Can you hear me now?

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

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???

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?

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.