? He stops me at malt liquor and says, “Yeah, just get me something girlie”. I start reading off the titles of the Bartles & Jaymes flavors: Mojito, no. Sangia, no. I get to, “Fuzzy Navel” and BBKF shoots back, “I said girlie, I didn’t say I wanted a vagina”! With that I couldn’t contain my laughter. I told him I’d surprise him and got off the phone. I picked out a six-pack of Mike’s Cranberry Hard Lemonade. The Spec’s zemployee zaw me walking up to the counter and zaid, “Good call. I think she’ll really like that”. And I said, “Yes, I think she zwill”.

My life with a 3-year old sociopath

2009-02-26T09:11:00.000-08:00

Since I often discuss the problems I have with the 4-year old, people often assume that the younger brainiac is an angel. For the most part I, actually, feel like he is. He’s the sweetest most loving little boy…when daddy is around, apparently.

Perhaps my expectations of the behavior of a 3-year old child are a bit too low. In fact, perhaps my expectations of a 4-year old child are too low. My struggles with the local school system in regards to my older braniac have been well documented, so I won’t regurgitate that for the sake of expedience. But now I’m having issues with our local school system relating to the younger brainiac.

For those of you confused why I have my 3-year old enrolled in school already, I should give you a brief background. My son doesn’t talk. Ever. I realize some of you are scratching your heads and wondering what the problem with that is. I have no doubt most of you feel like that would be heavenly if your toddler didn’t speak. But for me, it’s a matter of concern. It causes a great deal of frustration because the boy knows what he wants but lacks the ability, or desire, to communicate his needs. Many well-intentioned people gave us lots of advice when he was a little younger. “Don’t worry, he’ll talk when he’s ready”. “Einstein didn’t talk until he was 5”. “He doesn’t need to say anything, because his brother always answers for him”.

I didn’t want him to start life at a disadvantage of lagging behind in his language skills, so we decided to have him evaluated. We were told that he was significantly delayed in various areas of speech and that he was eligible for speech therapy through Central Texas Easter Seals. One of the benefit of being a foster/adoptive parent is that these services are free for him, so we saw no reason not to enroll him in the program. Admittedly, we’ve had a varying degree of success with the program. On his third birthday his Easter Seals benefits expired and he was elevated up the ladder to our local school system’s “Early Childhood Intervention” program. He went from having speech therapy twice a month to being enrolled in a local school program for 4 hours a day, 5 days a week.

His speech has gotten, relatively, MUCH better over the last 4 months. In fact, on the way to Galveston last week, I heard him counting softly to himself all the way up to fifteen. Last night, at dinner, he was dancing around, acting like a buffoon, when I noticed he was singing along to the musak that was playing over the loud speaker…to a song I had never heard before, much less play for him. I’ve always thought that when the boy DID start talking it would be in complete sentences, and for this I’m thrilled.

So what’s the problem you ask? As with the older braniac, I’ve gotten some disturbing communication from the school system regarding the behavior of my child. I’ve always been a huge advocate of the public school system. I think, hands down, public schools are a better environment for children than private or home-schooling environments. You can disagree with me on that all you want, in fact, I would appreciate you challenging me on that. I feel like private schools teach towards a specific agenda. In other words, send your child to a parochial school, and they’re going to learn the churches agenda. And while, admittedly, not intimately familiar with the home-schooling environment, I understand that there’s a certain level of interaction with other children, but for the most part it’s a limited engagement with a very small group of children. I feel like the public school system throws a child into a greater mix of diverse student populations that are invaluable to a child’s learning experience. Not to mention that whole exposure to childhood illnesses thing!

All that said, I’m beginning to think there’s some inherent problems to the public school system. As I mentioned at the very start of this, either I’m disillusioned and my expectations of my child are way too low, or THEIR expectations of children are way too high.

Last week I got a phone call from one of the younger braniac’s teachers. She was calling to tell me they were having “behavioral” issues with him and that it had been going on for a while. I found it odd that they had been having behavioral issues “for a while” and asked why I hadn’t been notified earlier. I was told they were trying to work the issues out themselves, but it had reached a point where they felt they needed some parental intervention or assistance. She went through the laundry list of “behavioral problems” they were having with my child. It took all I had to keep from laughing out loud on the telephone. To reiterate their point, yesterday he came home with a note from his teachers and three triplicate forms of “incidents” that I had to sign and date.

”We have seen increasingly aggressive behaviors while at school. I would like to
have his behavior evaluated by our mental health division here to see if they
can help us find solutions that may help calm his aggression…”

What? HE’S THREE. HE’S NON-VERBAL. What is a “mental health professional” going to be able to get out of him? I CAN’T GET HIM TO TELL ME WHETHER HE WANTS JUICE OR MILK!

Curious to see what his aggressive behaviors were, I checked on the incident reports they sent:
• Oppositional or defiant behavior: Has to be told a limit more than twice. Running in the classroom. Running away.
• Aggressive Behavior: Kicking. Throwing objects. Hitting. Biting.
• Inappropriate use of classroom and playground equipment: Climbing on furniture.

Again, I would like to say, HE’S THREE! Have these people never met a 3-year old before? The ONLY thing on the list that concerned me was the biting, as we had crossed that bridge YEARS ago. He hasn’t bitten anyone, that I know of, since way before his 2nd birthday. This leads me to believe that if he’s biting now, it’s a learned behavior from his new environment.

A group learning environment is nothing new to my son. He’s been in daycare since he was 6-weeks old. I feel like what the school administrators fail to recognize with their Pre-K and even Pre-Pre-K is that the children aren’t familiar with all the new rules of the school when they first arrive. THIS is a learned behavior. Of course my 3-year old runs around a classroom, that’s what he’s been doing at his daycare ever since he learned to walk! Of course my child needs limits told more than twice. HE’S THREE! Of course my child is kicking, throwing, and hitting, and climbing on furniture, HE’S THREE.

Please. Tell me, am I the one that has the problem? Am I disillusioned about how I expect a 3-year old to act? If so, please give me some suggestions at how to address these behavior issues.

I scream you scream we all scream for ICE CREAM

2009-02-20T04:17:00.001-08:00

I’m not above pandering to my children. Not that I feel I need to, but sometimes I just want to. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m also somewhat of a dork.

Last night we went to visit my ex-wife (a/k/a “fatty”; a/k/a “Kay”; a/n/k/a “low-fatty”) at the hospital. She’s been in there since Monday, when she went in to have an emergen-c-section. I had to drop off her breast pump for her AND I STILL hadn’t gotten a chance to see my brand-spankin’ new nephew yet! (And folks, despite the parentage, it’s really true…he IS a cute baby).

There was an “incident” in the hospital that will go down in our family as “The great elevator debacle of 2009”. Now, nobody fell down the shaft or anything. (ELEVATOR SHAFT, pervs!) However, there were tears involved. BOTH boys were hell bent on hitting “the button” to Narnia. When the doors of the elevator opened BOTH boys charged the elevator, but the older, bigger, faster, stronger boy won…by throwing the younger, smaller, clumsy one to the ground. After a loud discussion (me yelling at BM “WHAT THE FU”…hehehe, KIDDING!) with the boys about how neither one of them were going to hit the button now because both of them were acting like douche nozzles they both started sobbing. BM started yelling his new, recent mantra of “I don’t like you vewy much. You not vewy nice at me”. I told him to knock it off otherwise he was going to be staying in the hospital…in traction.

When we got out to the car I was having a slight twinge of guilt. I suppose I should have been proud at BM’s crazy mad line-backer skills. (I bet there’s a couple of you who didn’t think I’d know anything about Foosball, eh???) I mean, he TOTALLY took the LM out, cold. It was actually poetry. As we were driving out of the parking lot I says to the car (well, not so much “the car”, but the people IN the car), “I’m thirsty. I’m going to Sonic. Whoever can yell, ‘I LOVE DADDY’ the loudest will get anything they want when we get there”. And for the next four minutes I heard a choir of angels shouting to the world, “I LOVE DADDY, I LOVE DADDY, I LOVE DADDY, I LOVE DADDY”. I had a hard time determining who was actually shouting it loudest, so to break the tie, we all won.

And it really doesn’t get much better than that.

Pass me another Sam Adams, please

2009-02-19T12:26:00.001-08:00

As reported (LIKE WILDFIRE) yesterday, the BOY that would have Sam Adams’ career be over has posed nekkid for Unzipped magazine. (RELAX! The link is for the story, not the spread!)

I’m not saying Sammy boy wasn’t in the wrong here. I mean, his May/December breauomance, at his age, is similar to me dating, say, well, a much younger and legally blind “18-year-old”. And I ain’t saying that Beau wasn’t 18 when they started. Hell, it wouldn’t have mattered if Beau was TWENTY when it started. There’s a HUGE difference between, say, 55 and 35 compared to 45 and 18. One makes you say, “Look at that cute couple”, and the other says, “I wonder how much money and/or power HE has”? BUT THAT’S STILL not where Sam Adams went wrong. It showed a horrible (desperate) lack in judgment, but it’s not anything he should lose his job over. Who of us HASN’T dated someone much younger than themselves (or in one of your cases BEEN the much younger person!!!!) Where Sam Adams failed, miserably, is the cover up. The lie. The “PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON’T SAY ANYTHING”. But where he failed even more was his judgment in Beau Breedlove’s character.

So this “anonymous” person has come forward and is denying Beau was 18 when the relationship started. Is it any coincidence that this anonymous person is coming forward AROUND THE SAME TIME Beau is going to be showing his Bo in a magazine? Hmmmmm (Beau) I (Beau) wonder (Beau) who (Beau) this (Beau) anonymous (Beau) person (Beau) could (Beau) be (Beau)? Don’t get me wrong, I’m TOTALLY going to buy the magazine. I mean, look at him! Honestly though, I’d MUCH rather see Sammy boy…and I wouldn’t go running my mouth off about it either! (For reals Sam! Have your people get in touch with me…my email addy is right over there --->)

I sort of feel like Sam is a (stupid) victim (as well here). Don’t get me wrong. I TOTALLY think Beau is a victim too (snicker). I mean COME ON. You’re a 45 year old man and this “18-year-old” with a daddy complex comes up to you and says, “Hey man. I’m totally into older dudes who’ve let their waste lines fall to the wayside. You’re hot, do me”. It’s gotta make you feel good, right? I mean, I know my boo thinks I’m everything AND the bag of chips, but I KNOW he doesn’t still see me as the rock hard (BODY!) guy he met some 10 years ago. Hell yeah if some 18 year old said to me, “You’re hot”, I’d take my glasses off and smile. BUT…the difference between me and Sam is (F)reddy doesn’t think with his (F)red (anymore) and would be able to realize that the Boo had put him up (or paid him) to flirt with me to make the old guy feel better about himself. (Not to mention (F)reddy doesn’t wear glasses either!). Maybe Sam was having a low self-esteem day when Beau walked into his office (in his speedo, above) and Beau MADE Sam fall inside him? Who am I to judge? Does it speak volumes about Sam’s ability to pick a mate? ABSOLUTELY. Does it affect his ability to run a city? ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Warren Chisum is a douche nozzle

2009-02-18T06:41:00.001-08:00

douche [doosh] noun, verb, douched, douch⋅ing. –noun 1. a jet or current of water, sometimes with a dissolved medicating or cleansing agent, applied to a body part, organ, or cavity for medicinal or hygienic purposes. 2.the application of such a jet. noz⋅zle [noz-uhl]noun 1. a projecting spout, terminal discharging pipe, or the like, as of a hose or bellows.

(Douche Nozzle) (Warren Chisum)

April 10, 2005 was a fantastic day for my family. It was the day that my oldest son came to live with my family. It’s one of my top 5 days of my entire life, a day I will never forget. April 16, 2005 was also another day I’ll never forget. It was the day that Rep. Warren Chisum (R), Pampa, Texas introduced a bill to the Texas legislature to place a ban on the adoption of children by homosexuals. I had a huge anxiety attack that day. I had waited so long for my perfect family, and no sooner had my child been placed there was someone trying to stop it from happening. See, Adrian’s adoption wouldn’t be finalized for 7 more months after he came to live with us. The bill, of course, failed. But it still chaps my ass every time I think about this douche nozzle.

Two years later Texas decided to take up CPS reform. At the last second, Warren Chisum, again, tacked on an amendment to the CPS reform bill to ban same-sex couples from adopting children. There was an uproar in the legislature and his amendment was stricken from the bill and it passed without incident.

Our state legislature is again back in session and they’re busy “improving” our state. And Warren Chisum is in the news again. He hasn’t attacked MY rights again, yet. But he has been busy with yours. Earlier this week he introduced a bill that would require married couples (YAAAAY, FINALLY doesn’t affect me!) seeking a divorce to undergo 10 hours of counseling before a divorce would be granted. This would be at a cost of $50-100/pp./hr. to the happy couple seeking a divorce.

So, let’s summarize: California (and many, many other states), gays can’t marry. And in Texas, straights can’t divorce. Ain’t that a kick in the rubber parts? And while I not hoping any of my straighties get a divorce, I don’t think it’s governments business to tell them they can’t. It’s a matter of personal choice and it’s not a GOVERNMENTS choice. Warren Chisum must be one hell of a tortured soul if he’s constantly thinking about what his constituents are doing behind closed doors. That’s kind of sick, if you think about it.

The right to privacy is a presumable right, according to that little ol’ Bill o’ Rights of ours. It’s not explicit, but is implied. Many court cases have backed this up. Griswold v Connecticut was a case about contraception, and the Supreme Court upheld that it wasn’t the government’s business what two consenting adults did behind closed doors. Roe v Wade, regardless of how you feel about it personally, is fundamentally about a person’s right to privacy. Lawrence v Texas, again a right to privacy and finally decriminalizes one of things that the Boo and I enjoy. So when a couple decides to get a divorce, there’s an implied RIGHT TO PRIVACY ON THEIR PRIVATE MATTERS.

I’m curious where this arbitrary “10-hours of couples counseling” came from in Ms. Chisum’s mind. I mean, there are dinners that I prepare that take more than 10 hours to “fix”.

Let’s say, for example, you get home from work one day and you see a sweaty Ron Jeremy going at your wife’s starfish from behind and a line of six naked guys behind him waiting for their turn to take a stab at her. That’s going to take a little bit more than 10-hours of counseling to recover from, don’t you think? I mean, there’s a really strong possibility that you may be scarred for life if you see something like that, right? And before you hit me with the, “Well, (F)reddy, that’s a bit of an extreme example…”, PUH-LEEZE. I’ve seen Xtube…I KNOW what kind of sick, twisted, perverted stuff y’all are capable of.

Let’s say your wife goes all Lorena Bobbit on your junk, exactly how many hours do you think you’re going to need before you recover from that?

How’s about America’s favorite “heterosexual with issues”? Do you honestly think Ted Haggard’s wife is going to be able to work out these issues? THEY’VE BEEN IN THERAPY since that entire fiasco began, and NOW there’s more menz coming forward talking about their relationships with Teddy Bear…AND HE’S NOT DENYING THEM. Not ten hours, folks, YEARS OF THERAPY.

Now, if your wife is torturing you by making pickled beets every night for dinner, yeah, sure, perhaps a neutral third party can slap some sense into her for you and you can work your issues out. However, regardless if you can or not, IT’S A PERSONAL MATTER AND GOVERNMENT HAS NO BUSINESS IN YOUR PERSONAL MATTERS. So I’m fully aware that the vast majority of Americans are deeply dead set against MY personal matters. That’s coo. I’m able to turn the cheek, for the most part. I just want to go on record to say that when the government start tweeking YOUR issues, (F)reddy’s got your back. Even when you don’t have mine.

(F)reddy earning his beads at the Mardi Gras

2009-02-14T18:58:00.001-08:00

VD

2009-02-13T11:08:00.001-08:00

So I’ve had to keep this post on the DL for a couple of days, but I can finally come out of the closet!!! I had mentioned a few days ago about the contest being run over at Dad Blogs DOT com??? Well, Joeprah went ahead and submitted my name into the contest for my blog about my super amazing boo and how fantastic he thinks I am. On Monday Joeprah held the drawing for the winners…and little ol’ me was one of the five! Now, I realize that this probably diminishes the lovely “One-Two PUNCH” I had delivered to the boo this week, cuz after he reads this he’s going to full-on realize that I didn’t throw down the cash. BUT, he got ta got ta got ta realize that if it weren’t for him being such a sweet angel butt, I wouldn’t have been inspired to write about him and his many flaws. Like I said in my completely romantic card to my kitten, “Boo, I LOVES YOU MORE THAN SOAP”!

There were some great reads in the contest. If you’re interested, feel free to check out the other wieners, Ben Spark, Twin Pop, New Dad Blog, and Charlie. Another BRILLIANT read is from my dear friend, Anita over at Angelnina’s Cottage. If you’re not reading her, regularly, you need to be. She’s an amazing woman. What I wouldn’t give to have her and her husband, Mark, adopt me and the boys…(but then I think that’d make Adrian and Nathan her grandchildren, and I don’t think she’s ready for that just yet).

It was Anita’s post that got me to thinking about what a douche-bag I am when it comes to the whole “romancing the bone” thing. See, Jed tells me all the time that a steaming pile of shit is more romantic than me. I think I used to be romantic. I mean…I had to win him SOMEHOW, didn’t I? (Incidentally, I know EXACTLY HOW I won him…but that’s HIS story to tell!)

There was one year, I’d have to check my passport for sure, that I surprised him with a trip to London for Valentine’s Day. I thought that would be a wonderful and amazing surprise…and, perhaps, it would have been a little more romantic if I had not brought his mother along with us. BUT…

We were able to spend that Valentine’s day in Bath, U.K., following a tour of Stonehenge, at Sally Lunn’s. Now, much like the US, if you’re in the UK and forget to make a reservation for Valentine’s Day, you’re shit out of luck. PARTICULARLY, since, UNLIKE the US, in Bath, UK, at 6, the town is boarded up and there is nothing open in town except for, maybe, two pubs and Sally Lunn’s. When we had checked into the hotel I gave Sally a call (not the original Sally, cuz she died, like, 300 years ago). The hostess actually laughed at me when I asked if we could get in for dinner that, Valentine’s, night. And for a Brit to laugh, you either gotta be really, really funny, or really, really stupid, because British people just don’t have a sense of humor…about anything.

So, without saying anything to Jed and his mom, and his best friend, Amy (did I mention I also brought his best friend along as a surprise?), we all started walking to the town center, towards Sally Lunn’s. I’ll be damned if I was going to let an uptight little Brit ruin MY plan. (And Americans say we ain’t “brutish”!) I didn’t even pretend that I had called…we just walked over like we HAD reservations. AND-IT-WORKED! We walked in the front door and the hostess asked us what name our reservation was under. I said, “Oh! I didn’t think to make one, is tonight something special”? (AS IF Sally Lunn’s was just somewhere I’d think to eat on a whim, like What-A-Burger.) The man looked down her nose at me and said, “Sir, if you’ll just give us a few minutes I’m sure we can accommodate your party”. And accommodate they did! The dinner was quite tasty…as tasty as you can have with boiled potatoes and, well, you know, ENGLISH food. What I was MOST excited about was the heart shaped “bun” (or, BREAD) that they gave each table after the meal. Had I realized that Europeans didn’t use any sort of preservatives in their cooking an the bread had a shelf-life of about 20 minutes I wouldn’t have SAVED IT for the next day. Because, seriously, the next morning you could have used it to prop a door open. A HEAVY DOOR.

The following year, figuring I had done my “romantic deeds” for the decade with the trip to London I opted to do nothing. BESIDES, WHY DO I ALWAYS HAVE TO BE “THE GUY'”! Ummmmm, lemmee tell ya, that was the wrong choice!

Last year we had a fairly decent Valentine’s day dinner too. I took the boy to the Blue Star Cafeteria. Now, I assure you that just because it has the word “cafeteria” in the title AND the woman on the front page of their website is wearing some tragic bo bo shorts, it ain’t like a Lubby’s or a Furr’s type of cafeteria. It was DE-LISH. It wasn’t London, but hey…I made an effort. Once again, though, I screwed it up by making it a double date night with some other homo dad friends of ours. I just figured sharing a babysitter would be nice, eh?

This year we’re spending Valentine’s day in Galveston for Mardi Gras…ahhhh, bromance. Island resort, sand, surf…the smell of petroleum from the gulf, half the island still a construction nightmare from Hurricane Ike, oh, and Jed’s family! The good news is there’ll be someone that can babysit the kids while Jed and I go out for an amazing seafood dinner…alone! Like I said, I won 70 bones from Dad-Blogs for ProFlowers. They had a cool gift called the “One-two punch”. One day flowers were delivered…and the very next day a 1/2 dozen chocolate covered strawberries were delivered with some “conversation heart” frosted butter cookies. Awwwwwwww. Ain’t I sweet? Jed called me yesterday after getting the flowers and left a voicemail that sounded more like a question: “Uhhhh, (F)reddy? I just got…flowers? Ummmmmm…thanks? They’re really pretty? Uhhhhh…I love you?” It was said more in a manner of “Why are you leaving me? Are you dying?” than anything. It was really cute.

And what did (F)reddy get? Cashews and a sweet coffee mug from my favorite monsters, a iTunes gift card, and an opportunity to spend the day with my truly fantastic family. And, for reals, I wouldn’t want anything else.

The Six Million Dollar Man AND The Bionic Woman.

2009-02-13T07:51:00.001-08:00

And I’m not talking about that 2007 crapfest either!

Continuing on with shows I dug as a lad, I bring you two of the awesomest shows in the history of televsion. These were not paired together in my original post, however you’ll see why I’ve decided to pair these lovebirds together in this one post in a bit. Sit backs, relax, and enjoy. Firsts up, my original thoughts on the show:

The Six Million Dollar Man: Lee Majors was, perhaps, the hottest man on television at the time. He was fine, athletic, smart. He was, and had, the whole package (insert snicker here). My folks created a gay monster that year by buying me the Six-Million Dollar Man doll for Christmas. It kind of creeped me out a little bit, because you could roll up the "skin" on his arm to expose his bionics. He had a hole in the back of his head so you could seeing amazingly far distances with his bionic eye. I can't tell you how many times my Six-Million Dollar Man and my G.I. Joe doll did "calisthenics" together to beef up their appearances.

The Bionic Woman: I loved Jamie Sommers. She had the cool bionic German Shepard too. That scar on her lip bugged the shit out of me, and watching the repeated nightmareish image of her skydiving accident every week definitely kept me from ever wanting to jump out of a plane. I was always jealous of her bionic ear (and the fact that she eventually nailed Steve Austin). For those of you who don’t know, I’m partially deaf in my left ear JUST LIKE JAMIE, so I would have LOVED to have her super-duper hearing.

Y’all just going to have to forgive me a minute while I queer out, okay. I mean, JUST LOOK at Lee Majors back then and you can see why I loved this show so much. Ladies, can I get an AMEN? When I was growing up in German, as previously mentioned, we didn’t have a television. But we did have record players. For those of you born AFTER 1980, records were little wax (or plastic) disc about 14 inches in diameter that you put on a rotating device, known as a “record player”. They were, sort of, similar to what people born between 1980 and 2000 commonly referred to as a “CD”, and what people born after 2000 now call an MP3. Anywhoodle. My folks bought me the Six Million Dollar Man album, which I STILL HAVE to this day. Yeah, BE JEALOUS. For those of you who are wondering if it was an album of Steve Austin’s dance hits, STEP OFF! They were like recorded episodes of the show…ON ALBUM (or CD…or MP3…or what ever language you understand). Although there were only two episodes on this album, I would listen to it FOR.HOURS.ON.END. Oh my god, did I love The Six Million Dollar man. AND, as mentioned in my opening above, my folks also bought me the Six Million Dollar Man doll. (HUH! Now that I think about it, maybe it IS nurture vs. nature!) LOVED Lee Majors. Loved Steve Austin. LOVED the Six Million Dollar Man. I mean, JUST LOOK AT HIM! [faints]

Confused by my placement??? Don’t be. It'll all make sense in a bit. Lindsay Wagner played Jaime Sommers. She initially started off in a 2-episode arc of TSMDM in the second season. While Steve Austin was visiting his family in Ojai, California (Incidentally, the town where Brothers & Sisters takes place!) he runs across his old flame, Jaimes. They hook up, do the horizontal mambo, reconnect. She goes diving, foolishly, out of a perfectly good airplane and crashes into a bush and gets broked up real good. Steve, thinking with his little head, convinces his good pal (and personal surgeon) to put her back together again like he did for him. And Rudy does. But you know how chicks ALWAYS have to mess EVERYTHING UP…Jaime’s bionics aren’t functioning properly, then she develops a brain clot, and dies…in Steve’s arms…leaving him lonely and broken up…again. But the fans didn’t like that. They really dug Jaime, they really dug the love fest between the two characters. So the next season they bring Jaime BACK TO LIFE (gotta love television, eh?!?) and give her her own series.

Richard Anderson was one of two actors that played on both series simultaneously. (I’m not sure if this was the first series that did this…had characters from one show on another show at same time both shows were on the air. I DO know that they were the first two actors to play the same characters on two different shows on two different NETWORKS.) He played “Oscar Goldman” who was a good friend and confidant (and OSI director) to Steve Austin on TSMDM and Jaime’s boss on TBW. He, apparently, was good enough to keep the secret from his “good friend” that his good friend’s love interest was ALIVE AND WELL AND NOT DEAD. With friends like him folks, for reals.

Martin Brooks is the only actor in the history of television actors that actually looks younger today than he did in 1976. I don’t know how he did it…perhaps he cryogenically froze himself? Yeah, so this was Dr. Rudy Wells, the man. He was the original conflicted surgeon (although…not actually the “original”, cuz there were TWO other “Rudy”s before him. But he trade marked that “I’m very concerned about your health and emotional well-being” look that he’s famous for. A/K/A “Bedside manner”.

Now, I should point out that The Six Million Dollar Man ORIGINALLY started off as a television movie. In fact, there were THREE movies prior to the launch of the weekly television show about the “Cyborg”, Steve Austin. Additionally, after the show(s) simultaneously went off the air in 1978 three sequels spun off featuring both bionic characters (AND Rudy and Oscar). The Return of the $6 Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman (1987) in which Jaime helps train Steve’s newly bionic son (which was NEVER mentioned in the series); The Bionic Showdown (1989) which introduced a virtually unknown Sandra Bullock (who, incidentally owns a restaurant a half-block from my office FYI!) and featured Steve Austin’s son as an agent of OSI (wait…wasn’t he…BIONIC?); and the worst made-for-t.v.-movie EVER, Bionic Ever After (1994) in which both actors agents should be shot in the forehead for forwarding the scripts. Seriously? This movie sucked. When Jaime got bionic AIDS and her bionics started shutting down I actually muttered, “Good riddance”. I think the show actually said she had “A COMPUTER VIRUS”! And that was before “computer virus” was part of our daily lexicon! By that point Lee Majors had gained a gut and lost a substantial amount of hair (and sex appeal), and it was just tragic to see a 65 year old Lindsay Wagoner slow.motion.lift A TENNIS BALL because her bionics were failing. I cried out to my television, “PLEASE DON’T MAKE ANOTHER SEQUEL. PLEASE JUST LEAVE IT AS IT WAS…”

Real quick, to finish here, in addition to the dolls I had, mentioned above, I have very specific memories of my sister having the Bionic Woman Lunchbox:

And HOW SUPER AWESOME was Maximillion, THE BIONIC DOG!

And how much MORE awesome was the greatest television villain EVER in the history of television villains? THE ARMY OF FEMBOTS?!?

Uhhhhhhhhm, YEAH, THIS was the greatest show EVER!

Alice

2009-02-12T05:19:00.001-08:00

Part 3 of the series folks. If you missed The Facts of Life and/or Good Times, I suggest you check ‘em out. Writing this one gets me all misty eyed and emotional. I can actually remember where I was during the series finale. This was, perhaps, … yeah, I can’t even say that. Cuz later on you’ll be saying, “But (F)reddy. You said ____ was you most favorite show ever”. And then I’ll lose all my credibility and I’ll have to retreat back up into my shell. Buckle up. I have a feeling this is going to be a bumpy ride.

Alice: Single moms everywhere flocked to their local diner for employment opportunities following this show. Who wouldn't want to work with Florence Jean "Kiss-my grits" Castleberry, or drink Schnapps with her in her single-wide trailer??? Okay, so the show wasn't about Flo. (That was another sequel, cleverly entitled "Flo"...another sequel that didn't need to be made). Tommy was hot and was totally worth watching the show for. Not to mention, I dug how Alice had a revolving door of hot (for the 70's) men coming in and out of her...door every week.

So, I’m a bit conflicted about writing one thing about this show, the “changing of the guard”, if you will, from when Flo left the show to star in her own sitcom. See, it’s not that I hated Jolene. I actually liked her. BUT I sort of feel the way about her that I did when Chrissy left Three’s Company and there was a revolving door of look-a-like actress there to take her place. Not that Jolene looked ANYTHING like Flo, I’m just saying. I’m a purist at heart, and a small part of me died when Flo left the show. Like, had there not been that whole storyline about … well, let me just go ahead and add her and we’ll talk about that later.

I didn’t realize until about a year or so ago that the television show was actually spun off from the movie, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. I was going through a list of AFI’s top 100 movies of all time and adding all of them to our Netflix queue. When ADLHA was about to be shipped I read the description to see what it was going to be about and just said, “HUH?!?”. I actually REALLY dug the movie. It answered SO many questions for me. Like, I knew Alice was a widower, but didn’t know how her husband died. I knew Alice was a trashy lounge singer, but I just thought that was some random coincidence…something that Linda Lavin pushed for. The movie actually explains the whole shooby-doh-wah thing. Also, I always wondered why Alice settled in Phoenix, of all places. I mean, PHOENIX? REALLY? The film answered a LOT of these questions. Incidentally, IMDB has a “synopsis” of the television show, but it’s not exactly what happens…according to the movie that started it all.

Oh, I’m sorry. Does Vic’s “now” picture disturb you? So, Vic played Mel, the owner of Mel’s Diner, in the show. INTERESTIGLY enough, Vic ALSO played Mel in the movie version. In fact, Vic is the only character who starred in both the movie and television series. Mel was supposedly this hard ass that was difficult to get along with. I completely relate to him. I really think he was misunderstood for those 9 seasons of the show. And it was SO OBVIOUS at the end of the shows run. This is a shameful Freddy moment, but I have to be completely honest about something here. I don't know if anyone remembers the series finale for Alice, but I do. It's permanently etched in my memory. I SOBBED like a school girl during the final episode when Mel gave the girls the little cow creamer with the check inside, splitting the proceeds of the sale of his diner with each of them. It was one of the most emotional moments of my life. I still cry every time I think of it. I, actually, also cried when they reported Vic’s death in 1990. I sort of related to him as a fatherly type figure.

I hate to admit this, but something REALLY bothered me about Linda Lavin’s “Alice”. I don’t know if I thought she was whiney, stupid, horny, or what. But something always struck me as off about her. I can tell you, there’s a VAST difference between the character on the television show than there is in the movie. Now, OBVIOUSLY I didn’t know about this difference until last year…but that makes how I felt about Linda Lavin’s portrayal of this single mom back in the 80’s even more relevant to how I feel about her now. Don’t get me wrong. I think Lavin is an incredible actress. And I honestly feel that she would be warm and nurturing. But she came off in the television series as aloof and just…well, a push-over. And I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief that this woman would be able to pick up everything she owns following her husband’s death and start over in a new town, with a new job (that she’s never done before) and raise her son. I just didn’t buy it. I think if the show had been about what a fantastic, loving mother she was to her son, it would have been believable. But I don’t really think that’s what the show was about.

OH MY GOD! HOW MUCH DID (F)REDDY LOVE FLO?!? I loved Flo, hard. I was actually able to transport myself to Flo’s trailer and sit on Flo’s dirty sofa and drink beer with her when I watched her. (SEE! POLLY HOLLIDAY WAS ABLE TO SUSPEND MY DISBELIEF!) I squealed like a pig in mud every-single-time she screamed, “Kiss my grits”! Honestly, as a kid, it was the funniest line ever. I was super sad when Flo left the diner, but was thrilled when she got her own series. Sadly her other series, “Flo”, sucked balls. And not in the good way. Not because of her, mind you. It’s just that she worked with the entirety of the ensemble cast…and she just never really found her groove with the second cast. So, when I realized that ADLHA was a prequel, if you will, to the series, I was REALLY excited to see what Flo was like in the movie. Polly Holliday’s Flo was a MUCH MORE memorable character. As a little tangential side, when Gremlins came out in the early 90’s, I was DELIGHTED to see Polly Holliday in it…even if she did die.

Beth Holland played the loveable and goofy, Vera. (Not to be confused with Vera Carp, as played by my good friend, Jaston Williams!) While I certainly didn’t know it then, I actually ended up hookin’ up with and raising children with “Vera” in my future! The FP IS Vera, but not nearly as graceful. Beth Holland’s Vera was SO much better than the movie versions. In fact, I’m not sure the movie version of Vera actually ever spoke. Beth Holland largely disappeared after the run of Alice. She did a couple of cameo performances after the fact in some shows, but she’s pretty much kept herself in seclusion for the last couple of decades. Sadsies. I really thought she was a talented actress and someone I could see myself being friends with…obviously.

Phillip McKeon, rarrrr, played Tommy. Interestingly he wasn’t the first choice for Tommy in the series pilot. The ORIGINAL Tommy, from the movie, filmed the pilot for the television show, but for some reason Philip McKeon was cast for the very next episode. The Tommy from the movie was actually quite a bit younger (in the movie) that Philip McKeon’s Tommy, however it was felt that the actor who played Tommy in the movie was too old for the part. Weird! Whatever. Since Alice ended in 1985, Philip has remained to some extent in the television industry. His more recent acting credits include “Sandman” and “Ghoulies IV”. He’s more active behind the camera these days than in front of it…I’m sure “Ghoulies IV” had NOTHING to do with that decision!

Celia Weston played Jolene. Like I mentioned in the beginning, I sort of felt a phantom pain when Flo left and never really got into Jolene’s character or story line, much. I honestly can’t tell you a single thing her character did to enhance the story, EXCEPT to humanize Mel. It was while hooking up with him in the ally behind the diner that Mel found his soul. So I guess, in that regard, she was good for something. But Celia, sweetie, seriously. NOBODY believes red is your natural color, honey. Your, like, 90 now. Time to let go of the jar.

I guess the fact that one of my favorite shows growing up took place in a diner could have been some foreshadowing into my future (eating out at Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives across the country…hookin’ up with ~~Vera~~ Jed). Mel’s Diner was my Oz (not the prison one, y’all…the Dorothy one). There truly is no place like home cookin’.

The Homosexual Agenda

2009-02-11T07:29:00.001-08:00

I've found myself struggling to find my voice recently in this new blogging community. I started blogging a half-a decade ago over at another site in an effort to keep up with my friends and family more regularly. Separated by miles and time-zones, I'm really crappy when it comes to keeping in touch. So I started writing my drivel in an effort to keep my family up-to-date with what was going on in my life. And then a bizarre thing started happening. STRANGERS started reading what I was writing AND INTERACTING with me. Over the last 5 years those people have gotten used to my "style". They either love it or hate it, but they keep coming back. Things changed dramatically for me over the last 5 years and everyone who followed me had a front row seat into our lives. And our lives were celebrated. And it was fun. It IS fun. So a few weeks ago I signed up for this new forum, and it was like going from being one of the popular kids in high school to being the nerdy freshman drum major at a third tier college. It ~~was~~ is really hard for me to edit myself for folks that may not be used to a person who speaks off the cuff. Nonetheless, I thought it would be worth the effort to try and figure out how to make the transition. So here I is.

I recently signed up for the email alerts from the American Family Association. One of the podcasts I listen to on a regular basis was talking about how Christ-centered Americans should be boycotting Campbell's Soup products because of their position on the recognition of diversity amongst their employees and families. I think it's funny and ironic that an Christ-centered organization with the word "family" in their very name would be put out by any family.

You may be wondering why I chose to sign up for these frequent email "agenda" alerts. In the alerts that go out, frequently, you'll find email links to CEOs, CFOs, HR directors, etc. where you can send your emails of disdain and your plans to boycott their many products. I actually would like to thank the AFA for helping me out by providing me the email addresses so that I can email my support, instead. It also keeps me on my toes, letting me know what they think of me and what I do.

I've read a lot about "the homosexual agenda". It makes me sad, really. I guess the day I got in line the person handing out the agendas ran out? It certainly would have made the last 27 years easier if I had gotten an agenda. For 27 years now I've lived with anxiety that I'm going to be late for something. Some of the things that the AFA puts out there to their registered members is actually quite funny...if it weren't so sad. I'd like to take a few minutes of your time to clear up some common misconceptions about my people. I'll try to keep it as clean as I can, but you must understand: By the very nature of me being a homo, I'm predestined to be filthy. So consider yourself warned. And, at the very end of this post, at the risk of being expelled from my gay community for violating "the code", I'm going to give each of you the homosexual agenda (I actually was able to find a copy folded up in my FP's underwear drawer).

FACT: The gays want to undermine and destroy the institution of marriage. This MIGHT be true for a certain portion of the gays. Particularly in the Californias? I mean, they desperately want to be fully included in this whole civil rights thing. Which means they want the same rights to have over 50% of their relationships to end in divorce. I find it hysterical that 70% of Americans find divorce morally acceptable, but want to PROTECT MARRIAGE by preventing the gays from doing it. For the record, the FP and I don't want to get married. Actually, that's not true. After 11 years of cohabitating, I've been told I'm not marriage material. Apparently I'm parenting material, and mortgage material...just not marriage. This leads to a little confusion when coming up with a name for each other upon introductions. I can't call him my "husband", cuz we ain't married. I refuse to call him my "partner", cuz we ain't in business together. I ABSOLUTELY refuse to call him my "lover" because that's just gay. I won't call him my boyfriend, cuz I'm pushing 40's doorbell and he ain't that far behind me. Neither of us have been "boys" for quite some time. So I call him my finger puppet, or my FP for short. Because when most people get ugghed out by homos, the reason they get ugghed out is they start thinking about what I'm doing in my bedroom. If calling my boo my "Finger puppet" grosses you out, good. Maybe you'll stop thinking about what WE'RE doing...because I sure as hell ain't thinking about the disgusting things y'all are doing. (Except for maybe you...)
FACT: The gays have 24/7 non-stop drug induced amazing monster sex. This one is true. I mean, for reals. We're TWO guys, after all. Not just one. ***SEE BELOW
FACT: The gays have FABULOUTH (say it with a lithp people, come on) homes that are FLAWLETHLY decorated and EMACULATE yards and can cook anything Emeril can, but better. This is complete and total horse-pooh. I started a simple remodeling project on our one and only bathroom 4 years ago. It's still a work in process and will still be in process 4 years from now. We BARELY have a functional shower, and that's just cuz I'm the ~~king~~ queen of improvising. While it's true I am an amazingly fantastique cook, the FP (ugggh) can't boil water with out messing it up. Since having kids I have nothing of value in my house. My glassware has been replaced with plastic, my "art" has been replaced with shitty crayola drawings...which I love.
FACT: The gays like to have anonymous sex with any male in a variety of public places: Uhmmmm, look. Just cuz you have a knock-knock, don't mean I'm interested in seeing it. While I do have a "type", most likely you ain't it. MOST of us aren't into dudes that look like John Goodman (or John Candy...when he was alive, not like he looks now, cuz that's just disgusting); MOST of us ain't into married dudes; MOST of us ain't into IT guys. And, the odds are, if you're reading blogs, you fit into one of these three categories. Did I just make a gross assumption about a stereotype? Ummm, yeah. I did. So unless you look like Christopher Meloni did in the hit series, Oz, AND you're sharing a prison cell/shower with me...you've probably got nothing to worry about.
***SIDE NOTE: I actually had someone in one of my classes recently STATE THIS FACT IN CLASS. FACT: The children need to be protected from the homosexuals because of the increased risk of AIDS and other STDs: Bitch, please. Do you know how STDs are spread? Are you having sex with your children? NEITHER ARE WE! In fact, you might be surprised that many of us WITH children had to go through EXTRAORDINARY METHODS to get them. (You didn't think we popped ‘em out our manginas, did you?) As part of that process, many of us were monitored by various agencies. Through that monitoring, these agencies weren't able to witness any of us having sex with our children. And I don't think it was because we were on our best behavior while the people were in our homes. Cuz, in case you didn't know, FOUR YEAR OLDS ARE INCAPABLE OF KEEPING A SECRET...so I'm sure it would "slip out" if that's what we were doing with da kids.
FACT: They're trying to infiltrate our schools to indoctrinate our children at an earlier age. Since Ted Haggard beat us to the churches, we had no other choice but to head to the schools. I'm really sorry about that. Kidding aside, I realize there's been a plethora of news stories in the past few years about teachers being arrested for having sex with their students. These teachers all had one thing in common. A vagina. Now, I'm certainly not saying that all predator teachers are women preying on the rock hard bodies of a seven year old...but, apparently that's what the AFA would have you believe...about us.
Fact: Homosexual parents will teach their children how to be gay. Ahhhh, some of my fondest childhood memories are when I’d go down to the chain drive with my dad and help him wiggle into his harness and ball gag so I could sit and watch him get fisted by Bruce. If I was a particularly good boy that day, hhe’d let me hold the poppers. Good times. Ummmm, yeah. I think that pretty much sums THAT up. Don’t be stupid, stupid. I didn’t learn it from my folks.

I can't believe I'm going to do this. As promised, here's the homosexual agenda:

0600: Get up, drink the coffee my FP (ugggh) lovingly makes for me every morning (yeah, it's okay to be jealous). Finish getting the kids dressed/fed before the school bus picks up littlest monster at 640 am. Work on any school work/projects the biggest monster has due that day/do what I can to keep him from screaming at me. His mornings are iffy at best. M-W-Th-F I also chop veg, brown meats, and prepare sauces to throw dinner in the crock pot before I leave.

0730: Leave the house to get big monster to school before the 0735 bell. Usually get "the eye" from his teacher, cuz she hates me.

0740: Hop in the Jeep (or on the motorbike if it's Tuesday/Thursday) and head downtown to the job. Try hard to get there by 8 so I don't get shit-canned.

0800-1615: Work at a thankless job in an office (which fortunately has a door...but sadly, no windows) in an uncomfortable chair behind a computer that (seriously) still operates off of Windows 98. I work for a thankless bunch of attorneys who talk down to me all day and rarely have ever said "thank you" for anything over the past 12 years.

1620: M-W-F I pick up the littlest monster from daycare and take him to the big monster's school to pick him up. We run home and meet poppa to do the "YAAAAY Family" thing around the dinner table and catch up on the days events.

1620: T-Th I head straight over to school and put my brain in learning mode.

1800: M-W Hop on the motorcycle and head back down town for I REALLY, REALLY enjoy being the oldest dude in college. It's so awesome to constantly being told, "WOW! Your seriously don't look that old. Didn't they have colleges when you graduated from high school"?

2200: M-T-W-Th hop on my motorcycle and fly up Lamar as fast as I can hoping that everyone remembers to check their mirrors and their windows before they make a lane change. Get home at 2215 and click on the news to catch tomorrow's weather. Say "Goodnight" to the FP...but not before asking him how the boy's night was.

2230: Start working on homework and answering email from my legions of adoring fans.

0030: Get in bed, trying not to wake up the FP. If he happens to stir and says, "Can you do me like a wild dog?", I explain to him that I'm REALL tired and will try to shower him with...affection tomorrow night if I'm not too tired.

RINSE, REUSE, REPEAT. Oh, I guess I should mention, I lied above about the 24/7 nonstop orgies MY PEOPLE HAVE. It's a myth, man. A MYTH. It's probably the biggest lie of our people. So while you're busy thinking about me doing the boo like a wild dog, hopefully your mind is a blank. In other words, our lives are very much like your own.

So no need to fear my, brother. I'm not askerd of you, you shouldn't be askerd of me. As my last two pieces of evidence into how we are SO not indoctrinating THE CHILDREN, I give you:

Adrian in a wife beater. For real, people. If we're supposed to be all about fashion, do you think I'd let him leave the house looking like this?

Look at this hair, fool.

My family couldn't possibly be more normal, more boring than yours. Now you know what we're up to. Skerry, ain't it.

I think my son might be bi

2009-02-10T07:10:00.001-08:00

Bi-polar, that is. There is either something wrong with him, or I am a huge colossal failure as a parent these days. I just can’t seem to do anything right by him, for him, or around him. It’s too early for the hormonal surge of the teenage years, so it MUST be bi-polar, right?

I was reading a post that I subscribe to this morning where the fella was talking about his life-long issues with depression. I commented that I felt a lot more folks probably have issues with depression than are willing to admit, and that I felt it had to do with how we are raised. As a very general rule, a majority of parents try to quash cries, emotions, anger. I think this is damaging to children, because it doesn’t really teach them how to adequately or appropriately deal with emotions. I mean, think about it. Your kid falls down and bumps his/her knee and starts sobbing and the first thing parents do is say, “Awwwww, don’t cry. It’ll be okay. How’s about some ice cream to make it feel better. JUST-STOP-CRYING”. Children argue with each other about who has played longer with “Bumble Bee” than the the other and we demand that they stop screaming at each other…or to stop crying about it. I don’t have an empirical data to back my opinions up. These are just my observations from the park.

When I first got into this whole parenting thing I was very conscientious about my children’s feelings. I wanted to to be that cool dad that the boys told their friends about in their 20’s: “My dad was so awesome. When we were kids he use to take us to _____ every summer and we’d do _____ every day. Every three months or so we’d _____”. As part of being an adoptive parent through CPS we are required to maintain 40 hours of continuing education hours each year. Fortunately they count reading books as part of that 40-hours. I remember reading a book on adoption once that spouted some crazy shit. This is paraphrasing, of course, but the jist of the author’s point was, “It doesn’t really matter what you do for your adopted child. They’ll never bond with you. The reason is the child has dealt with abandonment issues their entire existence. Even in utero they realized their birth mother’s didn’t want them and would abandon them”. (Seriously, it said that!)

You’re warned as an adoptive parent not to “over-indulge” your adopted children to make up for perceived losses. And I’ve tried to do this. Honestly, though, with my parents and the FP’s mother this is hard. It seems like every third day the boys are getting a package of stuff in the mail. Our house is collapsing under the weight of all the “it’s okay you’re adopted, we love you” stuff. I’m sure that’s not their intent, but… I never thought that my boys would have to deal with these bonding issues that older children are when they’re adopted because we got both of them relatively soon after their births. We got Adrian when he was 9 months old, and Nathan about 2 weeks after he was born. So really, their ideas of abandonment couldn’t, or shouldn’t have been formed yet.

Adrian, the demon spawn I’m having issues with right now, was such a happy baby. OH MY GOD was he a happy baby. He shit smiles. He’s always been an “eager to please” kind of kid…until he started school (pre-K) this past September. Now nothing makes him happy. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. I haven’t been able to do a single thing right since September.

This morning was classic failure on my part. Adrian woke up, cranky. No, not cranky. More like evil. Jed was in the shower in the bathroom and Adrian threw the door open and yelled at him to keep the door open because it was dark in his room and he need the light so he could see. Then he went to lay back down. The 4-year-olds barking got me stirring earlier than usual, so I got up and went in the kitchen to start drinking my coffee. A few minutes later Adrian came out and was all happy, smiles, hugs, and love. I asked him if he wanted breakfast, he said, “Yeth”. So out comes the bowl of cereal and the boys sit down at the table to eat. Adrian puts his head down on the table and starts to go back to sleep. I tell him, “Bear. You need to eat. If you’re tired you need to go lay back down, but you can’t sleep on the table”. He starts sobbing and wailing like I had just shoved a hot poker in his eye. SERIOUSLY, WAILING…”I DON’T WANNA GO BACK TO BED (repeated 18,000 times)” I finally lost my nut with the screaming and yelled back at him (after 10 full minutes of CONSTANT “I DON’T WANNA GO BACK TO BED”), “If you don’t stop screaming and eat your cereal I’m going to throw it out. You’ve been screaming at me for 10 minutes and that’s enough now”.

What happens next is this new(ish) thing that he’s been doing for about 4 or 5 months now. EXTREME-CONTRADICTION. He screams, “FINE! I DON’T WANT MY CEREAL FOR BREAKFAST”, and so I do what any other rational thinking person who is tired of the screaming does. I swoop past the table, pick up the bowl, walk to the kitchen, and toss it down the garbage disposal. Which then leads to an entirely new ranting screaming fit of, “YOU TOOK MY CEREAL AWAY. I HUNGRY. I WANT MY CEREAL. WHY YOU TAKE MY CEREAL AWAY”. I try to explain to him that I took his cereal away because he said he didn’t want it (logical consequence?). And he then proceeds to repeat his “I HUNGRY” rant. Only this time, I’ve lost my nut because I’ve been screamed at for, now, 14 minutes and I tell him to go back to bed and not to come out until he can talk to me in his “big boy voice” and “not scream at me”. He screams all the way to his bedroom, all the way up to the top bunk, and for the next 15 minutes, “I DON’T WANNA GO TO SLEEP”.

After I’ve calmed my nerves down I go in and talk to him, very calmly, and say, “Bear, can you tell me the difference between the right way and the wrong way to ask for things”? And he tells me (in his TWO YEAR OLD VOICE) “say please and say thank-you"? And I say, “Yeah, that’s part of it. But what else”? He tells me he doesn’t know. And I tell him that he needs to “ask in his big boy voice and needs to stop screaming at daddy”. I ask him why he’s screaming at me and he does his fall-back move, wraps his arms around my neck and starts crying, “I don’t know”. So I hug him, and hold him, and tell him I love him. And magically the tears stop and he’s ready to be reintroduced to the rest of the family.

NOT TEN MINUTES LATER the bus comes for Nate and we all walk out to get him on the bus. When the front door opens, Nate runs out ahead and the fireworks start again. Adrian starts sobbing and screaming, “HE’S BEATING ME”! I tell him it’s not a race. I tell him it’s NATHAN’S BUS to get on. Adrian doesn’t even ride the bus! He sobs the ENTIRE TIME I’m trying to get Nate buckled in his seatbelt. After getting Nathan secured, I pick up Adrian and he wraps his arms around my neck and lays his head down, the crying stops, and we go in the house.

Next we start working on Valentine’s cards for his classmates that are due on Thursday. We barely get one done and Adrian starts screaming at me again that he doesn’t want to do it. By this time I just want him gone. (For the day, of course!) I don’t want to be around him any more, because now he is just making me angry. I get him some yogurt and a banana and (surprisingly) he says, very sweetly, “Tank you daddy”. He finishes, puts all his stuff in the trash (like we taught him) and comes to give me a hug. In an effort to save the day so he’ll have a good day at school I say, “Hey, you want to go hit the park before we go to school”? And he says, “YEAH”! (Incidentally, the park is next to the school and EVERY SINGLE MORNING since school started he asks to go to the park when we pull up to the school. Some days, if we’re early, I take him, some days I don’t. The days I don’t…FIREWORKS!)

Walking from JUST THE FRONT DOOR TO THE CAR IN THE Adrian starts playing a little hopping game. And he says, “Daddy, you need to hop”…and so I do. Only, apparently, I don’t hop in the right spot because he starts, angrily, yelling at me that I didn’t do it right. At this point I just want to drop it. Because it wouldn’t matter if I hopped on the 3rd rectangle paver on the right corner or the left, it wouldn’t matter WHAT I DID, I wouldn’t be able to do anything right by him. I hadn’t done a single thing right that morning. So I bark at him to just get in the car. I go to help him up (cuz I drive a big butch Jeep) and as I’m picking him up he yells, “WATCH OUT FOR MY HEAD. DON’T HIT MY HEAD”…and (I don’t) I toss him in his car seat and he starts sobbing AGAIN and screaming, “OWWWWWWWY. YOU HURT ME” (while rubbing his head). I say, “ADRIAN! I-DID-NOT-HIT-YOUR-HEAD”. And he says, “No, my arm”! I want to say, “WELL THEN WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU RUBBING YOUR GOD DAMN HEAD”, but instead, I drop it and just want to get to the park so I can TRY to make him happy at least once this morning.

I load up all our stuff in the car and we head to the park. We have, like, 10 minutes before the school bell. While getting out of the car he sees a Beanie Baby (or “sleepy time toy” as he likes to call them) and says he wants to take it with him. The school has hard and fast rules about not bringing toys to school. So I tell him he can’t because the school rules prohibit toys. He starts sobbing…again…and tells me I never let him have any toys. I remind him AGAIN he can’t take toys to school. He reasons, “It’s not a toy it’s a SLEEPY TIME TOY. I NEED IT FOR MY NAP”. And I laughed, because the kid who thinks he’ll die in his sleep is going to try to convince me that if he has this toy he’ll actually nap.

As we’re walking across the bridge to the park, I can see ONE SINGLE MOMMENT OF HAPPINESS in my child’s very near future. And do you know what that little fucker does the second we get across the bridge? He says, “I DON’T WANNA GO TO THE PARK…I just wanna go to school”. At this point, I’m done. I’m done talking. I’m done being yelled at. I’m done trying to appease. I’m done trying to fix. I just say, “fine”, and walk him into the school and sit in the hallway for 10 minutes until I can throw him in his classroom and get the hell away from him as fast as I can.

I honestly have no idea how to make my four year old happy anymore. I honestly believe he hates me and is trying to kill me.

Any thoughts? Suggestions? Words of encouragement? Cuz, I really don’t know what to do anymore. And the other child is coming up on 4 quicker than I care to think.

Today’s show has been brought to you by the letter “D” and “F”, and the number 4.

Good Times

2009-02-09T20:32:00.001-08:00

“I completely related to this show in a “I'm-not-black” sort of way. While living in Germany, we lived in an all-white high-rise apartment that didn't have a fat super. Okay, so in hind-sight, I really had nothing in common with this show except for the high-rise, and even then the rent wasn’t subsidized. But who can forget Janet, er, uh, Penny getting scalded by the iron? Who hasn't that happened to? So maybe I related to it a little too much.”

Continuing on in my series of sitcoms from my yut, I bring you…Good Times.

1974 was a wonderful year. My penis had finally stopped aching from that circumcision my folks insisted I have. As a country, 9 years had passed since the Watts riots; 7 years passed since the Supreme Court ruled in Loving v. Virginia allowing for the unions of mixed race couples; 6 years had passed since Johnson singed the civil rights act; 3 years had passed since schools were fully integrated (in theory); and FINALLY black families were depicted on television. Albeit, they were poor, under-educated blacks living in the projects, but it was a start, eh? I mean, seriously, you couldn’t have the first negro family sitcom on television be about WEALTHY EDUCATED blacks, could you??? I mean, I guess, technically, The Jeffersons was the first sitcom about black families (cuz they appeared on Archie Bunker’s Place), but they didn’t have their own show…and they were middle-class business owners…and America just wasn’t ready for that. They were ready, however, for Good Times! Good times was LANDMARK for it’s time. LAND-MARK. As mentioned, they were the first glimpse we whities had into the honest-to-god day-to-day lives of BLACK PEOPLE! We learned blacks were all: Funny, stylish, hot, and disciplined their children with hot irons. Rape was hysterical, nothing was funnier than child abuse or racism…except for Good Times.

Let’s face it. John Amos, “James Evans, Sr.” was hot. Who didn’t want to experience that fierce “black discipline”? I know I was standing in line. Yes, I know I was only four…but like I’ve mentioned AD NAUSEAM, I’ve know FOR-EVER! I was completely devastated the season (I think 3?) that they killed James Senior off in a car crash. For a couple of reasons. A) It was my very first notion that your dad could die and you would never see him again. B) I had NO CONCEPT of “acting v. real life” and ASS U MED that John Amos had died IN REAL LIFE. Again, folks, I was four! I was relieved, years later, to see him resurface on such shows as Cosby, Fresh Prince, and the A-Team. More recently he’s starred in Men In Trees, that show, 4 people in America saw before it was canceled. John Amos left the show early because he hated the scripts and couldn’t get along with the producers.

The family matriarch was “Florida Evans”, played by Esther Rolle. I feel like her character was, perhaps, the least believable of any of the characters on the show. Don’t get me wrong, I feel like Esther did a fine job of playing a black woman. But honestly people, think of all the ghetto black women you’ve seen on “Cops” and tell me how many of them were as passive as Florida Evans? Florida was a DOORMAT, and it just isn’t reasonable to believe that a man raising 3 children in the projects is going to be all pushover. Eshter Rolle had a very successful career in the the television industry following her time on the show. She, also, hated the direction the show was going (probably cuz she agreed with what I just said!) and wasn’t in much of the last season(s). Esther Rolle died November 17, 1998 from complications from diabetes.

Show me a person who has no idea what “J.J. Evans’” catchphrase was, and I’ll show you a person who is racist. EVERYONE, and I MEAN EVERYONE who was alive in the 70’s was familiar with “DY-NO-MITE”! Jimmie Walker was a FOOL on this show. He was a first class fool. I wanted to be friends with him. I wanted him to teach me how to make those faces. I wanted to be tall like him. Jimmie Walker did a couple of things in television before going back to his roots (and I don’t mean Africa people, don’t be like that!). He went back to stand-up comedy. I’d love to see him today. I would be willing to bet money that he’s STILL “J.J.”

BernNadette Stanis (google it people, I spelt it correctly!) was the middle child in the show, “Thelma”. She more a more realistic portrayal of what a strong black woman was. She was feisty, hot, confident, and an equal. BernNadette had a bit of a singing career following Good Times and dove into that whole conservative Christian movement. I think she’s another one who could have taken a completely different life path (and not just cuz she’s black, but look what happened to crazy Dana Plato!). She can currently be seen in Nationwide Insurance commercials, and that’s just about as entertaining as Good Times.

Y’all, Ralph Carter was HAWT. I had SUCH a gay crush on Ralph Carter back in the day. He was SO EFFING HOT. Now he kind of scares me a little bit… even after the show, when he focused on his music career, hold up…

HAWT! Ralph played the youngest son of James and Florida, “Michael Evans”. I think it was the ROLE of Michael’s character to show white America how nice, polite, respectful, and HOT young black men could be. His character was, in a word, perfect. Currently he’s a singer, and working that whole Church angle.

Ja’net DuBois played the slutty, sassy neighbor, “Willona”. Willona willnotta take crap from anyone. She will stick a piece of iron in her purse and use it as a weapon against you in a dark stairwell. Willona came off as a bad-ass, but as everyone knows, it was just part of her “act”. She really had a heart as big as she was, and was a warm and gentle character. Of course, none of this was really figured out until the 5th season when she adopted a girl (more on that in a bit!), but Willona was awesome. She was a force to be reckoned with, and she made me wish my mammy was buhlack. Granted, I still wanted to live in my gated community, but I wanted a black mom.

Johnny Brown played “Booker” on the show and showed that all over-weight black men are buffoons and clowns. I always felt sorry for Booker, because he was, more than anyone else (other than JJ) the ass of everyone’s jokes. Willona, particularly, was hard on him. Now, there’s great debate over whether his name was “Booker” or “Booger”. Both are actually correct. His NAME on the show was “Nathan Bookman”, therefore “Booker” was his nickname…however everyone, again, in an effort to make an ass out of him in every scene, called him “Booger”…presumably as a sign of disrespect. Johnny Brown is currently a stage actor/comedian. And yes, I was as surprised as you are right now to learn that he is still alive.

Who is this adorable little whore? Why, it’s Ms. Wardrobe malfunction herself, “Ms. Jackson, if you’re nasty”, Janet Jackson. Good LORD she was cute as Penny. And folks, this story line took off like WILD FIRE. In just a few episodes Penny had wedged her way DEEP into our hearts and consciousness and then BAM! Bigger than shit Willona discovers that Penny’s mom is burning Penny on the back with a clothes iron. Shit snap Cadillac. Penny’s birth mother couldn’t get out of the projects fast enough. Willona had her cornered and fearing for her eva-lovin’ life. And Penny had found her self yet another single parent home to be loved in.

Yes folks, thems were, indeed, GOOD TIMES.

Entertain our children, but for God’s sake, don’t parent them

2009-02-08T13:29:00.001-08:00

I read a post by Dad Files last week about the current crop of children’s television available out there. I wrote this post a little over a year ago, but seeing as how there’s a whole knew crop of lurkers out there, I thought I’d repost it so you didn’t have to go diggin’ for it.

I suppose everyone by now has figured out two facts about me. 1) I'm a 'mo. And 2) I'm a 'mo with children. Clutch the pearls Sally Kern, it's true. In the future, I'll post a blog about the process of how a homo gets a child, but in the meantime, this post is about a far more dangerous element than homosexuals parenting children. I'm fully aware that a large portion of our close minded society feel like children are better off in a household with one father and one mother. However, it's these same self-righteous hypocrites that subject their children to these people:

Thanks to Pat Roberts and the good folks of Florida, we have just about cast these perverts from our society. Thank God. I mean seriously. How creepy can a group of midgets in costume be? I don't know who has seen the Teletubbies and how hasn't, so I'll run through a typical TT episode for you. Every show starts with a hazy effect of a half dressed child in the top of the screen, presumably sunshine. This baby giggles as it watches the Teletubbies roll up and down a fake hill with real rabbits watching them frolic and have a good time. Then all the Tubbies gather around each other to watch a video segment off of the chest of one of the other characters. Usually this video they watch involves a parent with their child performing some fabulous activity like hunting rabbits or flying kites. Then one of the Tubbies says, "play it again", and the video replays itself. Two of the episodes that I've seen, the father in this video was wearing some way too high and tight shorts and was actually creepier than the Tubbies. HOW DARE the religious right peg all the gay on Tinkie Winkie.

I said many times before my first child that there were two things that I would never subject my children to. Elmo is one of them (the second is coming up). Who is the creep behind this child drug? As an adult, everyone knows what tickling leads to. Sex. So you basically encourage a child to tickle this red thing until it starts shaking and laughing. I've also screened many episodes of Sesame Street before letting my child watch this stuff and Elmos World is little more than Kiddie Porn. I've seen Elmo try to seduce Alicia Keys. I've watched as he coerced Eddi Falco into kissing his knee. Starting with asking her to kiss his eyebrow, kiss his cheek, kiss his knee. Come on Elmo. NO MEANS NO. Unfortunately my children LOVE Elmo and I have fallen victim to the selective marketing at Dollar stores around town. We own everything from laughing Elmos to Elmo shoes. Elmo is like heroin, and I am my baby’s supplier.

I may as well jump in to the second thing I refused to subject my child to. Barney. Fortunately the Barney phenomenon is pretty much extinct. Sure, my sisters gave me some of their Barney video tapes they used 17 years ago. I lied and told them I only had a DVD player these days. Truth be known, I immediately dropped the tapes off at Goodwill. I may have lost the battle with Elmo, but I will not fall victim to Barney.

Take creepy and multiply it times 20 and you’ve got The Wiggles. We're not positive, but Jed and I have a theory that the two guys in the Red and Purple shirts are dating as are the guys in the Blue and Yellow shirts. Though if you'll notice, the green couple (think about it, yellow and blue...) wear wedding rings, so we're fairly certain they've had a civil ceremony. The boys of The Wiggles are always doing this creepy finger dance, and sing the goofiest songs. If you raise your children with respect, like we do, you’ll teach them to call them Mr. Wiggle. As adults, we realize that Mr. Wiggle is a code name for a cock. Gay, gay, gay. My last criticism of The Wiggle gang is that the gaysian in the show is really useless. He doesn't really contribute much to the gang.

The latest greatest creep factor out there for your kids is The Doodlebops. These are the gayest men on the planet. I was trying to figure out which one is the gayest person, but it's so hard to tell. Rooney Doodle (the gentleman in the blue) may have possibly bottomed for Richard Simmons. Mo Doodle, well the name says it all. There's a fourth character that isn't pictured above, the Bus Driver, who is the butchest person on the show...but that's not saying too much. The format behind The DB shows stays the same too. Without going through the entire show, there is a point where they show the audience in one of the live shows and it's filled with lots of glowing faces of adorable children screaming with glee, having a good old time with their parents. These parents should be shot for subjecting their children to this show. I should be shot. After just a few episodes, I know ever word to every song and burst into singing at a moments notice. I wish, sometimes, I was dead.

The fact of the matter is all of the Teletubbies, The Wiggles, the Doodlebops, Elmo, and Barney are all gay, and children love them. Why wouldn't they? They're entertaining, catchy, and easy to follow. Why are there so many homos in children’s television? Because we're colorful, entertaining, talented, creative, and funny. How many straight people do you see in theater? Exactly. And that's why were entertaining your children.

My $133 day

2009-02-07T19:01:00.001-08:00

To respond to my critics, no. I’m not at a loss of material. I have a four year-old, my life is nothing but material. I just like to spin it out a bit, sometimes, and not make my blogs all about me. Now that I got that melesscentric post out of the way, we can get back to talking about me, if that’s what you really, really want.

My boo switched it up a bit this weekend and mentioned last night, when going to bed, that he’d get up with the boys this morning. It meant that I got to sleep in this morning. And boy, did I need it. I started moving around about the time that I smelled the coffee brewing. I came out of to a surprisingly quiet house. Quiet because there weren’t nobody here! This NEVER happens. Where, oh where, could my boo and the kids have gone? Was it planned? Was this premeditated? My quiet would be short lived.

The boo and the twin bulls came bursting in the door with BREAKFAST ($11.20), from McDonald’s! It was a banner day, indeed. Adrian announced, “DADDY! I GOT A MAGIC WATCH!”…and I knew it was going to be a fantastic day. A magic watch! WITH BREAKFAST.

We piddled around the house a while. Adrian cleaned his room a couple of times while Nathan kept messing it up. After watching more America’s Next Top Model than I could stand I begged the Kat to get us out of the house. I convinced him to take another stab at one of our road-trip restaurants/cafes. There’s one out of Austin, just a hair, that we were told about several weeks ago. It’s a little town called “Manor”, and, while technically not Austin, it may as well be.

290 Cafe is, obviously, on 290 about 15 minutes outside of Austin. They’re well known for their chicken fried steak, and for good reason. While I really was in the mood for a breakfastie type item, I went for lunch instead.

I was hard pressed to find something that didn’t sound good on the menu. Granted, 70 percent of the items were fried, I’m not passing judgment, yet. ALL other items were standard “comfort food” items: Roast beef & veggies, fried shrimps, etc. After I heard the boo order his “chicken fried chicken”, I realized he was doing me a favor and opening the door for me to order the chicken fried steak. We started off requesting an appeteaser of their onion rings and, for some stupid reason, proceeded to order the rest of our lunch as well. Chicken strips for Nate, Steak strips for Adrian. Chicken fried chicken with fries and okra for poppa, chicken fried steak with mashed taters and okra for me. I was a little disappointed when everything came out together, but…

It was quite tasty:

And yes, quite fried. Now, I did have one problem with it. The batter was the same batter for everything, except for the okra. The okra had a different type of batter. But the onion rings tasted like the French fries tasted like the chicken fried steak tasted like the chicken fried chicken. That’s coo. I realize there’s only so many batters to pick from. It was tasty nonetheless.

Now, clearly this picture was taken BEFORE Nathan started eating. There’s no ketchup/gravy/grease anywhere on the shirt, that’s the dead give-a-way. But the smile on his face PRE food was as big as his smile post food. The grand total for all this deliciousness? $51.64. I personally felt like it was a bit expensive, particularly for lunch in a small town cafe. I have to give the 290 Cafe a whopping 4.5 stars.

After lunch we headed back to the house for mandatory nap time. I’m a bit sadsies that Adrian “don’t want” or “don’t need” naps any more. Really, it’s one of the things I counted on for the first 2 years of his life. Fortunately Nate still digs his sleepy time. I have NO idea what I’m going to do when he’s too big for naps.

Adrian had been begging for a movie all day. I decided to take him and the brother to see “Dog Hotel” at the theater. JEZUS CHRIST the movies are expensive anymore. $20.50 for the tickets (just for 3…we still have Nathan play “two-year-old” since he’s not talking yet!) and $17.50 for the popcorn and 2 drinks. Adrian also wanted CANDY, and knowing this in advance, I stopped at Sun Harvest on the way to the theater and picked up a pounder of gummi-worms ($1.20), cuz there was no way I was paying $7/.25 pound at the theater. I really dug the show. It was funny (for kids), emotional (for parents who have adopted children), and cute. Sure it won’t win any awards, but it was still cute. I mean, come on. It had DOGS for goodness sakes.

Before we left the house for the cafe, I had put a crock pot of beef stew on.

***COMPLETELY RANDOM THOUGHT: I HATE that newer crock pots these days have plastic lids instead of the regular heavy glass lids. I really feel like they don’t get weighted down enough to keep the heat in properly.

Dinner was waiting for us when we got home, the house smelled delish. Not that we needed anything to eat after 2 gallons of popcorn and 6 (combined) liters of soda.

I forgot to mention, while at the 290, I was a bit of an “A-Hole”. To make up for it, I went to buy Jed a bottle of booze ($14.06) to make him some tasty frozen drinks and fill up his car with gas ($17.81) to make up for it. Yeah, apologizing is easier, but…

So that’s how I ended up spending $133.91 today. I can’t believe I spent so much money, but spending the time with the family…so much fun.

The Facts of Life

2009-02-06T21:01:00.001-08:00

Stay with me a second.

I wrote a blog a long, long time ago, when people still used MyFace to interact with each other socially. It was a post about television shows I dug in my youth. I’m not going to REPOST the entire blog, however I am going to tweak it a bit, blow it apart, expound upon it, and hopefully make it better. Rather than just put down a list of shows I dug, I wanted to do a sort of “where are they now” in relation to the show. Hopefully make it a little more interesting AND informative. My plan is to break down each of the shows from the original post, showing what I wrote in the original post…as well as some updates. If you like it, marry me. If you don’t, just leave your money on the nightstand like everyone else and get the hell out.

Obviously, based on the title of this post, we’re going to start with The Facts of Life.

When I was a wee lad growing up in Europe, we had no television. My sisters and I had to play outside for our entertainment and make up our own stories. The whole concept of serialized television or Sitcoms was completely foreign to me when my family moved stateside when I was 11. I have no regrets of growing up without the idiot box, in fact, I wish I had never been turned on to television. I quickly became absorbed with the colorful moving/talking pictures. Most of the stuff on television these days is crap. I'm sure folks from the generation before mine would argue "they sure don’t make shows like they used to," and I have the same argument. In no particular order, these were some of my more memorable shows.

This show had it right. You take the good, you take the bad, you take all of your stereotypes, and then you have...Token colored girl, token fat ugly "funny" girl, token lesbian girl, token blonde girl, token older woman with funny accent, and throw in a dose of Molly Ringwald, and you've got yourself an instant hit. I bought into the whole segregated girls school thing and always dreamed about going to an all boys school and bunkin' with some hotties, and not-so-hotties. In my dreams, we would stay up late at night fixing each others hair, plot ways to sneak out, pick on the above average good looking one. When we grew up we would all open a cookie shop that would eventually burn down and we would convert it into a Spencer’s-esque gift shop that specialized in "adult" toys. We would eventually all move off to college and get an apartment together, and then we would all get married and have the world's largest house built and all live together for the rest of our lives. Perhaps we would even take a trip to Australia together and get mixed up in some intrigue???

So let me point out, real quick here, the italicized paragraph above was from the original post…

Now, back to our regularly scheduled program.

Charlotte Rae played Enda Garret for all but the last 2 seasons of F.O.L. She was replaced by that successful sitcom killer, Cloris Leachman. There were MANY reasons I loved Charlotte Rae. For starters, she came from my folks’ home town of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. That automatically makes her good people. Her accent was awesome (though, not technically a native Milwaukee speaker!). You could walk all over her, burn down her house, her business, her lover, and she’d turn it into one of life’s little lessons rather than getting upset with you. She was amazing. I was COMPLETEL relieved to learn, while researching this post, that she’s not dead. She was most recently in a movie called You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, in which she plays Adam Sandler’s love interest. That kind of icks me out a bit, because she deserves WAY better than Adam Sandler. Charlotte was smart enough to know when the show had run it’s course and bailed 2 years before the rest of the cast. I guess age does bring experience. Unfortunately she was NOT smart enough to stay away from the two subsequent made for t.v. movies the show spun out, Fact of Life go to Australia, and Facts of Life C.S.I.: Who put the battery acid in Blaire’s masengill?

From here I’m having an internal struggle about where I go next. Because how do you identify the next major player? Do you pick them alphabetically? In order of star power? How about in order of people who still have careers? How about in order of popularity? It’s my blog, so I’m going to do it in order of race.

Kim Field’s was the very first African American girl to be shown on television…with braces. She’s also the only member of the cast who was able to continue a somewhat successful television career after jumping the shark in Australia with that second shitty made for t.v. movie. (Incidentally, it was not Tootie who burned Blair’s cooter with battery acid.) Kim Fields was able to show America that black girls could go to school without getting pregnant and dropping out. She also gave everyone a sense of how awkward it was being the very obvious black elephant in the room. She opened a lot of doors for white men everywhere…I mean, other women of color. Following (actually, DURING) the run of F.O.L., there were other “All Girl School” sitcoms that featured an all black cast with a lone whitie. Only Kim Fields can be thanked for that. Kim is still acting on the small screen, and can be found, most recently, on your local NBC affiliate in Lie to Me (or whatever network it is that’s cancelling that show after 3 episodes).

Alright, since there were no other racial minorities on the show, let’s go with the lesbian:

Come on. Was there a teenager alive who didn’t feel sorry for Mindy Cohn at the time? Bad complexion. Bad hair. OBVIOUS food issues. Destined to be a lesbian because there wasn’t a single male character on the show that had a scene with her where she wasn’t looking at his back. I mean, seriously she was the most relatable character on the show. We were all…what was her name on the show? See, invisible. Mindy Cohn is still active in the acting world today. As I mentioned above, she currently a lesbian…or, I should clarify so I don’t get sued, she’s currently GAY FOR PAY, “playing the PART of a lesbian” in Sex and Death 101. She’s also doing voice-overs for Scooby Doo (still has the voice for radio, eh?). And I’m sure she’s just “gay for pay”…with that haircut, Cindy? Really? Come on out, the water’s warm.

I believe I owe my life to Nancy McKeon. It was while watching season two of F.O.L. that I realized there were other homosexuals, other than myself. (I didn’t realize Natalie, THAT WAS HER NAME!!! NATALIE! was gay until much later in the series). “Jo” came onto the scene with her sassy little undid tie, her motorcycle, her grease stained face, her pleather jacket. She was the every dyke. I honestly think the producers got in some serious shit by introducing this OBVIOUSLY pussy starved character into an all-girls school and the AFA demanded they make her elope with someone. ANYONE. As long as he wasn’t black, it would be fine by them. Where was I? Oh, yes. Jo. Part of my obsession with Nancy McKeon at the time was that she was sister to Philip McKeon, whom I had a GINORMOUS gay crush on at 11 years old. I used to have fantasies about “dating” her just to get to him. But that’s for my blog I’m going to do about “Alice”, and this is about THE FACTS OF LIFE! Nancy McKeon has managed to solidify her star power on the Lifetime Channel and can be seen in any show ranging in hot topic issues as “My son was ass raped by a gang of priests and I’m out for blood revenge” to “I’m having private lady surgery” to “I drink my lunch and then drive”. She’s a staple actress over there, but, I’ll be honest, I haven’t seen her in anything since F.O.L., cuz I just don’t watch Lifetime.

Does anyone remember the three episodes starring:

Yeah, neither does George Clooney, I bet. I bet he’s trying as hard to forget that stint as his publicist is trying to forget this picture of him. George CLEARLY went on to be the biggest star following F.O.L. He’s been in everything, including the smash hit, BATMAN. (Folks, seriously, you should try to learn when I’m being SARCASTIC.) He WAS the original Dr. McHottie, and he has had his string of successful “Oceans” movies…Oh, and don’t forget his run on Rosanne too. I forgot all about Rosanne (cuz I had given up on sitcoms by that point!). Something very interesting, as you’ll see with my next cast member too, George’s name on the show was, wait for it, wait for it, “George”. Guess they didn’t want him to flub his lines. You know, he’s pretty, but…I doubt HE had a 4.0.

Or what about:

Yes, the little mini-dyke with the page boy hair-cut is none other than MOLLY RINGWALD. Molly played “Molly” on the show (I guess the creators were having a hard time coming up with original names?). She was destined for things FAR greater than F.O.L. though. She quickly disappeared and reemerged as John Hughes’ most celebrated stock actresses in hit movies like Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, etc. Somewhere along the way she got upity and moved overseas and had a fairly successful run as a French actress before realizing the food in France tasted like foreskin and moved back to the U.S. to try to revive her career. She had a couple of television series fail upon her return. And while she’s still acting these days, her biggest role now is mom. Incidentally, that picture (top, right) isn’t REALLY what she looks like today. That’s just what I think of her for FUCKING FLEAING TO FRANCE. Whore.

I think that’s it folks. I’d write about Cloris Leachman, but I fear she’d kill my blog like she’s killed every television series she’s been connected with since the dawn of motion pictures. That’s everyone from the series…oh, wait. Except for:

How could I forget this fucking douche-nozzle? I mean, seriously, for being “the hot one”, how many episodes did we have to endure with seeing her gravy covered grease chin? How did Lisa Whelchel’s, “Blair” get all the guys? Look at that hair? I mean, seriously, her rat’s nest would be competing against pubic hair for a totally awesome blow-job. That’s like 9-10 inches of clearance she’s got going on in her bangs. Yet guys found that attractive? REALLY? Thank god I was thinking about boning Philip McKeon. At least his lips would be able to make contact. Anyway, Lisa isn’t doing so much in the entertainment world these days. Despite the fact that she should have gone directly into porn or drugs after the F.O.L. run based on her acting ability (and HAIR), she didn’t. She’s like some super conservative (even more than Kirk Cameron) Christian mom who talks to girls about saving their virginity for Christ, or some shit like that. Good on her for busting stereotypes and doing something. “Blair”, while America’s sweetheart, CLEARLY wasn’t my favorite. I hate her as a character. I hated her “acting” ability. I gave two shits who put the battery acid in her douche. Frankly, the world would have been a better place without Blair. (NOTE: There is a CLEAR distinction between my feelings for THE CHARACTER, and the person who played her)

As they say in television, folks, STAY TUNED! There’s LOTS more to come…(And I’m not referring to Philip McKeon!)

How do I love thee?

2009-02-06T07:53:00.001-08:00

I mentioned the other day how I had signed up for Dad Blogs DOT COM? This isn’t a test folks. I was just refreshing your memory. Anywho. They’re having a little contest over there, and it don’t involve rulers. It’s a Valentine’s contest where you can post a blog about how super fantastic your wife is…the prizes, FIVE $70 gift certificates to ProFlowers.com. I ass u me that that’s one gift certificate for five individual weiners…but maybe there’s one blog that’ll be more incredible than all the rest and steal all five??? I dunno.

So Joeprah, one of the sites co-founders, posts a contest update yesterday about recent entrants, rule clarification, and such. And I posted a very brief comment, “If I only had a wife…”.

***NON-ESSETIAL TANGENTIAL PARAGRAPH: I should note, before I go any further, I fucking adore the name “Joeprah”!

Okay. So. A little while later in the day, Joe sends me an email explaining that he didn’t want me to feel like I was excluded from the contest because my “wife” had a mangina and that they weren’t a discriminatory kind of site and yadda yadda yadda. He basically said that if I wanted to write a post about my finger puppet, mother, jailed sister, pregnant cousin, or anyone else I worshiped on Valentine’s Day that I could and all entries would be accepted. I assured Joe that I wasn’t sensitive to the love-fest going on over there with the guys and their wives, and all was good.

So while I’m not technically writing this post in an effort to win any sort of prizes, I thought, what the hell. Let me tell my Boo story.

My sweet kitten is the most amazing guy ever. He sticks with me regardless of my many whims. Over the years he’s navigated, successfully, through my:

bowling ball obsession when I bought them every other day off of Ebay.
“Under $2k and 200k miles, gotta have it car/cycle obsession". (Seriously, at one point there were six cars in my driveway).
duct-tape phase, where I made wallets, purses, shopping bags, car-seat “upholstery”, and swimming trunks out of duct tape.
Pet phase (where I came home with a new mammal every weekend).
Camping phase (I still like to do this, but now I do it with the kids).
Cell phone/Laptop addiction. Either I have a “problem” or manufacturers need to start making these products more durable.

He tolerates my:

Shoddy weekend bathing schedule.
Mother
Smelly feet (that doesn’t have anything to do with my lack of bathing Friday through Sunday).
Father.
Bi-Polar personality/ADHD.
Sister.
Weekend nap schedule.
Road rage.

But most importantly:

He let’s me be me. I know many of you probably think or assume that “(F)reddy” is a performance piece, or an act. But I assure you…what you read is what I really am in person!).
He agreed to adopt these rug rats and then let me abandon him to be a single parent for 32 years while I go back to school in the evenings.
He always tells me how fabulous I am (and, it’s true, I am…but it’s nice to hear it)…AND tells others how amazing I am.
His capacity to stay mad at me is about 21 seconds, and that’s if I REALLY piss him off.
He has no sense of smell, so I can be as gassy as I want around him and not feel self-conscious about it.
He’s an amazing poppa to the kids, and they worship him as “the ‘nice’ one”.

Now, that’s not to say my boo kat is perfect. No. In fact, he has many faults. He:

Can’t cook to save his life. Boiling water is verboten for him in our house, because he can even fuck that up.
Isn’t exactly sure where the recycling bin has been stored for the last 10 years. (Though he’s getting amazingly better since I’m not home in the evenings anymore to take his shit out).
Thinks our house is green, but it’s not.
Drives worse than my grand-mother did the day she drove home from the hospital the day after her hip surgery better.
Has an unnatural obsession for comic books that is either going to defeat us or rescue us in these tough economic times ahead.
Did I mention his cooking is terrible? Seriously. Ask him about his “Chicken Scaryaki”.
Can navigate his way through any comic book and/or porn site, but can’t find another single thing on the internet. I’m not even sure if he knows what Google is.

He’s a pretty amazing guy. I’m sure many of you would argue he’s more amazing than pretty, but I’d disagree. I tell him all the time how lucky we are we found each other, cuz nobody else would tolerate either one of us. I enjoy being stuck to him. And I’m glad he enjoys being stuck to me.

Like I said, I didn’t write this to win any contest. I’ve already been told that I’m the absolute least romantic guy ever. I’ve been told I “ain’t marriage material”. The best Valentine’s day I ever gave my boo was when I took him to Bath Spa, UK for a week, and I even fucked that up by bringing his mother along. I try though, I really do.

The whatcha-hoosey-whatzit?

2009-02-05T12:48:00.001-08:00

I feel like I may be watching my 4.0 GPA run past me down the hall. For reals, y’all. I think I’m too stoopid for “math”. Either that, or I just don’t understand THE POINT of this “math”. I mean, I can factor poly and trinomials until the cows come home. Seriously, I can do it in my sleep, and I’m durn good at it. I’m just not sure what the hell it is I’m supposed to be book learnin’ right now.

Now, granted, I started the class a week late. I get that. My bad for being so smart n’ purdy that I tested out of my intermediate algebra class and was able to sign up for a new one. But you’d think with me BEING so smart n’ purdy that I’d be able to catch on? Not so fast.

Week one was about “The mathematics of voting” (as taken directly from the T.O.C. in the front of the book). We’s learnt about preference ballots and preference schedules; the plurality method; the borda count method; the I don’t even know what the fuck that means method; etc. I had to stop and think to myself, all of these various methods of counting and determining voting outcomes would sure come in handy IF I EVER DECIDED TO BECOME A VOTING JUDGE. WTF? Really? Where’s my “guzzindas”? Where’s my y=mx+b?

I decided to make the best out of a confusing situation and go ahead and learn it. I figure someday it’ll come in handy when our family of 4 is having pizza night and there are a choice of 6 toppings ranked in order from 1 to 6 on each of our ballots. I can spend ten minutes tallying the votes using the plurality with elimination method and make whatever pizza “wins” the election. I can then use the expanded plurality with elimination method to tell Nathan which “place” his pizza preference came in. See what I mean? Useful, N-E-V-E-R.

This week we got out of the “Mathematics of Voting” and jumped head first into WEIGHTED VOTING SYSTEMS. Seriously. DID I sign up for an effing civics class instead of math? The first day of the chapter we learnt about the Banzhaf Power Index, or, as Professor NOT Larry Klye says, “the Banzhaf Power Index”? Confused? YEAH, SO AM I. Because he begins every class with:

(Pushing the center of his glasses to get them properly seated on his obscenely large nose): “Uhhh, claaaaas. Today we’re going to discuss the Banzhaf Power Index. At least I say “Banzhaf” because that’s my understanding of the pronunciation of the word. I’m not here to claim that this is the correct pronunciation, but only my understanding of it. So if any of you have any additional literature …(PRO-NUN-SSSSSSED… LIT-ER-CHERRRR) as to a different pronunciation, please feel free to bring it to the class’ attention”.

Okay, dude, seriously. A) We ain’t in jolly ole England, so drop the formality with the PRO-NUN-SEE-AAAA-SHUN. You’re in Texas homie, PRO-NOUN-SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS it. And B) If you don’t know how the fuck TO PRO-NOUN-SSSSSSSSSS it, DON’T FUCKING SAY IT.

So he' drones on and on about the Banzhof Power Index, explains it, gives us an example. Yadda, yadda, yadda, we get it. Today we me on to the Shapley-Shubik Power Conclusion in weighted voting systems. And so as to save you and me time, read the italicized paragraph above over and substitute “Shapley-Shubik” for “Banzhaf Power Index”. Again, dude, for real, …never mind.

Someone else in class today decided to raise her hand and ask what I had

been wondering myself, “What’s the fucking point in all this, dude? I mean, I thought I signed up for a math class”. And Professor NOT Larry Klye says, “Well, it’s useful (READY???) if, for example, YOU’RE THE CEO OF A COMPANY or trying to find ways to influence a vote in a board meeting or something similar”.

DO-YOU-SERIOUSLY-THINK a CEO is going to be sitting in a COLLEGE MATHEMATICS CLASS in a FUCKING COMMUNITY COLLEGE? Huh? Do you? Yeah, I guess this class IS going to be helpful, for when I become the CEO of my…uh, HOUSEHOLD. Oh, wait. I already am!

I can’t take this guy seriously. For reals. I can’t. I’m dying. And so, I fear, will that awesome, amazing 4.0. Did I mention I had a 4.0? I can’t remember if I did or not.

Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day…

2009-02-04T10:53:00.001-08:00

Ahhhhhhhhhh, such a gorgeous day outside. Makes my brain spin and spin and … well, you know. You also know that when the wheels are spinning you get LOTS of randomocity!!! HOOORAY for randomness!

INTRODUCTIONS:

So one of my most favorite blogger posts this week was from my buddy, Breen Lantern. His rendition of Beyonce’s “All the single ladies” is one of the most hysterically funny videos I’ve seen since my cake eating video. (Sorry Sean, I just can’t help make everything about me. I’m a whore like that!) What makes this post my favorite of the week, as you’ll see, he did the video JUST for me! And I heart him hard for that. Now I realize that blogs tend to get a little incestuous with the same circle of people reading the same circle of people…but if you’ve not checked Sean out, you should…(UNLESS it’s Monday and you have an aversion to seeing dudes in their silky things!)

SEAN’S VIDEO

(F)REDDY’S VIDEO

INTRODUCTIONS, CONTINUED:

I’ve stumbled across some new (to me) blogs recently, some by accident, and some by referral. I’ve enjoyed reading Blond Boy Baking, but I can only read his blogs during certain times of the day. As he’s always talking about food, I never walk away from there without wanting to lick my keyboard. Since we all know how disgusting my keyboard is (and if you don’t, trust me), that’s not a good thing. Staying in the vein of food, I’m still totally diggin’ on Mommy’s Kitchen. I made another one of her recipes the other day, the beef tips n’ mushrooms. HEAVENLY. I seriously cried when all the leftovers were gone. Following a listen of Tom, the Ramble Redhead’s interwebs radio show I WILDLY AND SERIOUSLY MISTAKENLY ASS U MED a new website I’ve signed up with, Dad Blogs, was a blog site for gay dads. It was a somewhat reasonable assumption. His guest on the program was Brian from Green Dads, another gay dude who had adopted kids with his partner. I just, naturally, assumed that a gay dude talking about a website was referring to a gay oriented website. BOY HOWDY, I couldn’t be more wrong. I think Brian and I may actually be the only TWO gay dads on the site…the only two OUT gay dads, anyway. Nonetheless…since I signed up for the site, I have been contributing. And I’ve been reading some of the other dad’s blogs. In part, because, while we may not have a lot of things in common in one regard, our lives are very much the same in others. I started reading “Al Bundy’s” blog and Mr. Big Dubya’s blogs and found that as far as parenting goes…we really do have a commonality. Though I’m not (and doubt I ever will be) a blog they follow, I do enjoy theirs.

MY PIMP SAYS, 20 DOLLA TO MAKE YOU HOLLA

So I mentioned Blond Boy Baking above, and Breen Lantern. Sean (a/k/a Breen Lantern) pimps me out quite regularly (I think because he thinks doing so is going to get me to send him a picture of me in my undies for his Monday Undies posts!), but I was quite surprised, when checking out the blogs of people who had been leaving me comments, that I had been pimped in Blond Boy’s blog as well. ADDITIONALLY, while craving muffins today and wanting to take my fatty with me before she dropped the kid out of her vajayjay, I looked on the Taste No Evil Muffin Company’s website this morning to find out Karisa’s hours and about fell out of my chair when I saw that SHE had pimped me on her company’s blog! Y’all, I am so humbled that you like (or cringe about) what you read that you’d tell other peoples about me. It’s such an honor and brings tears to…well, it’s an honor folks. That’s alls I can say. Other than, THANK YOU.

AND SINCE WE’RE TALKING ABOUT MUFFINS!

If I don’t watch it, I’m going to have a muffin top by March. Oh, hell. Who am I kidding. I already got one! That’s right, you’re not seeing double below. OH NO MAMM! I picked up TWO blueberry bliss muffins this morning. I feel like a total jackass too, because I had told myself last time that I was most definitely, without a doubt, going to have one of their STUFFED CREAM CHEESE COFFEE CAKE muffins the next time I went…and I started salavating thinking about the blueberry muffins when I walked up and completely forgot! I guess another trip this week may be in order!

If I’m being completely honest, I think I may have a little fan-girlie crush on Karisa. There, I said it.

So. About this weather. Did I mention it was FABULOUS?

Okay, I know I’ve given you a lot to watch, read, check out, etc. Get to gettin’ folks, and remember. Be kind to each other. (Except for Sean. You can be mean to him, he likes it.)

I got soul, but ain’t a soldier

2009-02-04T05:14:00.001-08:00

Following my colossal failure of “forgetting our anniversary” last year, I had to make up for it…big. Fortunately the Boo’s birthday immediately follows the anniverserarium and, also fortunately, tickets for The Killers went on sale the same day, as did their newest album. I think my forgetfulness paid off? The Boo was happy.

Last night was the concerto. It was late for A) me, B) a school night, and C) me on a school night. There was a time I could stay up until midnight on a…well, any night of the week. But…

Nonetheless, we had a great time at the show last night. The evening started with M83. They were a throwback to the 80’s techno synth pop bands. Which I mostly enjoyed back then. But I had one big problem with M83. There were two synth-keyboardist in the band, a chick and a dude. Presumably the dude was the lead singer? I have no idea, because he had a hoodie on the entire performance (in TEXAS, yeah) AND, most insultingly, the keyboards were facing each other …and not even facing the audience…for THE ENTIRE PERFORMANCE. At first I threw it up there to “schtick”…awwwww, how cute. They’re singing to each other. But after the third performance of the two of them facing each other, and not the audience, I got annoyed and wondered if the two of them even realized there was an audience. It’s a shame too, cuz, apparently, the lead singer is a hottie. Not that anyone in the audience would know, cuz he looked like The Hunchback up on stage with his hoodie and our side-view perspective.

Next up came The Killers…and they just put on a heck of a stage show. Brandon Flowers was quite the crowd worker. I don’t get the whole feathered shoulder pads though. I really felt that Brandon’s performance was 1000% better than the douche-nozzle behind me who was VERY ENTHUSIASTICALLY yelling along to EVERY song. He even got most of the lyrics right. I was worried I wouldn’t know much from their discography (cuz, honestly, The Killers is Jed’s bag, not my own!), but surprisingly I knew well over 3/4 of the set(s). I guess I can hear a lot better than I thought I could. A great evening, for sure, but the morning came a few hours too early for me. I know I’m going to pay for it today.

Sounds like he needs a small challenge to his worldview from (F)reddy

2009-02-02T20:26:00.001-08:00

So…yeah. There are time I hate being the token homo…and tonight was one of those nights. In my Government class we were discussing the division of federal and state powers and civil liberties vs. civil rights. Professor Funny was talking about the snails pace at which civil rights have moved at a snails pace for some segments of the population in the United States since the drafting of the Declaration of Independence in 1789.

A somewhat cuteish bohemian boy sitting a few rows behind me raised his hand and said that he thought in the grand scheme of things he felt the acceleration of civil rights were moving at a somewhat rapid pace comparatively to other countries. Professor Funny said that if you looked at other governments that were similar in age that we were moving super slowly, and asked bohemaboy for an example.

The boy told a story about how he had dated a black chick and that she was equal in every way (education, looks, sexual stamina, etc.) and that would have been unheard of in his parents day and age. And he was probably right. I actually raised my hand in defense of his comment and explained that I felt he was talking about a historical comparison to, say, Spain and their advancement of civil rights and when comparing it to governments that aren’t as young as the United States he had a valid point. You really can’t compare apples to oranges, right? And so I thought I had made a friend? Ohhhhhhh, no.

While discussing the concept of “full faith & credit” (an interstate agreement wherein states agree to fully recognize legal contracts performed in other states…such as marriage and adoption rights. If an adoption is formalized in one state, theoretically it would have to be recognized in any other state)…and I think everyone knows where this is heading???

So (F)reddy raises his little hand and says, “but there are certain situations where this isn’t practiced”. And Professor Funny (I GUESS he ass u med I was going to go down the homo marriage route!) says, “Can you give me an example”? And I say, “Yes. For example, my partner and I have both legally adopted our children, however Oklahoma doesn’t recognize same-sex parental adoption agreements from other states. Therefore we rarely go home to visit my family, because should anything happen to me while visiting my family in Oklahoma, my family would have more rights to my children than my parent…who in Texas has full adoption rights”. And Professor Funny says, “Oh, yeah. That too”.

Next he went down the slope, “Why do you suppose this group, gay folks, haven’t attained the same levels of legal rights in adoption and other areas that other groups/people have made gains”?

Bohemaboy says, “Well I guess it’s because children need to be protected”. And Professor Funny says, “Protected from what”? And Bohemaboy says…(READY?)

He says that “children need to be protected from STDs and other diseases that are prevalent in gay men”. (Which, believe it or not, didn’t garner the loudest gasp from ME!) Professor Funny asked him to explain and he went on to say, “Well, I think everyone can agree that the instances of AIDS is higher in gay men than normal people”. This is when I stepped in and turned around and said, “Sweetie, I hate to tell you, but you’re wrong. According to the latest research, the incidences of AIDS is higher in infants, older people, women, and, in particular, African American women”. The simple fact of the matter, he had more of a chance of getting AIDS from his very progressive relationship than ADRIAN does getting AIDS from, uh, me. Professor Funny actually stepped in and bitch slapped the boy, I suppose, in an effort to keep me from bitch slapping him. Frankly, I’ve found that you can’t educate stupid people like that, therefore I don’t even bother getting upset about it. I was just stating fact. Professor Funny spouted some other facts that I wasn’t even aware of, at which point Bohemaboy said, “Oh, I guess I was just misinformed”. And while that may be, misinformation doesn’t excuse stupidity. Just ask W., mmmmkay?

EVERYTHING WAS CLEAR, though, following the next line of discussion in which Professor Funny started talking about (still with regards to the full faith & credit) about situations where states wouldn’t recognize marriages from other states. AND AGAIN, I was sure all eyes would be on me. But he took it in an area even I didn’t expect. he took it to the Virginias and guys marrying their 14 year old 1st cousins and wanting to know if that would be recognized in other states. And do you know what Bohemaboy said??? (Ready???)

Wait for it, wait for it…

He says, (in an inquisitive sort of way…not in a thoroughly disgusted sort of way…) “Really? You can do that there? (Pregnant pause) And it’s, like, legal there and nobody will say anything”?

That explains it all, you dumb cousin fucker.

Waiting for milk, man

2009-02-01T14:28:00.001-08:00

It’s a strange thing I do for the many people I love. Earlier in the week, my hot Cousin Larry sent me a tweet telling me he’d love me for ever if I’d take the fam to the Dairy Queen that Parker Posey worked at in “Waiting for Guffman” and take pictures of us eating a blizzard.

I suppose it’s a logical assumption that as a Texas I should be a huge fan of Dairy Queen? I mean, after all, the Dairy Queen sign pictured above is “the official stop sign of Texas”. But, like being a bad gay, I’m also a horrible Texan. For example, I don’t support “Death Penalty Thursdays”, and as of today I’ve only eaten at Dairy Queen twice in my life.

It’s not that I don’t like Dairy Queen. I suppose it’s tasty enough. But their menu is harder to figure out than your federal income taxes and there are MUCH better places to get “ice cream” than Dairly Queen. And yes, “ice cream” fully deserves to be in quotes there. Cuz I don’t know what that shit they serve is, but it surely ain’t ice cream. Apparently it comes in a colostomy bag that is pre-mixed and frozen on the spot??? That ain’t ice cream folks. I’ve made ice cream, and I know that ain’t how it’s done. So how do I know so much about the DQ having only been twice in my life???

As I was ordering our lunch-by-number from the apathetic angry person behind the counter, I started, as I always do, with the kids.

“I’ll take a number 8 (three tacos) with a milk”.

“We don’t have milk”.

I laughed, because surely this cow behind the counter was yanking my chain. “You don’t have milk”?

“No. I di’uhnt stutter. We ain’t got milk”.

I asked, “Well how do you make MILKSHAKES”?

She said, “Like everyone else. I lift the lever up”.

Whore.

So, I’m guessing the milkshakes you get at Dairy Queen aren’t, uh, authentic?

Since I had “ordered a combo” she pulled down a 3 liter Styrofoam cup for me to get the kid some soda from the teeth rotter. I told her it wasn’t necessary, that if THEY DIDN’T HAVE MILK, the kids WOULDN’T BE DRINKING ANYTHING…and CERTAINLY NOT 3-liters of soda…each.

So I ordered the second meal, the #6 (“The Dude”) with a diet soda for Jed. I think Jed was hoping I’d actually say, “Give me the dude” instead of “I’ll take a #6”. Sorry to disappoint again. Then I went on to get Nate’s. I said, “I’ll take the number 9 (chicken strips)" and as I gave a long pregnant pause to order something for myself, I noticed Ms. Mensa 2008 pull another 3-liter soda cup down.

Now, I sort of see the confusion. I had just ordered Jed’s meal WITH a soda, but I didn’t ask for one for the chicken strips. I went on to add to my order, “and a number 2” (the “belt buster”) with a coke. When she pulled down another cup I said, “I only need two cups. I asked for a coke and a diet coke”. And she said, “But you keep ordering by number and the combos come with a soda”. Uhhhh, NO MENSA, THEY DON’T. Perhaps it would benefit you if you looked at your own menu once in your career at the Queen. ALL of the combos CLEARLY have the option of the meal by it’s self AND, priced separately, the same combos “WITH A SODA”.

In an effort to not have Mensa wipe my bun on her crack for pissing her off, I just dropped it and told her I was done with my order. Four meals, two sodas, and a smile. BUT, having gotten my lunch. I have a question. If you’re going to label a DOUBLE PATTY BURGER a “belt buster” WHY NOT GO AHEAD AND THROW A SLICE OR THREE OF CHEESE ON IT? For real? Can it really be THAT difficult to … never mind.

So, for the pics…

And JUST for my hot Cousin Larry…

Can I go ahead and make this one of my official restaurant reviews???

5 stars for eating where Parker Posey filmed, 1 star for the rest. For reals.

P.S. For any of you regulars who are in touch with DQ Rick (the Dairy Fairy), make sure he sees this. He’s got some splaining to do! :-)

The wheels on the house go round and round

2009-01-31T16:52:00.000-08:00

Here goes another round of randomocity for y’all, mmmkay? It’s just been that kind of week and I just I’ve got lots to say…or spray.

Ryder…Goode:
This morning I hosted (or hoisted) my, whatcha callit? Ex-wife…BFF…Fly…Tia Kay’s and her hubby-to-be-as-soon-as-she-can-fit-in-an-off-the-rack-dress-again baby shower to welcome in my nephew, Ryder. Kay’s been in my life as a major supporting character for the last 21 years. In an effort to not make CNN Headlines, “World’s oldest living woman gives birth”, she got herself knocked up a half-year or more ago and is figgin’ to pop this thing out of her jay jay in the next three weeks. (Actually, so she doesn’t have to have vaginal reconstruction surgery to snap that shit back in place when it’s over, they’re doing that whole C-Section thing.)

I’ve always wanted to host a baby shower. I don’t know why. It’s one of those “always a brides maid” things, I guess. I had always been invited to them and, more importantly, asked for money to help host one/buy gifts for one, and never dreamed that I’d have one myself. When we got the oldest hellion, our very tight friends hosted us the shower of all showers. We got so much schwag at that shower that some four years later we’re still opening stuff. Jed and I are truly blessed with some amazing friends. Kay was one of the hosts for that shower, so I wanted to return the favor.

I started with a menu of fried chicken strips (and a variety of dippin’ sauces); meaty/cheesy wraps; a pizza fondue with garlic bagel crisps; a foul baby blue party punch thing; and a lovely round chocolate cake surrounded by a sampling of white cupcakes. For games we played “guess what’s in the diaper” (where I melted various mini-chocolates in a diaper and smeared it around); “guess how many diapers are in this generic plastic bin”; and gift bingo (where we numbered all the pressies and then called the numbers out as Tia Kay opened the gifts until someone called “BINGO”). For party gifts I found some AWESOME bottles of wine called, “Son of a Beach”. See, Kay is a beach, and she’s having a boy. Get it??? I feel like the party was a great success. There was lots of friends, lots of fun, lots of laughter…but most importantly, lots of love for this family we’ve created.

Am I dreaming?:
When I got home from the shower, I was exhausted. It’s a lot of work carrying this baby around! I took a nap with my bug for a bit. When I woke up I was a bit dazed. I walked out in the living room and Jed had the television on CMT watching a show called “Trailer Park Disasters”. If you haven’t seen it or heard of it, let me summarize. It’s basically the “Extreme Home Make-Over” for a house with axels and a tongue. The participants are trashy; the homes are trashy; the host is funny (and not nearly as annoying as Ty Pennington). The work they do on these mobile homes, amazing. I honestly am shameful of my “stick built” home after seeing the amazing make-over they did on this 2/2. (Technically, after the make-over it was a 3/2…but!) It gave me hope for my shit-hole (and I’m talking about my house there, folks). I could only HOPE to have the kitchen this trailer had after the make-over. It’s worth the look if you’re looking for a new show.

My mother is...

2009-01-30T12:14:00.000-08:00

My mother is a crackwhore who is in prison for violating the "3-strikes you're out" rule.

My mother died while she was giving birth to my brother.

My mother sold me to these guys for heroin.

My mother left my dad for a much younger guy and didn't take me with her.

What the fuck difference is it to you who my mother is?

I've found myself having to watch what I say more and more recently. These kids, damn them. They're like parrots, except for you can understand them and they're not quite as colorful. There was a time when I took great joy in fucking with people's heads when they would see me with the boys by myself and ask me questions about their mother. The questions seem a bit innocuous at first, but if you peel back the layers, the questions are really about being a Ms. Kravitz.

When I took Adrian to get his fourth or fifth hair cut the Asian woman (I ain't stereotyping asshole, she was Asian. Get over it.) cutting his hair said, "Your wife must be vewy (okay, I am stereotyping now) bwave for to let you come get his haircut by yourself". I replied, "I'm not married". She said, "Oh"? I said, "Well, I was married, but my wife died". She gasped, audibly, and then started yickity yakking to some other Asian chick cutting hair next to her. She asked me how she died and I replied, "She died giving birth to our son". PC? No, absolutely not. Funny as hell? You betcha.

I say these things as shock value, because it's none of your fucking business where my child's mother is. How very presumptuous of you to even assume there is one. I FUCKING HATE when we go out to eat as a family and the hostess, waitress, beer wench, whomever, comes up to the table with the flare on his/her pocket and says, "Hi hunnnnn. Is it dads night out tonight"? NO! IT'S FAMILY NIGHT you dork.

Over the last four years I've made up various things about the boys mother depending on what type of mood I am. I rarely would say, "Oh, the little bastards are adopted" and just leave it at that. I always liked to shatter the notion that mother's are inherently infallible and required for the rasing of healthy, well-adjusted children.

On the bus one afternoon a woman said to me, "Your wife must be very lucky. I see you picking up the kids every day. I think you're going to have a VERY good father's day". Well, to most of you, that may seem complimentary. But to me it says this woman thinks most father's are disconnected douche nozzles who don't do anything more than fuck their wives while they're asleep as to further perpetuate their seed…oh, and drink beer. IF I was a "traditional" dad, I'd be offended by this "niceness". How very dare you assume that I go above and beyond the call of my "fatherly obligations". I told this well meaning woman, AGAIN, that I didn't have a wife. She looked at my finger to confirm. She got all giddy and happy. And I said, "Yeah, that darned 3-strikes law. She was a little too close to the school during her last sale and we're not expecting her to get out for a while". Adrian looked at me, confused.

I've decided it's probably time I stop fucking with people's heads while my children are around. The last thing I need is for him to repeat his "origin story" to his teacher at school while the class is discussing "family".

So for the record people, here's the story on my children's mother. Don't ask me again. M'kay? There ain't one.

The end.

Blue Bonnet Cafe

2009-01-29T06:37:00.000-08:00

We decided to put another check mark in our Texas Landmark Cafes book this weekend. Saturday evening for dinner we headed out about an hour and fifteen minutes southwest of Austin to a little place called Marble Falls to eat at The Bluebonnet Café.

The Bluebonnet has been in business since the 1930's and they offer up some really tasty southern home-cooking treats. And the pies! DID I MENTION THE PIES???

Jed and I really MUST drop the "you can't order that, I'M ordering that" crazy rule we have. Cuz what I REALLY wanted was the chicken fried steak! But that's what Jed wanted. I ASS U MED that since he ordered the 8 oz. (over the 4 oz.!) chicken fried steak that he intended to share. But, once again, I just made an ass out of myself!

Instead, I settled on Mom's Famous Pot Roast with buttered carrots, mashed potatoes, and fried okra.

Now, OBVIOUSLY I didn't hate my dinner:

However, I did have some things I didn't like. FOR STARTERS, when our waitress brought out our dinner, she brought mine and Jed's. Apparently the boys cheeseburger they were going to split wasn't ready yet. And it wasn't ready for a good ten minutes after she brought our food. Listen, when there are toddlers at the table, it's a good idea to maybe bring their food FIRST! Secondly, as good as everything else was, I was really shocked at how shitty their dinner rolls were. For reals, I've had better dinner rolls out of a can. BUT, fortunately, all the rest of the food made up for the shitty dinner rolls. Even Nate forgave the waitress by REALLY getting into his burger!

He's such a well-mannered kid…sometimes!

Bluebonnet Café, my love, I give you:

4-stars.

The Teaches of Peaches

2009-01-28T07:32:00.000-08:00

I'm going to warn you in advance, this bligity blogity boo is going to be ALL OVER THE MAP. I've had WAY too much coffee this morning, and lots of random stuff to spew.

SUCKING ON MY TITTIES
"Huh? Right? What?"

Last night, while eating dinner, Adrian started rubbing his chest ala Anna Nicole meets Ron Jeremy. I asked him what he was doing. He said he was "playin' with my boobies". Now, I'm not a prude, but there's just something wrong with watching my 4 year old son playing with his "boobies". AND, since, clearly, there are no "boobies" in our house (except the two boobs raising him!) we asked him why he was doing it and where he learned it. He said a girl in his class, let's call her "Kay" (cuz all girls named Kay wind up pregnant and unmarried!), "taught him about boobies" and "put his hands on her boobies and squeezed". He also said another girl, let's call her…"Marge" (just so I can alienate only ONE of my IRL friends!), was "teaching him about kissing and trying to get him to kiss her".

Straight sex doesn't repulse me as much as one might think, but I'm not about to let Adrian "fuck the pain away" at four years old. He's going to have to wait until he's 12 to make that decision, like I did. However, for those who have read my blog for a while (or explored the archives), you may know that Adrian has already gotten the "Chester" label from his teacher. So I don't take this Teaches of Peaches thing lightly. This morning I wrote out a letter, dated, with the facts, so that she can't come back in a week saying she caught Adrian in the back of the class kissing Kay's privates. And I asked her to "address" it. And by "address it" I mean I want her to send a letter home to this little whore's parents about the lessons she's giving my son…just like the letters I got when Adrian was "flexing his muscle".

HIGHWAY TO HELL
Nathan has been doing amazingly well riding the bus to school. He LOVES riding the bus. So much, in fact, that 9 times out of 10 he just waves me away like I'm a fly. He usually ambles up the bus steps as fast as he can and gives his bus driver a great big hug. He loves that woman. Or, should I say, loved? This whole week there has been a different bus driver every day. I'm not sure if his regular bus driver is on vacation, or if she's found a higher paying job??? This morning's bus driver was THE WORST. Adrian, as usual, bound out of the house first when the bus pulled up. He likes saying goodbye to his brother on the bus. As he ran up the stairs of the bus the salty old bitch behind the wheel barked at him to "get off". She told him he "wasn't allowed on the bus". And so he stood on the sidewalk and waited while I strapped Nathan in his seat. And as I was getting off the bus he started to sob. I turned to the nasty old cunt and said, "Thanks for making my four year old cry. That takes a special kind of skill". Adrian was so sad he didn't get to say goodbye to his brother.

RELEVANT?
WHAT THE HELL is "College Mathematics"? No, seriously. WHAT THE HELL IS IT? Where's my 1 + 1 = X? And are all Math professors A) GAY; and B) so effing nerdy that it's obvious they never dated in high school (or pre-K for that matter)? I tested out of my intermediate Algebra class on the first day this semester, and couldn't have been more thrilled. This meant that I was able to sign up for YET ANOTHER math class, College Mathematics. Already having missed two classes, I tried to catch up this weekend, but when I opened the book it was talking about the election of James Madison, or some crap like that, and the "Borda count method" and other nonsensical shit. OR, as JED said, "PRACTICAL MATH"? What the hell is practical about learning polling techniques??? UNLESS I'm planning on being an election judge when I get done with this?

DT'S
I sent my beloved computra off to a HP repair facility in Houston via FedEx on Monday. Last night, while watching the news about the freak ice/winter storm annihilating Texas right now, they had a lovely picture of a crashed FedEx plane, completely destroyed by fire. I had a minor anxiety attack. See, the way my life works, my computer SHOULD have been on that plane. Alas, it wasn't. The FedEx plane that crashed was in Lubbock, or some other dreadful place like that, and my tracking number confirmed that my computer arrived safe and sound in Houston.

It's kind of strange being without a computer. I don't have access to my MS Money (which I obsessively look at 15 times an hour); I don't have access to my contacts (which are SUPPOSED to be uploaded to Gmail contacts, but A) only part of the information is there; and B) there ARE some phone numbers that, for whatever reason, didn't make it to my Gmail contacts); I can only access my email, blogs that I read, Twitter, and many other of my social networking sites via my brand spankin' new G1 (which works fine for reading, but is a pain in the butt for typing anything substantive in response); I don't have access to my iTunes (I can listen to my iPod but I can't download additional podcasts…which means I'm going to have a HUGE back-load when I finally am able to re-synch it). BUT, I'm actually amazed at how much more I'm able to accomplish not being strapped (wirelessly, of course) to the computer. Don't get me wrong. I can't wait until I get it back…but it's been a little nice not having it!

80,000 + 2
I've now known two of my close, personal friends who have lost their jobs this year. My oldest (both historically and chronologically) friend, Kay's baby daddy lost his job yesterday. In my opinion it couldn't have come at a worse time. They JUST bought a house…they're having my nephew delivered in three weeks. I suppose any time you lose a job is a bad time to lose a job. But this just seems like a particularly bad time. I hope this whole economy thing gets turned around soon. Honestly, I'm worried myself, but…I worry more for my Kay and my Eddie right now.

BIZARRE FLAVOR IN MY MOUTH
That old woman I keep talking about, Kay, turned me onto a blog the other day called Mommy's Kitchen. This chick is a Texas woman who has this fantastic website of fast family favorite foods. Now, they ain't healthy eats by ANY stretch of the imagination. Additionally, the snobs on this season's "Top Chef" would be horrified at the "ingredients" in these dishes. BUT, if you have kids, a full-time job, are enrolled in 12 hours of classes, and have a full social calendar, these recipes are SO UNBELIEVABLY easy that you still have time to cook for you and your family AND enjoy their company (and learn about boobies to boot!). Last night I made Mommy's Kitchen's "frozen burrito casserole". It sounds vile and disgusting (not only the title, but the actual ingredient list), but it was really, really tasty. Give her a looksie if you're looking for zomething zifferent.

That's all I got for today folks. I actually had another restaurant review all typed up and ready to post…but I wanted to purge my head before it exploded.