Back From the Dead

I have serious doubts that anyone still reads this blog. Then again, it’s not like I had that many readers in the first place. Either way, I figured it was about time for another post…you know…since it’s been a while.

But first, let me just say that I do have at least three good reasons for not posting in such a long time. They are as follows:

1. Immediately after my last post I came down with a very severe case of writer’s block, which has been the cause of significant grief and sadness to both my mother-in-law and my inner child. Each encouraged me to resume blogging on multiple occasions, and each was disappointed by my hollow promises to do so. For those of you who have never experienced writer’s block, the important thing to remember is that experts say the best way to cure it is to do various productive activities, generally unrelated to writing, and generally requiring some sort of physical labor, like sweeping the floor or mowing the lawn (expert suggestions), or walking to the refrigerator (something I came up with). Naturally, I went ahead and focused on the latter option, which apparently requires a bit more time to take effect than the first two. Thus, the beginning stages of my prolonged silence.
2. Right about the time my writer’s block started wearing off, my obligations to fantasy football really started picking up steam, which understandably left little time for anything besides eating, sleeping, watching Netflix, eating, checking scores and stats, sleeping, watching football, eating, talking about football, eating, and eating. Naturally, blogging was kind of shoved to the backburner.
3. A couple weeks after the fantasy football season ended, Stefany left me alone with our baby, who proceeded to go No. 2 in his pants without asking permission. And since no one else was around to change the diaper I was forced to do it, which caused me to black out and briefly die before coming back to life and slipping into a coma for about 90 days.

So obviously, considering what I’ve been through the past 48 weeks, you can’t really blame me for not writing. On the other hand, quite a few other events have taken place in my life, and I figure anyone with the stick-to-itiveness to keep checking back here deserves an update (and that includes you, Colby JACK…don’t even try to pretend you don’t have this blog bookmarked and set as your home page). Here are a few of the highlights:

• July, 2008: Stefany actually starts gaining pregnancy weight. And even though I’m still gaining myself, for some reason, watching her belly grow makes me feel less fat.
• August, 2008: I create what will most likely go down as the single-most entertaining fantasy football league in the history of fantasy football leagues and enter the season with high hopes of winning my first sports-related championship since edging out Bryan Gillies for first-place honors in the 4th grade shot clock competition. (Please try not to cry if you read this, Bryan.)
• August, 2008: I stop gaining weight…for the most part…well, on most days…or some, at least…okay, fine, that’s a total lie…
• September, 2008: I start the fantasy season 0-3 (hurting, but trying to stay positive).
• September, 2008: Finally stop contemplating when to drop out of school and decide to just hurry up and finish (I feel like you need to know these things).
• October, 2008: 0-3 becomes 0-4 (getting flustered, slightly angry), then 0-5 (beyond frustrated), 0-6 (severe pain in both temples), 0-7 (feel like throwing up), and 0-8 (hate football, never watching again, never blogging again, never laughing again, removing myself from all unnecessary social contact, contemplating running away from home).
• End of October, 2008: I manage to pull myself together and start going to the gym with Jord. (And yes, if you really need to know, we were generally the fattest ones there. However, I feel somewhat less depressed about this than you might expect since I am still somewhere between 48-92 times better looking than Jord, and since neither of us was the smelliest in the gym. A professor Jord knows garnered that honor. We honestly had to leave the room when we saw her coming. (Yep, I said “her.”) No joke. We literally just turned and walked out of the room when she started moving our direction. Even then, I usually started tearing up before I reached the door. In retrospect, it really was an incredible experience. I’ve never smelled anything like it before in my life. I don’t think I’m a talented enough writer to offer a description here that would do it justice, but I feel like I should at least try to convey the magnitude of the stench. Okay, let’s see…hmm…alright, here goes. I honestly believe she must have taken regular baths in a mixture of rotten eggs, curdled milk, methane and broccoli juice, while smoking cigarettes that she rolled herself with recycled toilet paper and cow crap, all the while spraying down her workout clothes with sulfur. (Jord, let me know if you don’t think that quite reaches it.) Oddly enough, I believe I remember Jord telling me she was single.)
• November, 2008: I stop going to the gym.
• December, 2008: I finish school (2nd best feeling of my life).
• December, 2008: I skip graduation to watch a Netflix. (And no, I don’t regret that for one second.)
• December, 2008: We have a baby, and he is much better looking than me (best feeling of my life).
• December, 2008: We bring the baby home and realize we have no idea how to be parents (scariest feeling of my life).
• December, 2008: Start working, decide I like my job.
• January, 2009: Decide to go back for more school (most cognitively dissonant feeling of my life).
• January, 2009: Decide I don’t like my job.
• February, 2009: Turn 25, have key lime pie (tied for 2nd-best feeling of my life).
• February, 2009: Get paychecks from December and January work, decide maybe I don’t hate my job so much.
• March, 2009: Change my mind, hate my job.
• April, 2009: Move to Lyman…to my mom’s basement (don’t feel 25 anymore).
• April, 2009: Mom buys us groceries (3rd-best feeling of my life, decide I don’t care about feeling 25).
• April, 2009: Try mango licorice for the first time, eat the whole bag.
• May, 2009: Realize April was a really great month!

Well, I guess that pretty much sums it up. See you in 11 months.

Just joking…but seriously, it might be awhile before I write again…like maybe three years…no, not really, I’m just kidding…but maybe not.

1,000 and Counting

Today is a big day for me. If you haven’t already heard, this blog just passed the 1,000-page-visits mark. I know. I was surprised too. With the exception of finding out my wife made cheesecake Friday night, it’s easily been the highlight of my week.

I know I couldn’t have done it without all my loyal readers, though. So thank you…really…from the bottom of my blogging heart.

Seriously, though, this really is a monumental day for me. I don’t think I’ve ever had 1,000 of anything in my life—except 1,000 dollars of debt of course.

I’ve been sitting here for the past three and a half minutes trying to figure out where, or who, so many visits to this site could have come from. I’m sure I don’t have 1,000 friends, and that means some of you are not only visiting once; you’re actually returning a second or even third time. And I don’t even have any music.

So here’s how I decided these 1,000 visits undoubtedly break down, give or take a few clicks, of course:

• 184 from my mother because, well, she thinks I’m great,
• 105 from my wife checking to make sure she won’t have to divorce me because of something I posted here,
• 33 from my wife’s mother because she gets the internet at work and because, well, she thinks I’m great, too,
• 46 by me checking to make sure I didn’t post anything that will make my wife want a divorce,
• 3 completely by mistake, and
• 629 from old friends wondering if I’m really as fat as I look in the pictures on my last post.

Oh, and if you were wondering if all that really adds up to 1,000 visits, it does. I double-checked it with my computer’s calculator. Plus my dad was a high school math teacher, so I’m genetically good with numbers. That’s how I know that in the last two months alone, I’ve made more than two dollars and 75 cents in Adsense revenue.

And that doesn’t even count the increase I’m going to see in my earning potential by referencing this blog on future job applications.

So once again I would just like to say thanks to all the people who’ve made this blog what it is today: a soothing yet startling excursion into my never-filtered but somehow tastefully buoyant stream of consciousness.

Cause that’s what it is, right?

Sympathy Weight? Mmm, that sounds good. I’ll have that.

For those of you who haven’t heard, my wife is pregnant.

I know, it took me by surprise, too.

The thing is, I’m starting to wonder if something is wrong. The doctors say she’s three months along, but she has barely gained a pound. I, on the other hand, have had no problems putting on weight and my cravings are worse than ever.

For some reason I always thought pregnancy worked the other way around.

Apparently it doesn’t for us, and to prove it, here are some pictures of Stefany throughout her first trimester:

Here she is at one month.


Now at two months.


And again, 30 days later.


Not bad considering she has a future professional athlete/Nobel prize winner growing in her belly. Other than her man-sized hands, nothing really looks that big. Weirdly, she ended up wearing the same thing each month; I don’t know why she did that.

But now, to contrast, below are a few pictures of me at the same times.

One month along:



















Two months:



















And BOOM! Here I am at three months:




















Once again, same clothes…weird.

Anyway, for the longest time I couldn’t figure out what the heck was going on, but as I was working through a second helping of Shepherd’s pie last night, it hit me: I’m gaining sympathy weight.

You know how sometimes pregnant women’s husbands experience sympathy pains during labor? I guess the thought of how bad it must suck to be in their wife’s shoes (or gown) at that moment makes their bodies react in a weird way. I’m sure a lot of you think those guys are pansies with no self control and an inability to cope with potentially stressful situations. But after seeing these pictures and knowing what you know about my character, no doubt you’ll start singing a different tune. I mean, it’s obvious you can’t help this kind of stuff.

As far as sympathy pains go, I’ve never been in labor so I really couldn’t tell you what kind of effect they have on wives. What I do know is that so far, my sympathy weight seems to be keeping my wife’s weight gain in check. I have no idea what that means. Everybody always says having children is a sacrifice; maybe this is what they’re talking about.

To be honest, for a few fleeting moments this whole thing made me a little depressed. But as I was unwrapping a Creamsicle the other night, I had an epiphany. Someone has to gain weight during pregnancy, I thought. Why not me?

More importantly, when I finally see that little baby boy, with his bright eyes, tiny hands and incredible ability to puke up everything he eats, I’ll know without a doubt that he was worth every sacrifice—and every bite of key lime pie—I had to make along the way.

The Frito Bandito Strikes Again: How that pistol-wielding midget’s bag of SUNCHIPS hit my wife in the mouth and me where it counts.

My wife’s teeth are falling off. At least one of them, that is.

And apparently, it’s Frito Lay’s fault.

She came strolling into our office/storage room a couple days ago holding up half of one of her back molars. After throwing up a little bit in my mouth, I asked what the heck happened, and she told me the thing just fell off when she was eating SUNCHIPS®.

That’s right, it just fell off. She didn’t even realize anything had happened until she started crunching down on a mouthful of harvest cheddar and cracked enamel.

As is painfully obvious in the “About Me” section of this blog, tooth repair is not one of my strong suits, and after staring into her mouth for about four seconds, I concluded that she should make an appointment with the dentist.

That turned out to be a formidable task. There are approximately 3,635,784 dentists in Laramie, and we learned after numerous phone calls that very few of them actually work. Eventually, she landed an appointment with a guy on the brink of retirement. He took two X-rays, covered her lips in Vaseline, told her his life story, charged her 90 bucks, fixed nothing and told her she could come back soon to get her tooth fixed for the very reasonable price of 900 dollars.

We decided to seek a second opinion, but couple Old Man River’s charges with the fact that the bag of chips cost $3.79, and that’s one expensive snack.

It’s also one strangely paradoxical product.

According to Frito Lay’s Web site, snacks “rich in whole grain foods…and low in saturated fat and cholesterol (like SUNCHIPS®) may help reduce the risk of heart disease.”

Maybe if I tell that to my wife, it will make her mouth stop hurting.

But I doubt it.