To My Wife On Our Anniversary

Twelve,

Who’d have thought?

I still remember each laugh.

I still remember each tear…and why.

On the pier we laid, vulnerable, ignorant, surrounded by nature and the love we now raise our children in.

I knew then what I know now,

Your strength is envious.

Contagious.

Our lives are far from perfect.

Our beliefs stray from the norm.

Our love has been more than challenged.

You’re undying kindness and devotion,

Is humbling and heart-warming.

The mornings we laid dreaming of years from now,

In the place we’ll call home,

Returning back to nature,

Together,

The two of us.

The journey getting there will be ours, remarkable, painful, revealing…

You are my hero.

You are my best friend.

You are my children’s mother.

You are my wife.

You are…everything I wish I was…

My Little Rat Bastards

We can’t have nice things and we all might as well be naked.

Anyone with kids knows this fact. Nothing is sacred anymore.

Peeing at the toilet—you might as well be peeing at half court during the NCAA tournament.

Furniture—globs of dried snot, food, and baby jesus knows what else all over it. Yeah, you want to come visit me now don’t you?

Car—it looks like a muddy soccer game took place while a Crayola factory exploded inside my Nissan.

Nothing’s off limits with these damn kids.

The daughter’s just a messy beast.

She’s broken long-standing records of being able to completely trash a room at mach speed. Sunday morning the wifey was busy defending herself from my quest for morning sex while we continued to hear the pitter-patter of the daughter’s feet back and forth between her room and downstairs.

When I finally surrendered and decided to go make coffee I walked down stairs only to find a massive doll house, two baby doll cribs, five Zhu Zhu pets and two dozen stuffed animals being read-to by my daughter, and what looked like the biggest cat-fight between a gaggle of Barbies strewn all over the couch. Oh, and she apparently had “breakfast cooking for us” on the toy stove, refrigerator, and sink that was set up in the middle of the room. All toys she gathered from her room and the basement into our living room.

The boy is a damn disgusting, snot-filled tornado.

When he has a cold he refuses to breathe through his mouth so all you hear snot being shuffled around in his nose as bubbles randomly escape. He loves to crawl on the floor of public places; go under tables at dinner; touch nasty, dirty things laying on the ground; and every one of his shirts and coats have crusted sleeves from constantly rubbing them along his nose.

And unfortunately he inherited the profound skill of being able to just flat-out break shit. When I was dating the wifey in high school, I broke lamps, chairs, tables, dishes and so much else at her mother’s house.

The finest example of my son’s skill I can provide are these three lovely trophies sampled from the boy’s trophy collection.

This baseball trophy used to sport one kick-ass bat that actually made t-ball look like the manliest sport ever invented.

I loved this bobble-head soccer trophy...it didn't even survive the car ride home before his head sprung out of joint making him look like Rain Man trophy.

This Pele-looking bad ass flying through the air to score the deciding game-winning goal lost his foot a while back. We have it in a baggy sitting next to the trophy in the boy's room.

But I wouldn’t have them any other way. Despite seeing the girl licking the window on the train heading into the city… Despite the boy picking up a lonely discarded M&M along the street and eating it… Despite the fact every time you tickle my daughter she sounds like a Whoopee cushion going off… Despite the fact my boy won’t let me see him naked, but every time I pee he’s right there staring… I wouldn’t change a damn thing about them.

They’re disgusting, dirty, hilarious and beautiful. They’re my rat bastard kids.

A Good Day

So, I had a cheesy moment with my little dude….and I loved it!!!

It’s been snowing like a bitch for the past few days. And since I’m a jobless statistic, I’ve actually enjoyed the snow because I’m not commuting in it.

I wake the kids up saying, “look out the window.”

I shovel it. I slip on it and bust my damn back wide open. I feel manly about it because I can control whether I allow it to rest on my sidewalks or not. And I’m humbled by Mother Nature’s ability to manhandle me despite my repetitive verbal abuse.

Then it hits me….I should totally build one kick-ass snow fort that will be a three month project with the kids.

It’ll melt some. Turn to ice some. Take some bad-ass snowball fighting hits some. But we’ll keep rebuilding, patching, working on it and making sure come spring, it’s still standing during the big-thaw!

And so I did it. And it’s something I should have BEEN doing. But I haven’t.

And, I’m not beating myself up for it. I’m chalking it up to another amazing experience in my time as a stay-at-home jobless-statistic dad.

Then it hits me…I should have been building one kick-ass fort of confidence around myself over the past month. And I should have had a three-month maintenance plan around it. And I haven’t.

I melted some. Took some vicious snowball hits. I cried. I looked in the mirror and walked away in disgust. And at the end of the day, all I'd really done is waste time.

And I wasn’t rebuilding, patching, or working on shit. NOTHING. No-thing.  

Thanks ex-boss, for giving me another amazing moment with my kids I otherwise would have missed.

Thanks ex-boss for making me realize another strength I hold within myself that’s now unleashed.

Thanks ex-boss for stopping my life at what I’ll hold as the most current critical moment in my self-awareness.

Thanks ex-boss…..but don’t get cocky you bastard…

I had an amazing phone call yesterday with a job I have a 99% chance of getting. It’s the best Christmas gift I could have gotten. I felt like I’d dropped 300 lbs. I got a piece of ME back. And, there’s still one more very strong potential job out there that I won’t hear about until January.

Nothing’s in stone and it could all crumble. But for now I feel lucky. Fuck that…I feel overwhelmingly fortunate. Only time will tell how it all plays out.

But yesterday was a good day.

I Have Two Fuck Trophies!

My brother (@IbeeNORM on Twitter) lovingly and occasionally refers to his children as “fuck-trophies.”

Now, he only does it in front of the right audience, and never in front of the kids—just making sure that’s out there so no angry parent-mobs form and go after him. But the first time I heard it, I laughed like hell while jotting it down on a little pad so I could whip the phrase out later as if I’d sat in my thinking chair late one night, sporting my pimped-out smoking jacket, pondering new and hilarious things.

But then later it hit me. My children really should be clad in gold, thrown on a pedestal, forever frozen in some award-winning pose as tribute to the wifey and me getting it on. Why? Because they truly are representative of a time when the wifey and I rocked the house of its foundation.

I’ll never forget our decision to start having kids. It was one of those spoken, but kind-of not-so-spoken decisions. And we started having unprotected sex. And a lot of it! And everyone around me knew something was different because I had perm-a-grin on my warped head.

Even people who didn’t know me were all, “oh yeah, that dude’s getting laid daily, if not hourly.”

Leaving Virginia after work one day to drive to North Carolina to be with family for Christmas, I joked to the wifey, “We should totally knock boots before we hit the road.”

Then, a loud boxing ring bell rang, clothes flew in the air, and it was on! I’m pretty confident I just laid there with deer-in-the-headlights look the whole time.

Then….she became pregnant. And that’s when that jagoff sex bouncer showed back up to guard the wifey’s sex-making area. He was all, “ummm….are you on the list to get in here tonight buddy?”

“Uhhh..yeah, I’m attached to the husband here. He should be at the TOP of the list.”

“Yeah…there’s no one on this list. Go on…go hit the shower pal. Get outta here.”

Pregnant with our first kid, the wifey went through a paranoia stage thinking the act of sex might hurt the fetus. And she was tired all the time. And sometimes sick. And I was left, still naked, raring to go, with perm-a-grin on my face, standing in the bedroom waiting.

And waiting……

Then it hit me—she totally used the hell out of me! And it was awesome!! But now that I’d tasted the sweet nectar of constant sex, it was like I was a teenager who’d just learned how to jerk-off again! I was humping trees, the leg of the cat, the mail box, apple pies…..it was sad.

But just like everything related to children—from pregnancy through every stage of their lives—I was being prepared for the next phase. And for our sex life, the next phase was the dreaded six-week post birth “Sex Shut Down Phase.” Wifey originally told me doctors said she couldn’t have sex for the first two years after birth, but Google set that shit straight.

So now, when I’m sitting on the back porch, relaxing, drinking a beer and watching my little fuck trophies run around, a smile creeps across my face as a think back to the time when sex was plentiful. When I could ask the wifey if she wanted to “drop the donkey” and she’d actually say “yes” rather than slap me. When I’d climb in the sex swing, wait for her to come home, and she was actually appreciative when she saw me strapped in. And, when I’d wake up to her on top of me and she’d say, “sshhhh….don’t even speak, look at me, or move. Just lay there,” and then she’d put the pillow back over my head.

Those were the days.....

Sex & The Snuggie

I got a glimpse last night into what my winter will be like. Let me rephrase that…what my sex life will be like this winter.

My wife is sick right now. I fell badly for her because she’s clearly not feeling well. She tries to help around the house, but all I see through my insane, fucked-up way of thinking is her spreading germs all over the house.

Last night I’m hanging out, just finished putting the little bastards to sleep, when it happens. The wifey descends from upstairs and flops down on the other end of the couch wearing the big, blue, stupid, frock looking, Snuggie. Yeah the real Snuggie.

Now…she knows I hate the Snuggie. She knows the first time I saw an ad for the Snuggie I picked up the TV and threw it out the front window. She knows that the very site of the Snuggie makes me want to take a flamethrower to it. It’s like nails on a chalkboard to me. But what am I going to do? She’s sick, and achy, and clearly wanted to get warm.

Then I suddenly became paralyzed with a sudden formula:

Comfort + Warmth = Snuggie cock-blocking all winter long.

She’s never going to take this thing off again. It will forever be the oversized sheath covering wifey and keeping us from the wonderful world of whoopie-making. It will become one with her. Once the children are tucked nicely in bed, she will shroud this magnificent piece of marketing bullshit around her body making her impenetrable to any and all efforts me and my little fella make towards sexual bliss.

I know, I know..you’re thinking, “well climb in there with her you idiot.” No..for a few reasons...

1) I hate the fucking Snuggie and don’t even want it touching me.

2) Wifey is clausterphobic and would be miserable with her and me in the Snuggie

3) I hate the fucking Snuggie and don’t even want it touching me.

And there’s no such thing as a crotchless Snuggie. There’s no Velcro strap that can be removed and placed back once the deed is done. There’s no flaps up top like women’s breast-feeding bra flaps.

My anger for the Snuggie has now reached new dimensions.

You’re on notice Snuggie. I will fuck you up. You will die. I will watch you burn, Twitter about it, TwitPic the whole thing, blog about it, then burry your ass in the alley where I can drive over your remains every day. You’re dead to me and I’m coming for you…….