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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.