Oedipus, Simple!

Lock Up Your... Cats

My son sleeps with my wife. I sleep in the next room -- his! It’s an arrangement that would make Oedipus himself puce with jealousy. There’s a simple enough explanation for this, and no it doesn’t rhyme with divschmorce. The reason: my son is a fucking bully.

My wife and I have obviously discussed the situation. It used to be my job, but now she’s taken the reins of putting him to bed every night. She claims he won’t go to sleep in his own bed. “Mommy’s bed; Mommy’s bed!!!” he demands, when she takes him up. Mommy doesn’t say no, so the kid winds up passing out on my side of the bed.

In the beginning, I’d simply carry him back in. This was about as effective as eating soup with a fork. Within minutes, the child would be straight back in. Lodging himself between me and my wife. I should point out my wife sleeps with about fifty pillows under her head. No joke, she’s practically sitting up. It’s kinda creepy. But it means me and the kid effectively share half a bed, because he’d need a fucking Sherpa to climb up onto her side. One time, after I returned him to bed for the tenth time that night, I went to use the bathroom. An when I got back to bed... there he was, IN MY BED! It was like a fucking cartoon: you know Pepe Le Pew – the skunk who rapes cats... for the amusement of children – when he’s chasing down his lady, and she keeps running away from him, but there he is wherever she hides? It was like that.

So one night I just climbed into his bed, and had the best sleep I’d had in weeks. I know this, because when he came running in shouting “Daddy, daddy”, at 7am, I actually felt capable of functioning like a regular human being, without mainlining a gallon of coffee. Of course, I had a gallon of coffee anyway. I like coffee.

The only person who wasn’t pleased with this new arrangement was my wife. She missed her husband? I kept her warm at night? She liked to occasionally watch me sleep, serene and vulnerable, but still somehow oh so masculine? None of the above. She had nobody to share baby-feeding duties with (and by share I mean get-him-to-do-all-of-them). Conveniently, she soon discovered that whenever our 5 month old awoke, wailing for a bottle and a new diaper, she had to use the bathroom. Every fucking time! “Baby, would you mind getting Eva? I have to use the bathroom”. And I would trudge down the hall to my (old) bedroom like a zombie – an old-fashioned zombie, not one of those terrifying modern, ultra-fast zombies – and feed my daughter at the foot of the bed, while my son and my wife slept soundly.

At least I like coffee.

It's All About The Money

Under That Jacket, This Guy is RIPPED!

I’m writing this from the sanctuary of the bathroom today. My family keep assaulting me with hugs and love, and demands of my attention. Can’t a guy get some peace. My wife is on a crusade to find all our legal documents. We’re trying to extract as much money from the government as possible. Today’s mission: to claim “Child Allowance”. For the uninitiated, child allowance is essentially free money from the government for having kids. Yup, that’s one of the few perks of living in commie, left-wing Europe. If you cut us, we bleed, eh... red. It’s not insignificant either: I get 260 Euro for my two kids. That’s about $350. A month. That buys a lot of diapers and crayons.

We’re also trying to get registered as a married couple, which will lower my tax rate, because here in commie, left-wing Europe we pay insanely high taxes. It’s so that we can pay everybody “Child Allowance”. I know; I’m from here and I don’t get it. Trying to understand the reasoning of some of our laws would push you to the limits of your sanity, and beyond. I just do what I do whenever I’m faced with something I don’t understand — I just smile and nod. I seem do that a lot. I think it’s weirding people out.

I don’t look at my bank statements much; if I want to read a horror story, I’ll pick up a Stephen King book. But I needed to log in to get some details for my wife. Anyway, I noticed a charge of 67 Euro for something called “Ripped Muscle”. I don’t have ripped muscles, so I’m feeling a little short changed by that. I think I remember signing up for a free sample of some kind of supplement though. I must have given them my debit card number. Why? I hear you ask? Well, isn’t it obvious? I’m fucking retarded, clearly.

I also saw a charge of $167 from Hertz Rent-a-car. I called customer service, and they have no idea what the charge is for. They said they’d call me back. I feel like maybe karma has bitten me in the ass on this one, but we’ll see. I’m sure they’ll find a reason for the charge. Either that or they’ll give me a coupon for $167 worth of car rental, that I’ll never need to use. Either way, I won’t hold my breath for a refund.

Well, I gotta go now, my son is knocking on the door looking for “love” and “affection”. Can’t I get a damn moment to myself?

Sex Or The Beard

The Holy Grail of Fat Guys with Beards

“You really need to do something about that… that thing on your face,” was the delightful greeting from my wife this morning. “It’s not even a proper beard; you need to trim it, groom it. It looks like a 1970’s vagina.” I’ve never been a beard guy. I know beards are manly, but what’s more manly than drawing a razor sharp blade across your face every morning? That’s fucking hardcore if you ask me. But I guess every guy, at some point in their life should grow a beard, right? I mean it’s one of the defining qualities of being a guy – our ability to grow a big fuck-off beard. So this is my time.

I had never actually intended on growing one. It just happened when I stopped shaving. It’s a depression beard. When you just about manage to bathe and clothe yourself, shaving is decorative folly. But as the fog lifted, I found the beard to be quite fetching. “It really brings out my lips.” I told my wife. “It makes you look fat.” She countered, unfairly in my opinion. “Actually, you’ll find it’s my fat that makes me look fat; my beard just makes me look awesome.” “I’m not having sex with you ‘til you shave that thing off.” “You know withholding sex only actually works with people who actually have sex with each other.” This statement thus began a huge argument about me not understanding her needs, and never listening to her, etc. (at least I think that’s what she said). But that's ok; it takes the heat off my precious beard.

My kids like my beard too. My three year old keeps asking what it is. “It’s a beard,” I tell him. He seems satisfied. And my 5 month old daughter keeps trying to grab it. I assume that’s an endorsement. Of course, I’ll shave it off eventually. I’m not a beard guy. And anyway, that sharpened steel is calling for my face.

Then my wife can go back to her regular list of reasons not to have sex with me. My morning breath, my bad moods, my inability to communicate with her, my lack of understanding about her illness, my intimidatingly large penis, and a hundred other character flaws that don’t make me Prince fucking Charming. Of course, all I hear is “It’s because you’re fat.”

Of course we have sex sometimes. We have kids, dammit. Kids that look like me. Sometimes we go through spells where the sex is flowing like cheap beer at a frat house. And then, zip… nada. The rain stops falling and the ground becomes arid and desert-like. Right now I’m somewhere in the Sahara. I think I just saw a camel.

I know it’s not going to be like the old days, we have two young kids who give us literally minutes of time to ourselves daily. My wife suffers from a chronic illness, and I’m a depressive, recovering alcoholic. But it’s just sex. Can’t we just fuck in the bathroom at 4 a.m.? I’d be game for that. Either way, until I get some sex, the beard is here to stay!

From beneath....

Well this is awkward. I kinda feel like the family member who borrows a bunch of money, and then disappears for a few years, before showing up at a funeral or some shit. I’m not good with awkward conversation and platitudes, so we’ll gracefully move on and perhaps you’ll listen while I fill you in on the past 3 months of my life.

So on May 6th of this year, my family and I were sent kicking and screaming back to Ireland, by my work. I had tomporarily relocated to Oregon in January 2012 and we had hoped to stay a bit longer there. Somewhere in the region of forever. Alas, it wasn’t to be, and we were sent back to the old country. My wife who is American, didn’t seem to mind a whole lot, despite the loss of our not insignificant expense account. Like I said, she’s American, and I think she is still waiting to see a leprechaun or some shit. Me, I’ve lived here all my life. People tell me all the time how great a place Ireland is to visit, or if they’ve never been, how much they would love to visit. The key word here is “visit”. That is: fly in, kiss the Blarney Stone, drink lots of Guinness and get the fuck out of dodge. When you deal with the high taxes, and shitty infrastructure, and abysmal healthcare, and shitty weather on a daily basis, it becomes akin to a kind of large insane asylum with bad food.

Ok, ok, I’m being harsh. Truth is, our move didn’t go too smoothly, and I’m perhaps a little bitter. Plus there’s fuck all to do when the national past-time is drinking, and you’re an alcoholic. We arrived with nowhere to live and no car. We were staying in my Mom’s and driving a rental, so there was pressure to buy a car and get somewhere to live. After a week I bought a used BMW from the archetypal greasy used car salesman. And as you would expect, within a week, the engine fucking exploded (not literally, it was the exhaust manifold, but I spent a month waiting on the guy to get it fixed). After about three weeks, we found somewhere to live: a slightly overpriced -- but the only place in our search that felt like it could be home -- house in a quiet little neighborhood near work. Unfortunately, this was about two and a half weeks after living with my Mom had become un-fucking-bearable. We hadn’t seen the woman in 18 months, and within days she made it clear our welcome was eroding on pace with my sanity. Disclaimer: I love my mom, and she’s been wonderfully kind to us. It just was way too crowded for us all, and the feeling that we had invaded her privacy swarmed the air like a siren call.

I also realised that I hate my fucking job. The perks, and the cameraderie that I had with the guys in Oregon was not there when I got back to the Irish office. So all I was left with was work itself, which I have little interest or passion for. We’d also eaten into our savings a lot more than we’d anticipated, and then I remembered that alcohol existed. So I started drinking again. Because that’s what total fucking idiots like me do.

So the blog -- this blog -- just kind of died. There was no place for it in my life with two small kids, and settling into a new home, and trying to get your car fixed from a sheister who kept trying to get me to go halves on the cost of repairs (yeah right, pal), and drinking, and guilt, and drinking some more, and a job I hated, and hangovers. Eventually, about two weeks ago, I put the bottle back down. I was deriving little pleasure from it; just numbness. Which is kind of when you know you are an alcoholic. If it’s not social, it’s poison. And my wife and I talked things through. We got some long-standing issues out of the way, and things were better... much better. And I thought about maybe writing again. But it just didn’t happen.

You see, all that other stuff is only half of the story. Because during it all, and maybe because of it all, I fell into a pretty hardcore depression. Not gloominess, or sadness, but a bitter unyielding malaise. Those that suffer from depression can maybe Identify. I’ve been suffering from it for a long time -- it comes and goes with me -- and I’ve been on antidepressants for about 3 and a half years. Those that don’t suffer... it’s almost unexplainable. For me, it’s just an unbearable hollowness -- like somebody just scooped out my insides, everything important about me, and now I’m just left wandering around like Heathcliff’s Cathy, banging on windows and shit, looking for all the important stuff I’ve lost in my life. And that relentless emptiness just wears away at you, until it’s raw and agonising. It’s like heartbreak and  profound apathy rolled into one horrific psychologically scarred ball. And to just play with my kids, or shower, or hug my wife, is a grappling, struggle, like swimming through honey. So yeah, “fuck this blog” was kinda where I was at.

But another part of me missed it deeply. I was aware that I was treading water, that I was barely going through the motions of living a life, and that there were a lot of holes that needed filling, and part of me was desperate to fill them. But when everything is so painful, it’s hard to even know where to start. And in all honesty, there has never really been a time in my life when there haven’t been holes to fill.

I guess I’m out of the deepest part of this depression. I hadn’t seen her face in years, and had almost forgotten her touch, but when you’re gobbling Cymbalta and valium like they’re movie theater popcorn, it’s easier to avoid. It still lingers though. I almost cried tonight, leaving my son for the night shift (crying’s good though -- it’s the numbness, the void, that’s so hateful; crying is a fucking vacation from that). But I’ll keep pushing on. I’ve upped my dosage of meds, and will try to find a good therapist nearby. I might even start meditation again. And as cliche as it sounds, I need to start liking myself. I’ve been through a lot of pain in my life, and most of that was self-imposed. There’s an anchor of guilt and shame hanging around my neck. I’ve hurt people: ex-girlfriends, discarded friends, family... my closest family. Christ! It’s hard knowing there are folk out there who actively despise you, even years after our last countenance. I haven’t just burned bridges; I’ve scorched the earth behind me. Those closest to me have forgiven me, but I’m just not sure if I have.

So I’m back. I can return to describing the zany machinations of my everyday life, while we guffaw in unison at my mild misfortune and embarrassment., m’kay? So just forget you read all this, and we’ll talk soon.

Old Man

Get me off the damn Interweb!

I’m dealing with getting older well. At least I think I am. No longer do I pass frivolous nights in garish bars, trying hard to drown in a well of booze, trying hard to entice women who maybe pass for a seven (when drunk) back to my place for coffee – coffee and sex, trying hard to fit as many pills or powder into my stupid young head, trying hard to balance a lifestyle of excessive vapidity and vapid excess with my sanity. I spent most of my twenties (and some of my teens) living for the weekend, a weekend entailing the above, but with hangovers – I never mentioned the hangovers. Of course, I don’t miss it. It sounds hideous to me; ok I’ve just written it to sound hideous, but looking back it was a truly grotesque way of life. And yeah I’m dealing with the absence of that in my life really well.

 Don’t get me wrong, the hardest part of being a teetotal dad of two younglings and husband of a wife, who’s been unwell of late, is the boredom. The incessant, merciless torrent of boredom. You might think your Saturday nights have dried up a little recently: a bottle of wine and some friends around for a DVD, perhaps; maybe some take out and an early night with your significant other, and a cuddle before the lights go out, wink wink; fuck it, maybe you’re in prison or homeless or a ten year old. Doesn’t matter. You’re still having more fun than me. Last Saturday night, I had the pleasure of watching the movie “Hop” three times in a row before being puked on by both my kids. Meanwhile my wife was upstairs, herself puking – I alone was the only non-puker in my family, and still I would have killed to swap places with her. So later I had to change my daughter’s shitty diaper, which was a fucking delight, because she wasn’t yet finished, so I got to watch that. It went from green to a mustard-yellow color (it looked a bit like mint and butterscotch frozen yogurt, but it did not, repeat: NOT smell like mint and butterscotch frozen yogurt). My wife then felt better just long enough to hold my baby girl (Eva the Diva, as we like to call her, does not like not being held. Ever. I mean EVER… ha ha ha, it’s enough to drive one crazy. Weird huh?) just long enough for me to put my son to bed. Upon his insistence, I told him Goldilocks and the Three Bears about twenty times before he finally settled long enough to sleep. At Ten. Fucking. O. Clock! Finally, I got some alone time with my wife, which lasted about nine seconds before we both crashed into Slumberville.

So yeah, I’m dealing with that aspect of getting older real well. But as I approach my mid thirties (34 is NOT yet mid-thirties; it’s late, early thirties), I’m starting to notice a few …changes. I have bona fide white hairs now. There aren’t many, only one or two, but they’re there, and they weren’t there before. I’m getting aches and pains: I have this tightness inside my shoulder blade that I can never seem to stretch out; and my back… my back is like a game of fucking Jenga. And I can’t get away with eating crap, and not working out anymore. My metabolism is like a steel mill in the rust belt in the 80’s – grinding to a fucking halt. I have zero baldness yet, but I’m getting back-pubes to match my chest-pubes. It’s gross, and I’m too lazy/cheap to get it waxed. Seriously, if the hair doesn’t stop, I’m gonna look like I'm wearing a sweater... under my shirt.

I’m turning into an old grouch too. I don’t like modern music; I don’t understand modern clothes – skinny jeans on girls are great; on guys, not so much. I complain a lot – Exhibit A: This blog. I yell at slow drivers; I yell at fast drivers; I yell at pedestrians; I hit people on bikes. If I had a walking stick I’d shake it at people. A lot. The weather is a fairly prevalent recipient of my wrath; I’m an Irishman living in Oregon, go figure. I’m a pre-middle aged fogey, and guess what? I love it. If I didn’t have anything to complain about, I’d complain about that too. It’s the best thing about growing old, and the older I get, the more cantankerous I get to be.

Now where the hell did I leave my damn pipe and slippers?

More Less Of Me... And A Kitten

I have have zero time at a PC or a laptop for days now. My life this week has been a mixture of screaming, demanding kids, lack of sleep, poor life choices, and a sick wife. The poor life choices were mine and involved alcohol (as 99% of shitty choices are), reminding me why I've abstained for the last few months. It's self-control, people, or lack thereof. I don't have it. If you watch me drink, or spend money, or "snack" before bedtime, it will become apparent why I'm poor and slightly pudgy around the edges. Or at least it becomes less of a surprise.

Anyway, as a consequence, very little action has occurred on my blog for almost a week. To make up for this, I promise I'll spend more time tending to my grubby little corner of the internet, and all you have to do is read the thing. That's a fair deal? Right?

Ok, I've got to go feed and bathe my kids, clean the house, then pick up my poor, sick wife from the hospital. All in all a pretty rock star way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Woohooo!!!

And because you guys loved the hamsters so much, here's a kitten being super-cute ('cos he thinks he's a people):

and some alternatives, for the less cutesy minded:

Surprised Kitty - Darth Vader

Surprised Kitty - Toast

Surprised Kitty - Lego

Video Killed The Dad Blogger

Why can't the TV eat my Kids?

Last week, I had to leave work early a couple of times and even take a day off. My wife has been unwell, and seeing as how caring for our two kids would drive a perfectly healthy person into the realm of madness, it’s been a bit too much for her while sick, so naturally I’ve had to miss some time to help out. Truth be told, I wasn’t too pleased about this. Understand something: I fucking hate my job; it’s tedious, boring and perfunctory, except on those occasions when it’s hectic, stressful and perfunctory. I suppose in many ways, you get what you put in, but I have no passion for it. It pays the bills, so I swap my time, and some labor for cash. Yes, I’m a whore. And yet, I wanted nothing more than to stay there until quitting time today. Because my house is fucking nuts.

Today, my wife and I have been working on a system of segregation, which has worked reasonably well: she’s been upstairs, napping with the baby in a mellow Lennon-Ono style love-in, whilst downstairs I have gradually been losing the will to live trying to keep my son happy. And by happy, I mean not yelling and screaming and hopping up and down making the floorboards shake (his latest trick). The changeovers have been the worst; he’s up with her now, trying to sleep, while she’s currently vegging on my lap, in that glorious, post-bottle stoner haze. Unfortunately, for the child trade to take place, they had to be in the same room as one another for two minutes. And so my wife and I were treated to a fucking world-class mini person scream-off. Two tiny kids screaming in some kind of perverted, fucked-up harmony, perfectly keyed to drive my wife and I out of our minds. Dante, if you’re reading this from somewhere beyond the grave… there was a tenth fucking circle.

Anyway, most of the day was spent hanging out with the little dude, watching DVDs. And if you don’t have kids, you probably just read through that line like it was nothing… right? But if you do have kids, you’ll know the pain involved in sitting down to watch a movie with your child. My favorite movies range from comedy, to action, to drama. Films such as Star Wars; E.T.; The Shawshank Redemption; Planes, Trains & Automobiles; Goodfellas. The list is not perfect, but there are two notable things about it: 1, the target market of these movies is above the age of six; 2, I’ve only seen these movies a few times each (I’ve seen Star Wars maybe 5 times). My son’s favorite movies, however, include the groundbreaking “Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel”, the award winning “Smurfs”, and the timeless classic “Stuart Little 2”. And guess what? I’ve seen each of these movies, and more – many, many more – about five hundred-fucking-thousand times each.

Watching movies with your kid is a strange sort of torture. At first, you’re not even aware of it: you sit down with your little boy or girl and watch Shrek, or Wallace and Gromit, or one of the many wonderful Pixar movies, and you enjoy it. “This is awesome,” you think, “I don’t see what’s wrong with this.” And you laugh at the jokes aimed at adults, and you even laugh at some of the ones aimed at kids, and your child curls into your lap, and you both laugh together… and all of these things only lend to the nightmarish qualities of the eventual horror in store for you.

So the movie ends, and you wonder what you’ll do next. You could do painting, go to the park, maybe read a story… then a little voice pipes up: “Pwess pway, daddy.” Hmm! Not too sure you’re in the mood to watch it again, you acquiesce as your child’s impatience steadily grows. So you watch it again, and this time you might smile knowingly at the adult jokes, maybe laugh at one you missed on the previous viewing, meanwhile your child cackles manically at the jokes aimed at kids, he or she curls up into your lap, but you nudge them away so you can play with your phone. And then the video ends. “Pwess pway,” your crazy little spawn demands again. What? No! Not again, let’s watch another one… anythi-- “PWESS PWAY!!!” Ok, ok. And gradually your descent into madness begins its inexorable crawl “Do it to Mommy!” you scream, “Do it to Mommy.” While the monster you bore laughs on.

Try it. Put your favorite movie on and watch it two or three times, day after day, after day. If you can handle that shit, you are stronger than me. If it doesn’t forever destroy that movie for you, you are inhuman. Fucking Soviet Russia could’ve learned a thing from this. The Nazi’s, the Japanese, you name it. Unit 731? Dr. Mengele? They have nothing on my three year-old and his DVD collection.

My wife and I are up to speed with all the DVD release dates, just to inject something fresh into the mix, to allow our minds 80 minutes of relief. We obsess over them “Oh My God, look – Wreck-It-Ralph is out next week, honey.” And a round of high fives ensues. As an act of rebellion, I’ve started quoting long stretches of dialogue from the movies. For some reason, my son abhors this. He begs me to stop. But I don’t. It’s all I have left.

Of course, now my daughter is just a few months old, so roughly when my son grows out of this current batch of kids’ movies, she’ll be there ready to take his place, forcing me to sit through them all over again. I think I’m going to need a hobby, or a drug habit, or something to get through this. Anyway, I gotta go… my son is asking (demanding) to watch “The Smurfs” for the eight billionth time.

The Reach Zone

Imma get that shit!

There is an imaginary line in every room, every shopping mall, every street… everywhere. This imaginary line is about four foot high, and anything left below this line will be cause, or consequence, of the most hostile of abuse. For most folk, this line is invisible – non-existent – but for the parent of a toddler, this line is the first fucking thing you see when you enter a room. For you see, this line isn’t imaginary at all; it is the boundary between life and death; between sanity and insanity. We call it ‘The Reach Zone’.

You will always know when you’re standing in the home of a small child – there is nothing… nothing beneath this line that isn’t made by Fisher Price or Mattel. And when you see the parent’s of one of these little sprouts enter the room of a regular person (a “normal”, we call them), you will see the palpable expression of panic appear on said parent’s face. “Holy shit, they keep stuff on the coffee table?”, “What the hell is that? It looks expensive!” and always “Oh Jesus, is that a fucking candle? Save us!!!”

My Dad used to remind us, my brother and I, of the time we shattered my Uncle’s expensive guitar while they sat in the next room chatting. I have no recollection of this, and thus only minor guilt, which I think pisses my Uncle off almost as much as the incident itself. But seriously, who doesn’t hear two toddlers obliterate a fucking acoustic guitar in the next room?

You become so accustomed to keeping stuff out of your kid’s reach, that it becomes automatic. Nothing gets left out. Everything of danger to a toddler (and that’s everything) is kept hidden, not just from arms reach, but from sight too. And everything that is in danger from a child gets the same treatment (that too is pretty much everything). You are a fucking ninja at keeping your house as safe and damage free as possible. The only danger you face is complacency. That, or arrogance, will be your undoing. Because it might take a while, but eventually you will fuck up.

Today, my three year old boy got a hold of the Desitin. Do I need to continue? I could end this post now, and it wouldn’t matter: because already you have a picture of the unmitigated carnage that befell our household today. Thankfully I was at work when this happened, for two reasons: firstly, I’d have been blamed, and second, I’d have had to assist in cleaning it up. Actually, my wife would have diligently rolled up her sleeves and got to work, while I sweated, panicking; dabbing here and there at large mounds of thick, white, glutinous paste (or what the missus calls a Saturday night – kidding, kidding). All the while my wife would clean up 99% of the mess. Which is exactly what happened, except I got to remain relatively sweat free from the confines of work.

My Son: If he becomes a clown, I disown him.

Suffice it to say, the Desitin has been placed far beyond the reach of tiny fingers, where it shall remain. And probably three or four years from now, when my son is old enough to know better, and my daughter is patrolling the lower reaches of our home, we’ll find jars of hot pink nail polish dumped across the beige carpets of our bedroom floor. Because it might take a while, but eventually you will fuck up.

Picture Perfect

That good-looking guy in my profile picture, right there at the bottom of my sidebar. That guy in black and white, with the cheesy smile and the scruffy-chic hair? Yeah, he's a lie. He doesn't exist. The guy writing this is an older, fatter version. Don't get me wrong, that's definitely me, it's just me four or five years ago, before I had kids, before I got married, and before I quit the gym and stopped kidding myself that protein shakes were an adequate substitution for cheeseburgers.

"How could you deceive us like this?" I hear you cry. "We thought you were a moderately good-looking youngish man, and now we find you are an average looking, average aged man! The lies!!!! The lies!!!" Well I'm sorry, but there are a number of reasons for my betrayal. Firstly, it's what my mother would call a "white lie", it's technically not entirely a mistruth, and who is it really hurting (aside from the lustful young ladies whose dreams and hopes have been shattered)? I could look like that again, if I liked. Aside from the extra twenty...ish pounds I've added, I'm aging quite well. No crow’s feet, no grey hairs. I could hit the gym, and purge myself of fast food and soda. And chocolate. And ice cream and cake. And... well, and pretty much everything I eat. I could start buying my clothes at A&F again (with da popped colla!), and go back to fancy expensive hair salons (yes, I was one of those guys). I could use moisturizer and exfoliate. And I would look at least as good as that guy. Probably better (truth be told, I was already beginning to tank when this was taken – I'd, by now, hooked my wife into a long term relationship). So really, that guy still exists: I just ate him. 

Another reason I don't have a more recent picture is because there are literally no good photos of me in existence since the turn of the decade. I don't just mean because I've let myself go. I still have the same face, and while I'm no George Clooney, I'm certainly not Quasimodo's twin brother either. I just don't have any pictures where I'm sober, or smiling, or without a wan paper-thin smile draped over thick layers of anxiety and depression. Most of the portraits I've taken recently have been with my newborn daughter. Or with my son. In most of those I look exactly like the dad of two small kids: like I haven't shaved in days, like I'm  about six weeks overdue on a haircut, like I look as if I maybe had a quick shower -- we're talking "Apply, Lather, Rinse". No fucking "Repeat" for me. Not on my son's watch.

There's more to it than that though (and this is where the sad, dramatic, violin-ey music comes in). Look at me. Look at how fucking relaxed I am. We're not talking stiff-drink-and-a-valium-relaxed either. Which was my go-to source of relaxation for most of my adult life. We're talking the kind of relaxation that comes with being in love, without a care in the world, free of all responsibility, with a healthy disposable income, and a penchant for having fun. I’m on vacation, having cocktails and cheesecake Goddammit! This photograph fell within a three month window when I felt completely free. And it shows in that photo. And in all the other photos since, I haven't fucking felt that way. And that shows too. I'm happy, and I'm deeply in love – with my wife and my kids. I'm financially dependent, and I'm healthy, but that's maybe one of two times in my adult life when I've felt like I had the universe by the balls. The other was when I was 20, which doesn't really count. And I probably won't feel this way again until I'm an old man... and that's ok.

After you have kids, nothing is ever the same again. You start to see the world differently; everything becomes a "what if", or a "but maybe" or a "oh shit". You know when you're a teenager and you steal your dad's Ferrari and drive it all around Chicago, and you're worried about your cocky best friend scratching it, well multiply that by a fucking million when you have kids. When the weight of every poor parenting decision, every strange looking rash, every heart-ending moment when you lose sight of your kid for a millisecond at the mall or the playground, stays with you day and night, you know then that you'll never quite relive your carefree twenties. But I wouldn't swap a second with my two little Ferraris for one more photograph like that. Being a parent is the hardest, most taxing, most willfully, endlessly stressful thing you'll ever endure, and yet it's worth every second of it.

Clowning Around

Joining a Circus with Dental Insurance was top of his wishlist

Pennywise the clown. That fucker haunted my dreams for years. He lurked in the shadows of my bedroom, hid between the cracked alleyways that dotted my hometown. He was everywhere I feared and many places I didn’t. I should never have watched that fucking movie: Stephen King’s “It”. I begged my Mother to let me rent it. I promised her it wasn’t that scary. “It’s about a clown, Mom,” I urged, “how scary can it be?” “It’s about an evil clown.” She countered. “A rogue clown, Mom. A clown who’s been chewed up and spat out by society. A misunderstood clown who’s made some wrong turns in life, and is trying to find some semblance of normalcy in his baggy-panted, white-faced, red-nosed existence.” Twelve year-old me probably didn’t say that, but either way she bought it. In reality, it was about an evil clown – one who feasted on the dreams and also the flesh (an important detail) of children.

Being a child myself, and knowing first-hand that clowns existed, and that any adult man, who painted his face and traveled around with a circus under the guise of entertaining kids, was almost certainly pure evil, I found this movie somewhat unsettling. Or put more succinctly: I didn’t sleep for almost a year.

Let’s cut to the fucking chase: clowns are weird. Anyone who aspires to be a clown is fucking weird, and anyone who has made enough poor decisions in life that they find themselves employed as a clown, is fucking weird. At face value, the concept of a clown is to entertain children. But let’s look a little closer at this supposition: The modern clown began as vaudevillian characters in French theater. You had the whiteface or ‘blanc’ clown, who would essentially abuse the lower class, or ‘auguste’ clowns. They did this with their faces plastered in colored face-paint, because, y’know, that’s hilarious and all. Later, common to North America, came the ‘hobo’ clowns, these are the guys who look like they’ve just murdered and raped some kids, and smell of piss. They’re usually sullen and grumpy and derive much pleasure from the physical (and one would imagine mental) abuse of their peers. Obviously anyone who can’t see the hilarity in that is lacking in the very basic tenets of a sense of humor.

Somewhere along the lines, people realized that these guys weren’t so much funny, as freaky-looking fuckers, and that rather than tickle the funny bone, they instead stomped all over their fear receptors. Horror writers, such as the aforementioned Stephen King, began to write clowns as the horrible, monstrous beings they are. Over the past twenty years there has been a flurry of terrifying clown movies. Clowns, as a source of joy, entertainment and gaiety, have virtually been wiped off the map (which is a good thing). Of course, many of these clowns have freaky-ass evil faces, as you can see on thiswebsite. But this isn’t even necessary. If, like me, you have a true fear of clowns, you’ll agree it’s the regular old middle-aged men with sad expressions and painted on grimacing smiles that are the most sinister. Except for Pennywise – the granddaddy of them all – who flips with consummate ease between creepy regular clown guy, and soul-petrifying monster, whenever those meddling kids piss him off.

His owner not willing to take a chance, poor Gizmo starved to death.

Of course, it wasn’t just clowns I was afraid of: Gremlins scared every shade of shit out of me. And a question: WHEN THE FUCK DOES “AFTER MIDNIGHT” END? 6am? 9am? Fucking when can I feed my pet, without him attempting to murder me and everyone I love? And I accidentally saw “Aliens” when I was eleven. I vomited that night, and every day for about six months I went to bed with anxiety that I had an Alien hitch-hiking in my chest. In fact, as a kid I was afraid of fucking everything: vampires, aliens, banshees scared the living bejeesus out of me (If you see one you die? How fucking unfair is that? Gimme at least a chance of escape, for fuck sake). On top of all these grotesque creatures of the night, I also possessed a vague fear of just your random, garden variety, amorphous type of monster; the ones that you never did see, but you knew looked all kind of monstery – a bit like the ones you see in “Monsters INC.” but less cute and more terrifying.

And then it stopped. All of it. I realized that the really frightening things in life were real. There were no Bogeymen hiding under my bed. There were actual real-life terrors waiting to strike at any moment. When my Dad was diagnosed with Cancer, just after my eighteenth birthday, I realized that adult life was a hell of a lot fucking scarier, than my childhood imaginings. Fears didn’t hide in the shadows; they jumped out and face-raped you in broad daylight. By the time my dad died, and I dropped out of college, got myself in debt, had my heart broken a couple of times, and been diagnosed with depression, I was no longer frightened of things that go bump in the night. I’d lie in bed at night willing them to come take me away.

Nowadays, things are much better for me: I have a beautiful wife; two amazing kids; a good job; depression still rears its head sometimes, but never for long; debt … debt still sucks, but I can handle it. I’m still afraid, of what the future holds for my kids, of how they’ll navigate school and the lure of sex and drugs in their teens, of their job prospects twenty years from now. I sometimes worry about my wife’s health, about my health – was my Dad’s illness genetic, or just bad fucking luck? But these fears don’t paralyze me; I still wake up in the morning and go to work, or make my son breakfast and watch cartoons with him. And I’ll be there for both of my kids when they get scared that there may or may not be an evil child-murdering clown in their closet. I might even check it out for them. Either that or run screaming for the door.

Perc'd Up

Playing with kids will fuck you up

In the way that slightly overweight dad’s who’ve let themselves go do, wearing ill fitting jeans and a t-shirt of their favorite sports team (an irony that only becomes apparent when standing near an actual athlete, with abs that look like they could be used to crash test Jeeps, and Pecs you could take shelter under), I’ve fucked my back up. The set up was quite an obvious one: I was wheeling my three year-old around our street on his Mickey Mouse bike, when  we came to a slight incline of maybe two or three degrees. It was at this point my spine said “Fuck it, I quit” and I spent the next ten minutes on my hands and knees in front of all our neighbors, whimpering like a freshly neutered puppy. To be fair, the bike was about 18 inches off the ground, and I hadn’t bent over this far since my last medical. It also involved running, so in many ways I’m lucky to be alive.

I could try to explain the moment my back imploded, but all I remember is seeing white and falling on the ground. I also remember my son laughing at his goofy dad lying on the street making strange chimp-like noises. We were about 15 foot from my front door, but it might as well have been on the other side of the Mojave for all the fucking hope I had of making it home. I considered crawling back, but between me and you, I’ve left enough dignity on the sidewalk over the years to consider that. I managed to convince my son to wheel himself over to the garage, and then I began the long trek home. Think Bambi on ice, after downing a fifth of Whiskey.

The drive to the hospital was a whole new world of pain for me. I kid you not. Maybe that says more about my sheltered existence than my injury, but I spent the entire journey unsure whether to pass out or vomit: every bump and pothole treated me with a level of hatred hitherto reserved only by ex-girlfriends. Whenever my wife hit the brakes, my back spasmed like my spinal cord was connected to the power grid.

We finally reached the hospital, and then… Percocet. And everything felt better. Everything. My pain slipped away into the ether, along with all the other little day-to-day worries that turn an anxious depressive such as me, into a twitching, paranoid mess. It was like God himself was my personal assistant. All I could do was smile 'til drool spilt from my lips. I cuddled my kids so much even my three year old began to feel embarrassed. I told my wife I wanted to marry her. Trust me, you haven’t ever really experienced strong painkillers until you’ve told your mother in law that you love her. Repeatedly. I’ve taken a bunch of different, ahem… “recreational” drugs in my younger days, and with the possible exception of ecstasy (that shit is dope), nothing comes close.

As luck would have it, I was given a prescription for a bunch more of the dime-sized magical little discs. Plus a note for a week off work. All in all a very nice outcome for a man who may or may not have begged for death at one point.

Scoli-fucking-what-sis?

Except… as a precaution, my primary care physician suggested maybe I should get an X-ray done, just to get to the bottom of the occasional back-aches I’ve suffered over the last few years. “Sure, why not,” I said,  willing to acquiesce to any demand she made for that delicious prescription of sweet, sweet candy she’d promised me. I wasn’t concerned. I’d pulled muscles in my back before; usually at the gym, sometimes playing sports. I figured it was all a part life when you have a nice round belly like mine, and the flexibility of Venus de Milo.

But there are a number of things you don’t want to hear from the mouth of a medical professional, when you’re the subject. “That’s unusual” is high up on that list. “Eh… what’s unusual?” I replied, relying heavily on the drugs not to go into full-on panic mode. “Have you ever been diagnosed with scoliosis before?” she queried. “Eh no,” I offered in response, “No I have fucking not.” “Well it could be just a spasm, but your spine looks slightly bent. Let me show you.” And there it was, the X-ray of my back that looked like a game of Jenga… played by a bunch of four year olds. Usually when I look at things like Ultrasounds, and X-rays, I can’t make head or tail of it. To me they look like someone spilt their dinner on the floor then took a black and white photograph of it. But there was no mistaking this: my spinal column looked like someone had taken a hammer to it.

The nurse told me she’d seen worse, and that physical therapy would probably fix it, but that the doctor would assess it and contact me next week. But I see an MRI on the horizon, and if that’s bad news, then surgery. Of course, usually this would have me hyperventilating in a state of extreme panic. Not today though… now where did I put those damn Percocet?

Return of the Living Dead

This man knows pain only a parent can...

You may have noticed, if you’ve been paying really close attention, that I haven’t been around for a while. There’s a reason for that. I am now the proud father of two small children. Three weeks ago my wife gave birth to my daughter, who now, along with my three year old son, is the recipient of all my time and energy. Writing a blog, you say? Yeah, that’s kind of down the pecking order of my priorities right now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m elated: every day is a gift and all that shit, but it doesn’t mean it’s easy.

Last night I managed to get four hours sleep, which was awesome. Most nights it’s two or three. My daughter, in her brief time with us, has decided that she likes being held. Constantly. This means that either myself or her mother must be awake at some point through the night holding her, so that she can sleep. Unless of course she decides it’s time to be fed, in which case she’ll charm us with her attention for a diaper and a bottle, then it’s back off to Slumberville. It’s impressive really; that’s the kind of high maintenance her mom would be proud of. Were she not so fucking tired all the time.

We could manage this, just, were it not for a rather loud and boisterous three year old we share a home with. With him night time is not a problem – it’s the bit in between we have trouble with: he’ll sleep like the dead from 9pm ‘til about 8am. But then … then the screaming begins. And does not fucking end. Running away won’t help; like Daniel Day-Lewis in Last of the Mohicans… he will fucking find you.  I’ve taken to hiding out in the bathroom. I’ve got a bunch of books in there, along with my wife’s iPad. All I need is a mini refrigerator and I never have to leave. At this point I’m shitting more than a puppy on your brand new beige carpet. But still, my son hunts me down, banging on the door and squealing with a fury only a three year old can realize.

Then, as the sun sets, and bed time nears, my daughter decides this would be an awesome time to raise her fuzzy little head from whomever’s chest she’s lying on, and grace us with her presence until about 2 am. And thus the dual source of mine and my wife’s exhaustion completes its daily cycle. I’m convinced the two of them are working in tandem, like some kind of cherubic, pink-skinned, chubby-cheeked tag-team sent from above to purge us of our sins. Through sleep-deprivation.

And have you ever held a sleeping baby? It’s like taking fifty Valium and climbing into a bed made from angel’s feathers and fucking clouds, while Morgan Freeman recites nursery rhymes. Now try it on a day when you can measure how much sleep you got the night before in minutes, not hours. If you can stay awake through that shit, you have my eternal respect. Right now, my wife has taken my son to the store (I can still hear him scream from here though), so our daughter is asleep on my chest. It feels like my eyelids are made from plutonium, and actually, as you can probably tell from the quality of writing, most of this post was written by my face falling repeatedly onto the keyboard.

In fact, and I’m a little ashamed to admit this, a few nights ago, while lying near the edge of the bed, I fell asleep holding her and almost dropped her. And by ‘almost dropped her’ I mean ‘definitely did drop her, but caught her’. And by ‘caught her’ I mean ‘broke her fall’. Oh put the phone down… the floor was carpeted, and she only fell about 6 inches – like I said, I broke her fall right before she hit the ground with a light thud. But seriously, what sort of fucked up survival instinct is that? What the hell was Mother Nature thinking? “I know; I’ll make these defenseless, vulnerable, utterly dependent baby humans so loud and demanding, that they cause the very people they rely on to keep them alive, in a state of exhaustion that risks all of their lives. What can go wrong with that?” Survival of the fittest? Fuck you too, Darwin!

Anyway, my son is home and my daughter is awake, which means it’s time to eat and poop ... I think I’ll poop first.

Sleeping like a Dad

Our own Dad-like Hell!

I’ll keep this one brief because the past few days, my spare time is like my sex life: It doesn’t exist. And when it does, it consists of me panting for breath, wiping the sweat from my brow, and weeping silently. You see, my wife has been put on permanent bed rest until the baby is born, which essentially means I have to take care of her, my 3 year old son, as well as cook, clean, do laundry, and make daily visits to her doctor’s office. I don’t need to tell you that I’m failing miserably. Already, the laundry is beginning to pile into a giant amorphous beast. I think it has developed sentience. We need to keep the door locked to prevent it from absorbing my son. And I’m pretty sure it raided the fridge last night.

My Wife has it pretty bad too. I have to admit that. Her body is serving up the eviction papers as we speak. My daughter will have to vacate, because my wife has had enough: Back spasms, high blood pressure, nausea, discomfort, pain, and about eighty more symptoms that she likes to remind me of every… 2 minutes or so. I told her that’s how I feel when I go to the gym. Now she has a sore fist to add to that list.

So there’s a high likelihood that I’ll have a daughter the next time I post – that could be when she goes to college, at this rate. Maybe I’ll get her to guest post. Hopefully she’ll settle down quickly, and her and my son will keep each other entertained, and perhaps they’ll tire one another out and sleep 16 hours a day, and my wife and I will have all the time in the world to rekindle our pre-baby magic. I know this is just fantasy, and I’ll spend most of the next three years in a sleepless fog of screaming kids and shitty diapers. But a man can hope. After all, “once you choose hope, anything’s possible.” Christopher Reeve said that… before he died… from severe complications from his quadriplegia. Hmm…

I do want to point something out. I would happily murder the person who coined the phrase “sleeps like a baby!” Babies don’t fucking sleep. A baby’s sole, single solitary goal in life is to deprive his/her parents of as much sleep as possible, while still managing to survive. It’s like a game of Russian roulette for the wrinkly little Benjamin Buttons`. “Let’s try to drive our parents to the point of insanity, without them abandoning us by jumping in front of the nearest passing train!”

The problem is, it doesn’t end with the newborns. Tonight, my son (whom I’ve spent every waking hour with over the past five days) decided I’d misjudged his bedtime tonight. “Hey Dad,” I imagined him say, “it’s Saturday night. Let’s stay up for two more hours.” Well, son… believe it or not, I had a game on the DVR I wanted to watch. Maybe you should just go to sleep and climb in to our bed around midnight, like you do… Every… Fucking… Night! Nope. It’s 10.30 now and the little Beelzebub has literally just fallen asleep 10 minutes ago (To note: I began writing this post 12 hours ago).

So yeah… the uncle, or aunt (‘cause it wasn’t a Mommy, or Daddy), who coined the phrase “sleeping like a baby” is more than welcome to spend the evening putting my son to bed. Sleep like a baby? Yeah right! Should be ”sleep like the parent’s of a baby… any fucking chance they get!!!”

Hey Roomie!

Hey Marv... tonight we eat!!!!

My mother-in-law will be arriving in a week. That’s pretty much the last thing we’re waiting on – aside from the actual baby. When she arrives, we’re pretty much ready to go. I’m pretty excited about this (the baby arriving more so than my MIL). My wife, understandably, is not so much. She’s more… how would one put it – in a constant state of blind, unrelenting terror. Basically she’s got an operation to look forward to; an operation whereby they’ll cut through layers of her abdomen, until they reach her womb. Then they’ll keep cutting until they find a baby. While she’s awake! Let that sink in for a moment. When they performed a C-section on her to spelunk for my son, she remarked that although numb, she could feel them tugging and pulling at her insides. It was a fucked up sensation for the eyes too. Like one of those magic tricks where they put the body in a box, saw through it, and separate the feet end from the head end: where my wife’s torso should have been, were two surgeons rummaging away at the table like two bums in a trash can. A very bloody trash can.

I made the unfortunate comment, a few weeks ago, that I was nervous about being in the room with her while they cut her in two. There little point in me telling you it didn’t go down well. I do feel genuinely bad for her though: where I’m beginning to get excited – up at 4 am excited – she’s essentially paralyzed with nerves.

But the thing that gets her through it, the thing that gives her a beacon of joy at the end of her painful, mentally draining ordeal, is the knowledge that for the four or five days she’s going to be recuperating, I’m going to be housemates with her Mom.

Now, I have nothing against her Mom. My MIL and I get on just fine. We interact when we have to. We make polite conversation, we both enjoy willfully corny jokes, and she stays out of my business the exact right amount a Mom-in-law should – which is totally. She can be a little passive-aggressive at times, but show me a lady in late middle age that isn’t. We get on perfectly, which is to say we keep each other at just the right distance to never have to argue or, I dunno… hug and stuff. But now… now we have to decide what to have for dinner together, we have to coordinate getting ready in the morning, which may involve me knocking on her bedroom door and maybe seeing things I never wanted to see. We’ve got to watch TV in the evenings together, and go grocery shopping together. And we have to do these things together. We can’t just ignore each other for nearly a week; then the charade is blown. There’s no going back from that. Ultimately, it’s akin to saying “I’ve got nothing against you; I just don’t like you.” So we have to do all these things together. And I have this irrational fear of us walking through Wal-Mart together hand in hand.

Of course my son is the delicious filling in this crusty tasteless sandwich. He’ll fill all the awkward silences. He’ll be an unending topic of conversation when the only sound is the clock ticking in the background. And that moment when we’re watching a movie and the sex scene comes on and me and my MIL are silently dying on the inside, well, that’s bedtime.

And then when my wife and newborn child return home, myself and the MIL will go back to being polite strangers, casually avoiding any genuine commitment to a shared relationship. But every once in a while, we’ll catch each other’s eye, and share a knowing moment… that we’ve been to hell and back, but that we shared it together.

On a totally unrelated note (because right now my options are: keep writing, watch reality TV with my wife, or tidy up), my wife and I have been getting up super early lately, and I have no idea why. The past two mornings I’ve been up before 4.30am, and my wife usually follows me down the stairs an hour or two later. My son meanwhile, stays sleeping until after eight. It’s like bizarre world. When I was a small child, I can’t think of one incident when my parents were up before me.

In part I suspect it’s because my son climbs into our bed in the early hours. He doesn’t do this sometimes; no, he does this EVERY. FUCKING. NIGHT. And he fidgets. It’s like having a three foot tall, somnolent break-dancer under the covers.

But it’s more than just that. He’s been disturbing our sleep since he was born, and the effect has, hitherto, been me draining every last second of time until my alarm clock goes off. So it can't be just that. As I mentioned above, it could be excitement, but to be quite frank, I’m not very excitable in the mornings. It usually takes a not-insignificant amount of caffeine before I’m able to raise a smile.

It could be the fact that I’ve been falling asleep while putting my son to bed, the last few nights. Why am I falling asleep while putting him to bed, I hear you ask? Well, aside from the fact that I’m waking at four fucking am, my son has started to take sometimes more than an hour to fall asleep. We think it’s a phase he’s going through – I believe the phase known as “being a little shit” and it lasts until he’s about 18. He stays awake by playing little games with himself. We make sure to remove all toys from the area, we turn out all lights, we don’t engage him at all; it’s full-on like sensory deprivation for the little guy. But like some middle-eastern political prisoner, the kid bears his solitary confinement out, by keeping his mind active: he’ll wiggle his toes and feet for ten minutes. Then he’ll play with the corner of his pillow for a while, flicking it back and forth, back and forth. Then he might make little shapes with his fingers. How he gleans entertainment from this is beyond me, but it’s the kind of thing that could have me punching myself in the eyeballs with frustration, if I hadn’t learned a coping mechanism of my own: it’s called sleep. Yup, I just clear my schedule for the evening, and lay there in the darkness until I get drowsy. He probably caves around 1am, I have no way of knowing, other than I stumble back to my own bed around 2, and he follows me not long after. Then squirms and kicks until I’m awake again, downing cup after cup of tea and coffee, waiting for the sun to come up. Ad infinitum.

As you can see above, I’m super-fancy now and have my own domain name. No more “.blogspot” for this go-getter. I’m on my way to the top. Unfortunately, this had two nasty side-effects. One, I think I may have an ulcer from the fucking frustration of trying to redirect my domain through my blogger domain name. Seriously, I’m fucking gray now. And two, it erased my blogroll (why did it do that, you might wonder? My money is on spite. It makes no other sense to me than Google wrote code to erase my blogroll out of spite, for removing the “.blogspot” from my address). The upshot is: I need the names of anyone who may have been on my blogroll, and now isn’t, and wants to be again. Or if you were never on it, and want to be anyway… we can do that too. I’m desperate. As long as you’re not trying to sell penis enlargements, or some shit like that.