New parents…WTF?

Posted on May 14, 2013 by donofalltrades

This is a post from when literally three people read my blog. I’m reposting it because new followers won’t know it’s recycled garbage and because I can. Fuck, ignore that last sentence new followers.

You can’t please everybody, so 2 out of 3 ain’t bad!

It’s funny what the brain remembers, especially as we get older. I often struggle to remember why I walked into a room or where I put my keys, but there are still some memories from years ago that I can visualize like they happened yesterday. One of those moments was when we brought our first-born home from the hospital back in 2003.

I remember a couple of nursing students tending to the baby right after she was born because it sort of annoyed me that my first born was being handled by rookies. I know they have to learn somehow, but find a second or third born to practice on! She had swallowed some fluid that you’re not supposed to or something like that on her way out of the birthing chamber. Her own feces maybe? I’m not sure, but it was disgusting sounding and it delayed our getting to see her and hold her, so it was an unexpected aggravation.

I remember my brother, Dutty, bringing a good-sized cooler of Natural Light to the room and not being razzed by the nurses on the floor about drinking like a bunch of white trash hoosiers in the room while my wife and newborn adjusted to all the newness a first-born brings. Just take the empties with you so they don’t stink up the room! That was the only rule and I thought it was fair enough.

I remember many more subtle details nearly ten years later, such as all of her birth numbers and a couple of great nurses who I meant to write nice letters about, but never did (sorry nurse Kimberly).

I also remember that the hospital staff was very demanding about making sure we had a car seat properly installed in our vehicle before they’d let us take the baby home. I had taken the car to a fire station because apparently, firemen are car seat installation experts? Even though we lived in the City, I took the car to a suburban fire station in Mehlville because the City firemen actually get a lot of calls, whereas the Mehlville folks seemingly have more free time to help soccer moms and Don with car seat issues. Anyway, a couple of them were kind enough to wake up and check the seat for me. I was fairly confident that installing a car seat wasn’t that difficult, and that I’d done a fine job, but to appease the wife, I let the firemen check it out.

It was obviously loosely strapped in as they shook the crap out of it and asked me if I let a retarded monkey install the seat. They said it couldn’t possibly be more unsafely installed. Geez, it’s not like I had it upside down! I laughed and assured them I knew no retarded monkeys and proceeded to lie that my third trimester pregnant wife installed the seat incorrectly and that I’d deal with her when I got home!

I was certain the seat was fine, and that a little jiggling was to be expected, but I’ll be darned if a 300 plus pound firefighter didn’t nestle himself in that seat while another one pulled the crap out of my seatbelt and buckled it in so that the seat wouldn’t budge an inch. It was impressive and I couldn’t wait to lie to a nurse at the hospital that I had installed the seat myself!

As promised, a nurse pushed my wife and baby to the exit in a wheelchair (why does everyone have to leave in a wheelchair?) and demanded that I pull the car up to the door so she could see the car seat. Apparently, the immovable car seat did not impress the nurse as much as it did me because she made me unbuckle it so that she could cram some colorful swim noodle contraptions under the seat so the baby wouldn’t be uneven or some such nonsense.

After more inspection and delaying our eagerly awaited departure another 15 minutes, the nurse had appeased herself that the baby wouldn’t somehow escape her seat and bounce out the window of my moving vehicle and finally told us we could go. Really? Who made you the we’re ok to go home with our baby boss? What if we hadn’t brought a car seat with us? Do they have a stash of $200 car seats that they’d have installed for us? Do they keep the baby indefinitely? In hindsight, the whole thing seems ridiculous and semi-aggravating.

However ridiculous, that nurse may have been the last person with any sense who has tried to make sure that we were doing what we were supposed to be doing with respect to raising our kids correctly.

After the nurse went back inside, I remember sitting in the Xterra (which I had to sell my F150 to purchase since, apparently, a non-extended cab pickup wasn’t family friendly) and asking the wife, “now what do we do?” The moment was surreal…we had this new person in the backseat of our car (probably wondering herself what the fuck was going on) and the three of us needed some guidance! We sat in silence for a bit until I finally made a command decision. Like any responsible new parents, we took our 3 day old baby to Rich and Charlies for lunch because we were starving! It wasn’t totally irresponsible in that it was on the way home anyway, and it was the end of July, so it’s not like we brought her there during the height of cold and flu season.

I guess that makes me a bit of a hypocrite, because before I had kids I worked at Grant’s Farm during the summers of my college years. I used to think people who brought their week old babies into the Bauernhof area during late July and August, where it was often well over 100 degrees and filled with beer swilling sweathogs eager to trample each other to be first in the free beer sample line, were total idiots. Look at my new baby! Uh, ma’am, I’m no doctor or parent but that doesn’t look like a healthy shade of red for a tiny baby and her crying indicates to me that she’s not having as much fun as you and your fat-assed boyfriend Cletus are. But, to each their own I guess.

Part of the problem is that there’s no instruction manual on how to raise a child properly, so we’re stuck with our instincts and what we’ve learned up to that point in life to figure it out. This is why stupid people mostly raise stupid children. Stupid is all they know to pass on to the next generation. Stupid people seem to breed with other stupid people instead of finding smarter people so the chain of stupidity continues on and on.

I was 30 when Addi was born and the wife and I were both college educated, but we still find it amazing at how difficult this child rearing is. It’s physically and mentally draining sometimes. There is no one size fits all for kids and we’ve learned in our little family that boys are different from girls, and our two boys are completely different from each other. It’s total insanity and nobody has any correct answers as to how to do it right.

Anybody can raise a child, right?

The very hospital that made sure I purchased a $200 car seat and that it was properly installed could have, at the very least, given me a pamphlet with instructions on what to do in certain situations and how to best not raise a future sociopath. When can they eat M&M’s? Am I not supposed to put Frank’s Red Hot on their tongues to see how they like it? Can my 1 month old have Kool-Aid? How long can the baby lay next to me while I drink cocktails in the hot Florida sun on the beach? There are all sorts of future unanswered questions that come home with these kids, and you have nothing but your own collection of what passes as common sense and the internet to help get you through it.

I suppose, if you didn’t mind doing a half-assed job of raising kids, that it’d be ok to just wing it and hope it doesn’t affect your life too much. That seems to be how trashy people do it, but that’s risky and the wife insists on some effort being made at raising decent human beings.

If you don’t mind one day being the parent of a malcontent who climbs a bell tower with a 12 pack and an assault rifle to finally address life’s little ass-rammings, which he’ll blame on you, then parenting may not be that difficult. If you could give two shits whether or not your kids grow up to have a better life than you, or at least have the same opportunities as you because you’d rather watch Oprah and drink Milwaukee’s Best in your underpants instead of help your kids with homework, then it might be doable with very little stress.

Unfortunately, the work of parents who’d like to see their kids grow up to be productive members of society is a little bit more difficult. Even though I’m not above drinking beer in my underpants, I like to believe that the wife and I fall into this latter category of parents. I know my wife does all she can to see that it happens. I assume she read a lot of literature about babies while she was pregnant and on maternity leave, because she knew and still knows lots of things that I’d have never considered. Were it up to me alone, these kids would have missed out on lots of things in life already, like vaccinations and preschool.

The wife found a pediatrician and she’s gotten the first two into school on time and she makes sure they all brush their teeth and knew when they could eat regular food and all this crazy stuff that I would no doubt have bumbled by myself. Once they get past their first year, which is where we are with all three, you can sort of treat them like regular people so it’s nice. Aside from the little man, who insists on yelling and screaming and babbling, but for a couple of coherent words, it’s nice to be able to have conversations with the kids.

It’ll be interesting to see how they all turn out. How three kids, from the same two parents, raised in the same environment, can all turn out so differently, is stupefying to me. It’d be boring were they all the same I guess, and I’m glad for their unique differences, both good and bad.

Posted in Parenting | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 33 Comments

That time I was crazy, but then i wasn’t…

Posted on May 13, 2013 by donofalltrades

I don’t know where some things that seem so important because they’re going to kill us all one day but then completely disappear the next day go, but it happens from time to time. Stuff just comes into our lives for a little bit and then leaves.

Last week, I was watching PBS because the kids must have been watching Sesame Street or some similarly awful show earlier in the day, and by the time I realized that I didn’t have the remote within reaching distance, my fat ass had already nestled into a couch cushion.  We have sweet leather couches and I don’t move once I’m nestled, so I was stuck until I ran out of beer or had to pee.

There was a commercial on about an upcoming show concerning archaeologists looking into the mysterious deaths of 57 Irish immigrants who were working on the railroad in Pennsylvania back in 1832.  That seemed promising, but that thriller wasn’t going to be on until next week.

The upcoming show was going to be some NOVA special.  NOVA?  Oy, that’s pretty hit or miss right there.  Dear God, please don’t let it be something awful, because the iPad wasn’t within my reach either.  If the show sucked, I’d have to try to lure the dog over to me to help me hoist my big butt off the couch, but she’s old too and looked pretty comfortable and uninterested in answering my future calls to come help me up.

The show, it turned out, wasn’t too bad.  It was about the meteor that whacked the crap out of Chelyabinsk, Russia last year.

Do you remember that incident?

We were all apparently very lucky that this thing landed in the snow some place in rural Russia instead of in the middle of a major urban area.  It wasn’t the rock that did all the damage, it was the sonic waves or something afterwards that rattled windows and cars all about the city.

Even though I think the show was a little melodramatic simply because science people involved with meteors clearly want us to be afraid of meteors so that we’ll demand funding for scientists to study ways to prevent death by meteors, it’s still a legitimate threat.  I spent a few days worried that I could die by way of a meteor hitting earth after I saw the show.  I’m sure others worried about it right after the event in Russia happened too.

But now that a couple of weeks have passed, I’m not worried about meteors.  I’m worried I’ll die from a copperhead snake bite that I’ll get while cutting my 10 inch long grass.

Why?  Because we have a neighborhood FB page and somebody was all atwitter recently about copperhead sightings and it went on and on about how I should check my BBQ pits before I open them and be careful near logs and rocks and what not in my own yard.  One neighbor was bitten, apparently.  Jesus, I don’t live in Australia, but now I have to worry about snakes?  I hate you FB page!

That was a few days ago.  I cut all the grass yesterday and was not attacked by a copperhead snake, so all ended well.  I’m not worried about snakes right now.

The meteor scare reminded me that we were all going to die from a Tsunami someday as well.  The entire east coast is at  risk should a wave form someplace in some ocean far far away in just the right environment.  It hasn’t happened, yet, but the threat is there.

The tsunami reminded me that at one point, we were all going to die of a nuclear attack. Those of us who are 70’s babies were all scared that the Russians were going to nuke the hell out of us and we out of them, thus destroying the planet.  We’re still alive, but that North Korean chap is rekindling bad memories for me.   Is that Star Wars system still functional?

Before the nuclear wars, we kids were afraid of other stupid things too.  At some point, I was scared of quicksand.  It’s possible that too many Tarzan episodes or the near death of a push cart ridden by Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles caused that scare, but it was real enough to me.

About that same time, killer bees were going to come from Africa and sting us all to death. The horrifying thought of death by huge swarms of bees kept me in for an entire summer of my youth!

More recently, AIDS was going to get us.  Some monkey in Haiti was apparently to blame for AIDS, but it was petrifying to think that you could get this horrible disease just by shaking hands with the wrong person!  Well, some people thought that at the time, and it took a long time to clear all of the misconceptions up.  Magic Johnson apparently has had HIV, which I guess leads to AIDS?  I don’t know, but he’s been alive for a long time and seems just fine.

West Nile Virus? Bird flu?  SARS? Mad Cow Disease? Vaccines are killing our babies?  Good Lord, the things to fear are endless, but some of them were only short lived.

What ever happened to Mad Cow Disease, for example?  Are the cows no longer mad?

I can relate.

I was “mad” or touched in the head, or crazy for a bit of my life too.

Well, strike that, my dad was first.  After 50 years as a normal human being, he suddenly couldn’t ride in an elevator or stay in a hotel room above the first floor unless it had a walk out balcony.  He’d have crazy panic attacks or what not if he did, and we’d all have a good laugh at his expense.

Then all of a sudden, I couldn’t sit in a restaurant without starting to feel the same way.  I’d just up and start feeling like the whole room was closing in on me and suffocating me.  I’d have to walk out and go sit in the car.  It was crazy.  I thought I was crazy.  I’m sure my wife was laughing at my expense (until it dawned on her that she’d married a loon).

It happened over and over again until finally, it happened at work in front of somebody who forced me to go to the hospital.  He said I looked like shit and like I needed a doctor so I went ahead and let him take me to the hospital.

5 days in a freaking hospital later, I went home and it’s never happened since.  That was 10 years ago.

While Doctor Jewishfellanameforgotten put me through a litany of tests to make sure my heart was ok, I tried to convince him that I was just going crazy.

Look Doc, I told him, I just got married a few months ago, we have a baby coming, it’s a girl, I’m starting a new job at work, I’m about to start law school while getting ready to have said baby and work this new job all at the same time, our house is too small and we’ll need a new one, I can’t work more secondary jobs with all the school work I anticipate, I have to sell my truck and get an SUV, my wife will get a minivan, and there’s always a chance that I can fall in quicksand or catch the AIDS!!  My brain simply had enough!

He insisted that I wasn’t crazy, even though he was a cardiologist and not a Neurologist, psychiatrist or even a psychologist.

Apparently though, hearing that my heart was strong and that it wasn’t causing my brain to go haywire did the trick.  I left the hospital and haven’t had an episode since.

My crazy came and went.  Just like Mad Cow Disease.

Posted in Humor, Stories, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 45 Comments

Reality cooking…good tv?

Posted on May 10, 2013 by donofalltrades

I had such a wonderful time reminiscing about my experience as a near Chopped champion yesterday, that I’ve still got food and cooking shows on my brain.  Let’s clear it out with another post concerning cooking, even if it’s sort of a forced post.

Aside from those two fat chicks from the show Two Fat Ladies, tv cooks are, for the most part, a bunch of pleasant to look at skinny minnies nowadays.

I don’t trust skinny cooks.

I mean come on, whose food would would you rather eat, this skinny woman’s offerings?

Yay, I can cook!

Yay, I can cook!

Or food served up by these fine ladies?

Mmmm, food good...

Mmmm, food good…

Well, that’s a bad example, actually, because the large ladies cook in the UK.  While immensely entertaining when they cooked together, they rarely cooked anything that I’d ever put in my mouth, even if I was triple dog dared.  While I have nothing against rendered fat drippings per se, their use of rabbit and squirrel and quail and such doesn’t suit my palate.  Come to think of it, I guess food isn’t the first or even tenth thing that comes to mind when I hear UK.  Sorry UK peeps, but your food sort of sucks.

Ms. De Laurentiis, on the other hand, despite her waifish build (chest and head notwithstanding) cooks excellent Italian fare that even I can duplicate with much fanfare from the family.

But, looking all pretty alone in your kitchen that overlooks the beach isn’t reality for most of us.  It’s perplexing to me that a food channel hasn’t seized the opportunity to find somebody to host a cooking show that’s infinitely more realistic than what’s shown nowadays.

They could just make it reality TV and follow somebody around during dinner on a weeknight.  Here’s a typical night with me making dinner.  Well, typical if the kids don’t have practice or a game to get to.   Would you watch this crap?

Start show with scene showing Don drooling on himself with his face smashed against the disgusting window of the  honkey bus after a long day at work.

Don exits bus, gets in his car and picks up the boys who’ve managed to find red and blue suckers at the babysitter’s house again.

Don and boys are sitting in car in babysitter’s driveway.  Cool wants to know why they aren’t moving yet since they’ve been in the car for 3 seconds already.  Don sighs, contemplates ending his life by jamming one of the hundreds of discarded sucker sicks strewn about his car into his ear, but isn’t sure it won’t just hurt his eardrum and not kill him.

Don texts wife:

What’s 4 dinner?

idk

No craving?

No

I was just thinking about killing myself with a sucker stick.

That would probably just hurt your ear – don’t you have your gun with you?

????!!!

How about chicken picatta and noodles? 🙂

K

Don drives boys home and slips off his shoes.  Don almost manages to take off his tie as Cool and G$ both begin demanding something to drink.

Cool says the word outside and now G$ wants to go outside badly.  He is following Don around with his little shoes demanding that Don put his shoes back on his feet and take him outside.

Don, clearly frazzled, yells at boys to please shut the fuck up for 3 minutes so he can go potty.  Don feels bad for saying fuck, but at least he said potty.

Don goes potty.

G$ is now trying to hammer a triangular block into Cool’s non triangular ear hole causing Cool to scream.  It doesn’t fit which pisses G$ off so he screams as well.

In spite of the surround sound screaming, Don fills a pot with water.  Don turns towards stove with pot of water and trips over 90 pound dog who snuck up between his legs.

Wet and pissed off, Don curses the day the dog was ever born and throws her outside like he should have done when he first got home.

Don cleans water up and refills pot.  Don checks path to stove.  All clear, pot is on burner successfully.

Don goes upstairs to take off work clothes and lies on bed for 72 seconds of rest.  Don wonders if he could kill himself by jumping out the bedroom window.  Don assumes he’d only break a leg or something since it’s grass underneath so he gets back up to finish dinner.

Don puts on raggedy mustard stained t-shirt and shorts from a pile on the ground to go along with black dress socks and flip flops he’s already sporting.

Don goes back downstairs when he hears Cool yelling for help.

Don finds G$ pinning his older brother Cool to the floor while holding him in a head lock.  Don tells Cool he’s the older brother and that he should quit being a pussy.  Don goes to find frozen chicken breasts in garage as boys continue their battle.

There is no Bud Light Lime in garage fridge.  Don curls up into fetal position on garage floor and weeps softly to himself for several minutes.

Don finally finds chicken and begins to defrost it in microwave.

It’s 5:25 pm and Don realizes his daughter Ace needs to be picked up from school at 5:30 pm.

Don texts wife:

r u able to get Ace on your way home from work?

I think so, yes.

I thought about killing myself by jumping out our bedroom window.

Please don’t kill yourself inside the house!

?????!!

🙂

Don is relieved to not have to leave to get Ace.

Don can take no more of the screaming, so he yells at the boys to shut the fuck up again and convinces them that it would be fun to go play the Wii together.

Boys are playing Wii in living room peacefully now while Don gets out all of the ingredients for dinner.

Wife calls Don.

“The highway is a mess, you’ll have to get Ace at 5:30”

Don looks at clock.  It’s 5:34.

Don says ok, hangs up phone, remembers to breath and counts to ten.

Don sees chef knife and wonders how long it takes to bleed to death.

Don remembers he doesn’t care to be poked with things and decides to carry on living.

Don leaves chicken defrosting in microwave and contemplates the water on the stove situation.

Getting Ace could take 10 minutes, can I leave the water to boil that long while I’m not here?

Don decides against it and turns off the burner under his near boiling water.

Don contemplates leaving boys alone for 10 minutes while he gets Ace.  Don has a vision of G$ chasing Cool with the chef knife and decides to ask wife first.

Don texts wife:

Can I leave boys home while I grab Ace?  I’ll turn off the stove.

WHAT? NO!  YOU TAKE THEM WITH YOU DUMBSHIT!  ARE YOU NUTS?

I thought of killing myself with the chef knife.

Not the good santoku knife I hope!

No, the one from Kohls.

Oh, ok.  Go get Ace, you’re late!

Don grabs boys to get Ace.

Boys bitch because they were having fun.

Don gets boys into car and goes to the school.

Ace is not paying attention by looking out the window for him so he has to go into the school in his flip flops, black dress socks, ratty shorts and mustard stained white t-shirt.  Of course there’s an event so hundreds of people are milling about.

Don finally gets Ace and returns home sure that DFS will knock on the door sometime this week.

Don realizes he forgot to stop at liquor store for more beer after getting Ace.

Don turns burner back on under the pot of water and covers pot.

Boys are demanding food while Ace is demanding help with homework.

Don excuses himself and returns to his fetal position on garage floor to sob quietly again for three more minutes.

Don goes back inside.

Don sees ceiling fan in living room and wonders if he can hang himself from it with his tie.  Don remembers he installed that fan and is confident it won’t hold the weight.

Don texts wife:

Can boys have crackers before dinner?

Yes.

I thought of hanging myself from fan.

Not the good fan in living room, right?  And not with your good tie I hope!  And I said not inside!

K

Don gives boys crackers and sits down to help Ace.  Don doesn’t know what the fuck a rhombus is nor can he remember how to multiply fractions anymore.  Do the denominators need to be the same?  His mind goes blank.

Don is alerted back to reality by microwave bing.

Don checks chicken. it’s nowhere near defrosted.

Boys are done with crackers.  Cool wants more milk and G$ wants more food.

Water is now at a rolling boil in pot.

Mutiny is near certain.

Don wonders if pouring boiling water on his head would kill him.  No, probably not.

Don checks chicken again, it’s still pretty frozen.

Don collects all the ingredients for the chicken picatta from the counter and puts them back where he found them.

Don throws a handful of crackers on the floor to distract G$ and gets Cool some more milk.

Don parks Ace in front of laptop and introduces her to Google search engine for help with math.

Don takes semi defrosted chicken to the sun warmed  patio outside.  Don flips dog the bird while she looks at him cockeyed.

Don goes back in, grabs his pistol and wonders how painful a bullet hole to the head could really be.

Don remembers wife said to not kill himself inside.  Don loves his wife, so he goes back outside to patio.

Don throws chicken into trash bin outside and grips pistol.

Don fires pistol 16 times into trash bin while repeating fuck you frozen chicken repeatedly.

Pistol now empty, Don looks up and waves to a neighbor he didn’t see across the way standing on his deck with his mouth agape.

Don goes inside, grabs box of macaroni and cheese and boils noodles for seven minutes.

Don strains noodles, returns them to pot and adds milk, magic cheese powder and butter.

Don stirs noodles and dinner is ready.

Posted in Parenting, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 60 Comments

Chopped…a time i didn’t win $10,000.

Posted on May 9, 2013 by donofalltrades

Sometimes I just remember stories that I think will make fine posts.

A couple of years back, I woke up in my nice NY City hotel room excited and nervous as all get out.

I just knew that I was going to make the best dishes that day and leave that Chopped studio $10,000 richer!

The big time!

The big time!

I had filled out my online application and totally lied my butt off like a true champion.  I told them I cooked for emperors of obscure countries that are really hard to find or don’t exist at all, as well as for Steve Jobs as his personal chef for many years, but good luck calling him to verify that.

My education was incredible.  I worked under and with some of the best now dead and unable to verify my claims chefs around, from Julia Childs in France to a run working with Anthony Sedlak at one of Canada’s finest non fast food restaurants whose name escaped me.

I told them I’d spent the past 10 years volunteering as a cook for the local elementary school where I was district lunch lady of the year 4 of those years and only lost the others because it turned into a popularity contest.  That’s what I did by day and I volunteered at a fire station preparing dinners for firemen at night (they love firemen for some reason).  This was in addition to feeding my own kids all the time and I made sure they knew that I was hoping to win the $10,000 so that I could donate all of it to the local homeless shelter and food bank (ha, yeah right!).

They were wowed, and chose me to be on their show.

In truth, I have no cooking skills or training and have never worked in a restaurant kitchen other than as a pizza maker over 20 years ago.  I think that’s why I was feeling a little nervous.

They told us it was going to be a long day, 12 hours or so to film an hour long episode.  I got to the studio after emptying the wet bar in my room that morning of all of the white liquors I could find and refilling the 7 bottles with water from the sink and returning them to the wet bar.  I didn’t think the show would cover that part of the tab, and I certainly wasn’t paying $12 for a few ounces of hooch.

I walked to the studio and was starting to feel a little buzzed by the time I arrived and got introduced to the other three contestants.  They were all younger than my then 37 year old ass and had all sorts of real culinary experience and training.

There was the black guy who looked angry at something or other.  He was there to prove that he belonged on the cooking scene even though he came from the Bronx and grew up with 9 siblings in a very poor neighborhood.   “Geez dude, you cook in restaurant, it’s not like you’re a fucking doctor or professional baseball player who’s made it against all odds.  Get over yourself!” I thought to myself.

The next contestant was a lesbian with purple hair, of course.  She also looked angry at something or other and wouldn’t shut up about how the $10,000 would be so great because she wants to marry her partner and yadda yadda yadda.  Ok, bitch, whatever!  I’m getting a headache already and it’s not even 9 am.

The final competitor was the obligatory fat guy and I think he was Mexican or Cuban maybe?  I don’t know, if he said, I wasn’t paying attention anymore and I was really starting to feel distracted by a knot in my stomach from being so nervous.

We met the host of the show, Ted Allen, but not the judges.  They showed us around the pantry and showed us how to use all of the different equipment and what not.

“What is that again?” I asked pointing to the blast chiller.”  And this,” pointing to a blender.

They had filmed our introductions the week before, and I was pleased with mine.  It showed me grilling burgers in my yard while my kids danced around yelling what a great cook daddy is like a pack of little retards.  Of course I had to pretend I was an asshole and say that the other three contestants are going down because there can only be one winner, me!  Then I held my spatula all gangster like because that was the douchiest thing I could think to do at that point.

We got our water boiling and our pans hot before the show really started, and when they were good to go, we finally got to walk to our stations.  As we walked out, we were able to see the judges for the first time.

I took my spot as contestant number three behind my giant basket containing the mystery ingredients.  I was right in between the fat Cuban or Mexican and the lesbian.  Oh, if only I could know what was in you in advance giant mystery basket.

There was a lot of talking going on, but my mind was someplace else.  I could only hear wa wa, wawawa, ACK!  It was Charlie Brown’s teacher in my head.  I was suddenly VERY nervous and my rational thought was retreating deeper into the recesses of my brain, trying to escape.  What the fuck are you doing, Don?  It demanded to know!  You don’t know how to cook you lying asshole!!  It felt like a real life reenactment of the dream I have a lot where I’m in a band playing guitar and the curtain rises in front of thousands of people only to have me realize that I don’t know how to play the guitar nor do I know the words to any songs!

Damn, I was starting to sweat already.

I snapped out of it for a second to Notice Ted Allen was introducing Alex Guarnaschelli.

What a smug bitch.

What a smug bitch.

Back in the dark parts of my brain again, my thoughts turned to my hatred of Alex Guarnaschelli.  It was a hatred based on nothing in particular.  I don’t know you, I thought to myself, but you’re kind of fat and sort of a bitch and I know you cheated during that contest to be an Iron Chef!  She was clearly not the best chef out of that group.  She wasn’t even in the top 5, but I think she was boning Geoffrey Zakarian and he was an Iron Chef judge.  You slut!  You don’t deserve to judge me!

Ok, Don, snap out of it…

The next judge was Marc Murphy.  No!!  I hate you more than I do Guarnaschelli!  This is the douche who always complains that he would have liked to have a little bit more of this or that all the time!  What a stupid ass thing to nitpick!  Learn to eat your proportions together better, you prick!  Grrrr, my mind was racing and I was fuming with hatred for these people who’ve never done anything good, bad or otherwise to me personally.

I hated your dish because I ran out of dipping sauce before I was done with my french fries.

I hated your dish because I ran out of dipping sauce before I was done with my french fries.

And finally, the third judge was Aaron Sanchez.  Thank God, I don’t hate him for any reason.  Plus, he’s Mexican, so I convinced myself that if I make him a fine Mexican dish, he’ll vote me on to the next round for sure.  God, I sure hope there’s a packet of Old El Paso taco seasoning and taco shells in that basket.

Hey, make me a chalupa and you'll win!

Hey, make me a chalupa and you’ll win!

But, I forgot about Fatty McMexican next to me.  He and Sanchez just nodded to each other like they were old homeys.  What the fuck?!  Dammit, now I hate you too, Aaron Sanchez!!  Everybody is against me for sure.

Seething with rage and dripping sweat like a whore on nickel night, the basket items were revealed.  I still wasn’t in my right mind, and wasn’t hearing Ted properly when he rattled off the ingredients.

For your appetizer round, you will be tasked with making a dish from:

Penguin meat

Dog shit

Green play-doh, and

Marbles.

Marbles?

I was about two seconds from fainting when the fat Mexican ran behind me and bumped me back into consciousness.

“Hey, Ted, what am I supposed to do with play-doh and fucking marbles and dog shit?” I asked the host, still not thinking straight.

“CUT!”  Somebody yelled in clear disgust.

“No talking to the host or the judges, Don. Just cook,”  instructed an angry lady with a headset.

We resumed filming and I made my way to the pantry.  Everything was a blur.

I went to a sink and splashed my face with water.  I felt much better and noticed a shelf with some wine bottles.

I grabbed a red and a white wine and went back to my station.  I knew I could cook with red wine so I opened it up.  I then opened the white wine and chugged 3/4 of the bottle without taking a breath.

“Whoooa whoooa, Chef Don just drank nearly an entire bottle of wine and hasn’t even touched any of his ingredients,” I heard Murphy say to his fellow judges.

I finished the bottle off with my second swig and looked over my ingredients.  Thankfully, they were marked.

I was working with ostrich meat, chocolate pudding, brussel sprouts and quail eggs.  What?

“I’d rather work with the dog shit!” I yelled to Ted, who just shook his head and scowled at me perplexed by my comment.

I took my ostrich tenderloin and sliced it into medallions.  I threw some salt and pepper and olive oil on those bad boys and seared them in the pan.  While they were searing, I put the pudding into a food processor with some sugar, mayonnaise, salt, ketchup, mustard, red wine, capers, pineapple juice, red pepper flakes, green olives, tartar sauce and cumin.  I’d read somewhere that cumin was becoming a trendy spice.  I processed the mixture into a nice consistency and let it rest while I tended to the other ingredients.

I took the brussel sprouts and threw one as hard as I could at Alex Guarnschelli, just barely missing her big fat head.

“Ha, ha, take that you bitch!” I muttered.  The wine was really starting to shake hands with the liquor and do a number on my sobriety.

I tossed the rest of the brussel sprouts into a trash can and cursed them as being the most disgusting fruit ever.

“Those aren’t fruits, Don, and they’re a basket ingredient so you should use them,” said Fatty McMexican all of a sudden.  Who asked him?

“Hey!  Llll, lll…listen….listen here fa Fatty, I’ll, I’ll yew, yew, yew don’t you tell me what to do with my fruit!  Do you want, want me to, to…. I’ll take this…hey, what kind of knife is this, Fatty?”

“It’s a Santoku, you crazy fuck.” Said, Fatty, followed by something in Spanish that I’m confident wasn’t flattering about me.

“Well, you, you leave my fruit alone or I’ll put this Suntoker knife in your belly, you unnerstand me?!!”  I grumbled to Fatty.

“5 minutes left!” said Ted.

“FUCK!!!” I yelled at nobody and staggered to the pantry again.

I grabbed another bottle of wine and dropped it on the floor, shattering it into thousands of pieces.

On my hands and knees in the pantry now, and nearly in tears, I yelled, “NO!!!! Nooo God, not the wine!!!!  Oh, wait, here’s another one!”  to nobody in particular.

I opened another wine bottle and took a few glugs before I smelled the smoke.

“Hey, lesbian lady, you, you, you smell that?”

“Your meat is burning, dickhead,” she said.

“Oh, OH, POOP!” I wailed.

I quickly poured the red wine onto the meat and made a complete mess all over the stove.  I was going to finish the meat off in the oven, but it appeared by the char that it wouldn’t be necessary.

I cracked open a quail egg and gently inserted the insides of the egg into the boiling water and then I dumped a bunch of salt into the pot.  Realizing that time was getting short, I just threw the rest of the eggs in the same boiling water, shell and all.  I then grabbed a brussel sprout out of the trash can and some white bread from the pantry.

I went and grabbed some plates but clumsily dropped every last one of them, shattering them all over the floor.  No time to weep again, Don!  I grabbed some bowls instead.

I put a piece of bread into a bowl, and then a piece of charred black meat on top of it, followed by my special pudding sauce.  I chopped up a brussel sprout and put it on the sandwich and finally topped it with the poached quail egg and possibly some eggshell.

I decided to leave it an open faced sandwich and made three more the same way.  As Ted was counting down from 10, I thought I was going to black out.  For no particular reason, other than I just saw it there, I dumped the rest of my wines all over the four sandwiches.

“HA!  Sammich soup!!” I yelled!

Ted said “time’s up,” and I was elated.

“I can, can, can’t believe I did it!” I said in relief.

As security led me out of the studio, I asked if anybody was even going to try my sandwiches!  “Hey, I cooked those for you!!  The least you could do is try a bite!”

Alex Guarnashcelli blew me a kiss as I was led past and promised me she’d try hers.

I hope she choked on it.

——————————————————————————————-

Photos from Foodnetwork.com

Posted in Humor, Stories, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 90 Comments

Go dog go! why babies are oodles better than doodles.

Posted on May 8, 2013 by donofalltrades

I enjoy reading posts written by many different types of bloggers. Many of my favorites are parents who are trying, mostly half-assed, to raise kids like my wife and me.  Some are written by people who enjoy traveling to places I’ll never go (sorry third world countries), or who have a mental illness or disease that the blogger is able to poke fun of or who inspire me just by living the way they do.  Others I like because the writing is excellent or because the blogger has some sort of talent that I don’t, like poetry or photography or art or being able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

But some blogs I like have none of that.  Some are simply entertaining because the person writing them is entertaining.  You know those sorts of people, right?  They could write a post about sitting in their cubicle and doing nothing at work for 8 hours, post a picture of their stupid “I hate Mondays” coffee mug sitting on their desk, and you’d like the post because something about it is just the funniest thing you’ve ever seen.  Their blogs aren’t necessarily about anything in particular, they’re just funny.  I’m not saying these bloggers are without talent or that they’re boring at all, no, far from it.  In fact, one of my favorite blogs is put out (Giggity!) by one of these entertaining people.

Her name is Jules and her blog is right here.  I smile when I see a post in my reader because I know it’ll entertain me every time.  Well, almost every time, but we all post clunkers now and then though.

No offense to the bloggers I regularly follow and comment with, because you know I love you all, but I fancy myself a bit of a trailer trash blogger.

I seem to be drawn to other bloggers who, like me, have a limited number of followers, many of whom are their own family members, friends or neighbors.  Most of these bloggers curse and complain about life and parenting and lack of funds or their spouses and they don’t post pretty pictures of food they’ve cooked or clean rooms in their house because what they’re serving probably came from Domino’s or a can and isn’t that pretty and they have to eat it in a house that looks like people (with kids) ACTUALLY LIVE THERE!  I told Jules I’d be nice, but I’m sorry, if you have multiple kids and a clean house then I hate your face.  My wife hates your face too!

Well, some of us have posted pics of the food we’ve served the kids in our messy kitchens while momma was away getting her hair did or drinking her troubles away.

419724_10200378444693959_353513730_n

That’s right, frozen pizza and beer.  It’s probably 10:57 pm on a Tuesday in this picture as well, so what?  And yes, I like Bud Light Lime!  I’ve heard all the jokes, but you’re welcome to try an original jab, if you’re so inclined.  Feel free to throw one in the comments.

I like bloggers who are engaging and who are good sports about things without being all uppity and douchey.  Generally, popular bloggers are less responsive to comments from little people and don’t take the time to acknowledge that other people exist outside of their own personal Mount Olympus of Bloggers.

Go Jules Go is different though.  I’d say that she’s very popular here in WordPress land for sure.   She’s also a good sport and has always responded to my snarky comments on her blog even though I’m not one of her many husbands or uber-popular lady friend bloggers.

I don’t even remember where I first ran across her blog.

She is everywhere, so it’s hard to pinpoint.

Freshly Pressed?

Yes, she has been.

Recommended Humor Blog?

Yes.

Featured on the Daily Post?

Yes.

Even Featured on Freshly Pegged?

Yes!

You hate her already, right?

Yeah, me too.

Well, I tried to hate her at least, but you know what?

She’s not so bad.  She’s really pretty funny, semi-talented and fairly nice as well.  Especially for a New Jersian.

She can sing.

She gives things away.

Her first husband blogs too, for God’s sake!

She’s one of those folks other people just enjoy being around.  She’s sort of like me in that respect, minus the cursing, ranting and mustard stained shirts.

I guess my many snarky comments to her over the past several weeks about her effeminate dog finally pushed her too far though, because she cornered me on the interwebz and demanded that we co-host a sort of challenge post whereby she would try to convince me that I should want to own a doodle dog very badly and that I would do my best to convince her that she should want to have a baby or babies, also very badly!

I’m assuming that she must have lost her last blog off with her 3rd husband The Byronic Man when they wasted their time arguing about Glee even though everyone knows that show totally blows.  Why else would she be slumming for the likes of me to contest such an important issue?? This is like a heavyweight boxer tangling with a lightweight, figuratively speaking, of course.

Her ego must need a boost, and I’m always willing to help a friend in need.

Jules has over 4,000 followers!  When I looked yesterday, it was under 4000,  She did nothing on her blog the past couple of days but somehow managed to add nearly 20 more followers.  Geez!

4,000 compared to my 200 is a lot, and I know most of her followers are going to blindly side with her because she’s a woman and she’s funny and she’s cute and she’s got a great personality and they all love dogs and she says funny things like doodle and she gives them free stuff and they’re all her chipmunks, blah, blah, blah, etc.!

Look, I get that you all love her, but please hear me out and then help me convince her that she needs to put that dog of hers in a pen in the yard just for a little bit or lock him in the basement, or let him watch, whichever, but she should start working on makin’ her some babies now!

My strongest ally in this “discussion” is my true love for all God’s babies.  I have passion for my subject matter, so I can preach on about it with unwavering conviction.  I have the passion of a Southern Baptist preacher sounding off against the sins of evil that offend his God on my side!  Hallelujah, everyone, can I get an AMEN!!!

No?  Oh, ok, well poop.

Anyway, yeah, I’m a grown man and I just said that I love babies.

I’m not ashamed of that!

Lots of men love babies, right?

Who doesn’t love babies for God’s sake?

I’ll tell you who doesn’t love babies.

This devil thing doesn’t love babies.

I hate babies!

I hate babies!

And this guy very much does not love babies unless they’re in his belly!

Get in ma belly!

Get in ma belly babay!

And neither does this woman.  She does not love babies.

I love my duckets but not no babies!

I love my duckets but not no babies!

That’s Jules all right.  Look at her flaunting the fact that being childless allows her to have disposable dollar bills that I can only dream of possessing.

Crap….sorry, ignore that, I’m supposed to be arguing that babies rock and that you want them!

Jules does not love babies, in part, because she has exhausted all of her love on this…….this thing….Not the man in the mirror, the four legged thing.

29722_460001968135_6509963_nPretty disgusting, right?  Look how it just lets the water run in the sink like there’s an unlimited supply of clean water in the world. La-di-da-doodle dog!

While her doodle wastes water and looks like a sewer rat in the bath, my own beloved boys share bath water so as to not be wasteful and they even have a funny Ed Grimley routine that’s the envy of any wet dog in the bathtub related show!

Bath time is great, just great I muss say!

Bath time is great, just great I muss say!

She calls her doodle dog Uncle Jesse.

So now you’re thinking, awe, he’s named after Uncle Jesse, that’s sweet.  I thought the same thing too, and almost started liking the dog, but we were mislead!  He’s not named after the greatest Uncle Jesse ever.

Hey, I'm Uncle Jesse, not that other twerp!

Hey, I’m Uncle Jesse, not that other twerp!

Nope, he’s named after this scallywag of an Uncle Jesse.

Kiss me and you'll grow up to be anorexic and addicted to drugs!

Kiss me and you’ll grow up to be anorexic and addicted to drugs!

Uncle Jesse the dog is some sort of doodle dog.  My understanding is that a doodle dog is some breed of any potentially awesome dog mixed with a poodle.  I know, right??  Why ruin a cool dog by crossing it with a surly, uppity, snobby French dog like that??

Well, even if some of you think that Uncle Jess is cute, he’s certainly not as cute as a baby. I mean come on!  I ain’t no looker, but even I can make a cute baby.  See that fella below?  He’s mine.  Isn’t he just darling?  So precious.

Please tell me I'm pretty!

Please tell me I’m pretty and that Don isn’t my real father!

What?  You’re on the fence still?

Well, Jules wasn’t convinced either, so she proposed we come up with a 10 pack of reasons why our preferred beast is better than the other’s.  Her argument that her silly dog is preferable to having darling children is right here.  I’m shaking my head just typing that nonsense.

In the name of all that is good with humankind, I eagerly accepted the challenge and now, in a mostly non foul-mouthed way (you’re welcome GoJulesGo readers) I present to you…

My 10 fairly unconventional reasons (in no particular order) why Jules, and maybe you too other doodle owners, should ditch the doodles for some youngin’s.

Now before we get to gettin’ on this list, please know, ye lovers of all things canine, that I’m not a dog hater by any stretch of the imagination.  I don’t want any hate mail please!  I’ve got one of these at home in addition to my kids:

Pfft...Doodle please!

Pfft…Doodle please!

That’s Jojo Dancer, the DOAT clan’s pooch. She’s been with me for all of her nearly 12 years and is still going strong.  That’s what a real dog looks like.  I’m not anti-dog, but I’m outing myself right now as being anti-doodle. I’m sorry Peppermeister, but no man should have to answer the question “What kind of dog is that you have there?” by uttering anything that has the world doodle in it!  You may as well just put your testicles on the end of that leash, because you’re clearly not using them properly, if you’re walking around with a doodle dog.

So, with that cleared up, here are 10 reasons why having children is preferable to doodle dogs!

  1. Your biological success means your mother isn’t a biological failure! You love your mother, don’t you, Jules?  Here’s something from the internet.  You can Google it, if you think I’m lying.

Question:  How do you define biological success?

Answer:  The definition of (individual) biological success is having offspring who also reproduce. In other words it’s a headcount of grandchildren.

images (2)

They can’t put anything that isn’t true on the internet!

Your mother had you, Jules.  Who knows how or why?  My guess is that it involved a box of Franzia, a drive in viewing of Raiders of the Lost Ark (Harrison Ford did it for the ladies back then), and the back seat of a 1981 Olds Cutlass, but how it happened isn’t relevant.    The point is that their beautiful, probably sticky love created you.  Now, to ensure that your very own mother can be deemed a biological success, you must produce at least a single, viable offspring.  Nature is beautiful like that, which leads to point number 2.

2. Ummmm, so you do know where babies come from, right? Toss them pills or condoms or circadian rhythm calendars into the trash can and start enjoying your marital duties the good old-fashioned way, without the guilt or shame or fear that comes with worrying that you’ll end up pregnant!  Once you embrace the consequences of making the beast with two backs as desirable, you’ll be able to get wild and crazy whenever and wherever you want!  It’s liberating and just lots of gosh darned fun!

3.  You have a uterus, so you should use it!  If you have a perfectly healthy uterus and you’re not trying to fill that thing with babies, then why lug it around at all?  You wouldn’t go and buy a fancy Louis Vuitton purse and then just chuck it into the back of your closet, would you?  God gave you that thing instead of a penis because he trusted that you’d use it for what he intended, not let it shrivel up like a raisin.  If women stop using their uterus for what it was intended, then I think Darwinian evolution dictates that eventually they’ll mutate into something like another stomach and then what?  Women will get fat and your food bills will become outrageous!

You don't want your lady parts to look like this, right?

You don’t want your lady parts to look like this, right?

4.  Absence makes the heart grow fonder.  You’ve heard this saying before, haven’t you Jules?  It’s totally true!  If you’re away from Uncle Jesse for 5 minutes because he’s out in the yard peeing all over your tulips or digging up your husband’s peppers, you might miss him a little bit and scratch his head when he comes back in to show your love.  But what if you left town and didn’t see him for weeks or months even?  You’d be Sooooooo excited to see him when you got back, right?!

Well, the same is true for your other true love!  No, not bacon, dear.  You’re not fooling anybody into thinking bacon or your husbands are your next true love after your dog.

You needn’t be ashamed to admit that in between your doodle and your husbands, your second true love is alcohol.  It’s quite ok, really.

Proof?

Look at me with my pornographic (XXX?) beer!

Look at me with my pornographic (XXX?) beer!

More.

Where's the booze?

Where’s the booze?

Here’s some more booze, Jules!

Classy ladies drink wine.

Classy ladies drink wine.

And finally here as well.  Oh my!

Less classy ladies to this...

Less classy ladies do this…

While this may seem like a negative, it’s really not!  Delaying gratification is a wonderful practice and since you’ll be such an awesome mother, you’ll not drink for 9 months of your pregnancy, well, 8 months I guess since you’ll probably not know right away.

So after the darling little one is born, that first drink you take will either be sooooooo good, or you’ll just hate it and never want to drink again.  Sounds like a win/win either way to me!

5. You’re a blogger.  Pretty soon your friends are going to be done getting married and Uncle Jesse will have a bad hip and spend his days laying around licking his private parts because he can , and then what will you write about?  Nobody wants to read more than one or two posts about the time your dog ate its own poop (yeah, they do that!) or dry humped your mother in law’s leg.  When you have kids, you’ll have an over abundance of blog material!  They look cute, post.  They poop all up their backs and spit up all over your front, post.  They say something stupid, post.  They say something funny, post.  Everything a kid does is a potential post!  And the same exact incident can be written to be funny or sad or anywhere in between.  Look at all I got in under 24 hours once with just my youngest!

6.  Kids suck at tic tac toe and checkers.  When’s the last time you won a game of tic tac toe?  If you’re playing with anyone over 6, I’d hope the answer is that it’s been a long time.  They all end in cat’s games, and ties suck nearly as much as losing!  Well, this isn’t the case when you play your own little ones!  They’re mostly stupid up until a certain age and can be beaten nearly every single time!  Not just tic tac toe either, you can whoop them in checkers, cards, the Wii, foot races, breath holding contests…I mean they are terrible at almost everything!!!  It’s a real confidence booster to blow past your 4 year old in a 50 yard dash and be able to yell “WHooooOOO!  In your face, boy (or girl)!!!” every.single.time.

7.  Just playing is fun.  You don’t even have to beat the pants off your kids to enjoy being with them, because just playing these games is reason enough to have kids.  People think you’re a little silly when you color on the place mat in restaurants with no kids at your table, but with a kid in tow, color away!  Sorry, but you can’t bring dogs into most restaurants.  Coloring is as fun as you remember it being.  I often notice my childless neighbors watching me enviously while I do fun things with my kids outside.  They don’t get to fly kites or play with remote control cars or ride their bicycles.  While they’d never admit that they’re bummed about the social stigma of playing kid’s games sans the kids, it shows on their sad, sad faces.

8.  Life isn’t always just about you.  I know that this one may be a hard one for you to hear, Jules.  If you’re not having babies because you think that it’s going to affect YOUR life so much, then you’re just being selfish, and nobody likes a Selfish Sally!

Do you know what your mother and your mother in law’s hearts will look like with grand children?  Or with even just a singe grand child?!!

Something like this.

Gosh I just love my grand babies so much!

Gosh I just love my grand babies so much!

Here’s what they’ll look like when you’re in your mid 30’s and it’s become painfully obvious to them that you have no plans to procreate.

Oh god, why!!!??? Just one grand baby is all I wanted!!

Oh god, why!!!??? Just one grand baby is all I wanted!!

It hurts to see, doesn’t it?  Imagine how their poor little hearts feel inside their little old lady bodies.  I hurt for them just thinking about the emptiness they must be starting to feel already.  Oh, Babs, please, you can come watch my babies (for free?) anytime you want to get your kid fix!  I’m so sad for her…

9.  Life is easier with kids.  You may hear some weaker people complain that life with kids is hard, but you’re not weak, right?  You have a husband to help too, so it’s even easier.  Kids make life ten times easier to live!  Sure, if you want to seem responsible, you have to put a car seat in the car and I’ll admit that they do insist on eating two or three times a day.  That can be aggravating, yes!  But kids are also a great excuse to slack off in other areas of your life.  Your house is a mess?  Nobody cares, because you have kids so it’s expected.  Go ahead and park junior in front of Nickelodeon while you soak in a bubble bath with a glass of wine all afternoon.  Don’t want to go to Annoying Anita’s party?  Sorry Annoying Annita, but I can’t find anyone to take the kids that night.  Many places have expectant mother parking places now, so you don’t have to go out and hurt yourself to get great mall parking during Christmas shopping season as long as you can manage to keep yourself pregnant!  Stranded on the side of the road?  Passersby will be more willing to stop and help when they notice you have a baby on your hip.  The good kind of helper, too, not just the creepy ones who will stop for any blonde woman they see on the side of the road.  And what about your husband?  Do you think he wants to have to cut the grass or clean the pool or the gutters all by himself for the rest of his life?  No way!  If nothing else at all, kids are instant manual laborers.  Well, not instant, as it takes a couple of years for them to be able to push a mower, but they’ll get there pretty quickly and you and he will have more snuggle time because of it.  I bet that doodle isn’t making your yard any nicer looking with his poops and pees all over the place.  Not to mention, towards the end of your days on earth, you don’t want your husband or some strange niece being the person to decide which old folk’s home to stick you in.  A child you’ve birthed and loved their whole life is far more likely to feel guilty for putting you in a terrible home on the wrong side of the tracks than somebody who you didn’t birth will.  The list of advantages I could trumpet here are endless, but you get the point.

And finally…gosh, this got long, is anyone still reading?

10.  You owe it to your Chipmunks!  Your chipmunks can’t get enough of you, and since cloning isn’t a viable option yet, the next best thing is something that shares your DNA.  Imagine being able to spread more love via little Juleses and Peppermeisters!!  Not to mention that kids find chipmunks to be adorable.  Do you know who doesn’t find chipmunks adorable, Jules?  That’s right, dogs.

Dogs hate chipmunks!

Dogs hate chipmunks!

So even if you’re not convinced that YOU want babies, Jules, your mother surely does.  Your mother in law, probably does too.  If they’re not enough, then do it for your 4000 plus chipmunks out here online.

I know I speak for all of them when I say that I’m looking forward to the joy and entertainment that your children will bring to the rest of us!

Posted in Humor, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 120 Comments

Winery confidence…how not to be that guy, sort of.

Posted on May 6, 2013 by donofalltrades

I knew I was drunk because I had my bare ass freshly pressed against the back window of the rental van aimed at a convertible corvette that may or may not have been in sight of the van at this point. Showing my ass literally is not a part of my usual MO. Figuratively, yes, but I do normally keep my bertcheeks where they belong. Alongside me, also with his ass pressed to the window, was an otherwise normally sane neighbor of mine.

What caused us usually fine, upstanding members of society (well, my neighbor anyway, he’s a pharmacist) to bare our asses to Joe Corvette and his lady passenger?

Winery trip…

Whoever thought of opening wineries to the public is brilliant.

I assume that most people in this country now have wineries within driving distance of their homes. Our local wineries are close enough to make a day of it, but just far enough away that a designated driver is a must. If there are people out there who visit wineries without being tabbed the designated driver but can still see straight when they’re leaving, I’m impressed!

I remember being in law school and awaiting an evening class at my favorite watering hole just across the street once when three or four tour busses pulled up and parked across from the bar. Hordes of college kids exited the busses and promptly began stumbling face first into the grass. Some didn’t make it to the grass and fell flat onto the street or sidewalk. Still others began urinating right there on the sidewalk in the middle of the afternoon. One couple was about to have sex, and several others had their bare asses pressed against the bar windows because they weren’t being allowed in for various (obvious) reasons.

It was one of the craziest scenes I’ve ever witnessed. Part of its craziness stemmed from the fact that it wasn’t even 5 pm yet and there were a couple hundred kids stumbling drunk like a bunch of zombies in such an urban setting. By the time campus security arrived, the level of silly had reached its zenith. The kids that remained had only done so because they were too hammered to figure out where to go or even how to go about getting wherever it was they wanted to go. They were like sheep without their shephard dog and they had just returned from a few hours at a winery.

I had a good laugh and went to class. Only at a Jesuit school would that be tolerated. Well, it was mostly tolerated I think. It was near graduation time, and I think everyone at a university is more pleasant around the end of May when the end is in sight.

Those kids had the right idea in that they didn’t drink and drive, so kudos to them. I assume that like me, most of those kids aren’t regular wine drinkers, so the wine hit them unexpectedly and pretty hard. Still, they made it home in one piece, and at their age, that’s an accomplishment.

For those of you out there who’ve never been to a winery, I highly recommend it! Don’t worry about feeling out of place because you ain’t no wine snob, there are always plenty of others in the same boat as you. Just to give you head’s up though, here’s a Cliff’s Notes list of tips to get you through your winery day.

  • Who’s driving? Make sure it isn’t you and try to make sure it’s not one of your idiot friends who drinks as much as or even more than you like to. Find a pregnant wife or girlfriend or somebody who’s found Jesus and doesn’t drink anymore, because most of these wineries are nowhere near where you live. Even if they were, driving 100 feet in your future condition is not a good idea. Many of these wineries are in small towns and we all know how small towns like to make revenue from traffic related violations, right? Trying to decide at the end of the day “who’s the least drunk and therefore, logically most able to drive?” is not the best way to get home safely.
  • Lube yourself with some lighter fair. No matter what sort of event you’re attending, if it involves pre-event drinking, it has to be awesome! Drinking before you get to the winery is a no brainer, so ice up a cooler with beer and soda for the driver and get your pre-drink on for the hour or so drive to the winery. Drinking before drinking is a guarantee that you’re going to have fun while you’re drinking.
  • Whoah there though; pace yourself big fella! You have several hours of wine drinking ahead of you and you’ve skipped breakfast? Try not to exceed a six pack on the ride there, just in case your friends can’t be trusted to carry you back to the van and lock you in there safe and sound in a couple of hours after you’ve vomited and passed out on a patio in front of a family with small children after telling the dad that his 7 year old daughter was going to grow up to be “smokin’ fuckin’ hot.” There’s always somebody in the group who thinks it’d be funny to shave your head or draw a penis in permanent marker on your face. Make sure you outlast that guy at least.
  • Order something you can pronounce first. You don’t want to sound like a buffoon right away to the first bartender you encounter, so when asking for that first sample, keep it simple. Ask to sample the “house char-don-ay” if you’d like a white wine, or a “house mer-low” to get some red in your system. The point isn’t to order something you’ll necessarily enjoy this time, but to get something in your hand without drawing attention to yourself as being an idiot who knows nothing about wine and is only there to get tanked.
  • Now find a douchebag. You’re going to want to take your successfully acquired sample of wine and nestle near Mr. and Mrs. Douchebag for some wine education. They’ll be the couple who showed up in a Corvette or BMW or Mercedes station wagon but are spending the afternoon doing the same thing as your dumb, broke ass, so they’re not that cool after all. They probably took some classes on wine drinking in the hopes that they won’t sound like douchebags, but their attire gives them away. You’ll know them when you see them and they’ll be taking all of the bartender’s time asking him or her questions that they already know the answers to. Eavesdrop on their conversation about the 6 wines this shitty Missouri winery offers and you’ll know all you need to know to order future wine samples with confidence.
  • That’s wine pal, not beer or Kool-Aid! They, whoever they is, say that beer drinkers shouldn’t drink wine, in part, because they drink it the same way they do beer. First off, shut the fuck up whoever you are! I don’t drink wine from 12 oz cans so you’re totally incorrect. Beer chuggers do, however, sometimes forget that we’re they’re drinking a more potent beverage in wine and get to chugging instead of sipping. We, er those people will feel fine for about an hour or so, but at some point, those 2 bottles of wine on top of the 5 beers you had on the ride to the winery will hit you from out of nowhere!
  • Let’s eat! There will come a point in time where the experienced drunk will know that he or she has reached the point in the road where it forks. The road less traveled will be taken by switching to water and laying off the booze for a couple of hours. Your well traveled road taking ass, however, knows nothing of that other direction and will continue to drink wine, knowing full well that you’ve now reached a point where tomorrow is a lost day. That’s ok though, you’re having fun, but let’s fill our belly just to help ease that pain a little bit. While crackers and cheese probably isn’t going to do much to defend your brain cells from being overrun by the much stronger wine molecules, it’s better than nothing. Most wineries serve food nowadays, so try to find something that doesn’t sound completely queer and eat it. Bread, sausage, cheese, birdfeed, it doesn’t matter, just get something into your system.
  • Go home now! Hey, the winery is fun, but it isn’t meant to be fun for more than 4 or 5 hours. If you’ve not wasted time talking or walking around aimlessly, and have been sampling and buying wines for 4 hours, you should be plenty hammered now. When you slap your wife on the ass and tell her she looks bootiful and it turns out you’ve just slapped some guy named Steve on the ass and not your wife, then it’s time to go. Find the driver and nestle into your spot on the van. If the others aren’t ready then fuck em. Drink the rest of the beer in the cooler until you’re confident that you’re drunk enough that you’re willing to press your ass against the back window for those people right behind you to admire without giving it a second thought.

Have fun and be careful my friends!

Posted in Humor, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 72 Comments

Eh, just stuff in my brain. hey Canadian bloggers, I mention hockey and beer so jump on in!

Posted on May 3, 2013 by donofalltrades

There’s not a lot to do where I am on a Thursday night when softball is rained out, but thankfully, the Blues were on the television tonight!  The Blues are a professional ice hockey team right here in St. Louis, for those of you who live in a cave or Ireland or whatever.

NHL playoff hockey rocks!  I did not want to stay up late tonight, but the game didn’t start until 8:30, so there was no option.  For the duration of the Blues playoff run, which is normally very short, I’m an honorary Canadian.  It’s all hockey, gettin’ drunk and saying eh? whenever I can for me, eh?

Where’s my Kiss Me I’m Canadian shirt, honey??  Ah, that’s right, it’s stained with syrup, semen and moose shit still from my last foray into Canadian role playing during the great Shania Twain run of the late 1990’s.  That’s  ok.

Long story short, I drank I’m drinking many beers and the Blues won, so let’s move on!

I’m fairly buzzed from drinking on my couch all night, so I’m just typing whatever I feel like for a few minutes.

I’ve been thinking about getting back on the streets as a police officer lately.  Not because I want to, necessarily, but it’s been in my head.  The blog material alone would be unbelievable.

One of the cool things about being a police officer was that I met literally thousands of different people over the years. 

I was allowed into many of their homes and into their personal lives, whether they liked it or not.

We are “invited” into your homes before you’ve had a chance to clean up after the kids.  We’re called when mom and dad are fighting or mom can’t control her teenager and wants the police to do it for her or because your dog has been barking all night and your neighbor is finally tired of it.  We show up oftentimes when you’re not expecting us, so we catch you off guard and in your natural state, so to speak.

It was always interesting to me how people kept their homes or what they were eating for dinner when all hell broke loose.  Silly as it seems, I noticed such things.

Can you imagine?  There have been times when people’s family members were mother fucking each other and I’d be looking at shit on the kitchen table and thinking to myself huh, I wonder if I can take these pork chops and have them for dinner since everyone in this house is going to be in jail tonight.  They look great.

Ha, no, I’m kidding?

I’ve been  in near million dollar homes that were disgusting messes, clearly not well maintained.  I’ve been in apartments in the projects that were beautifully kept and tended to with care.  I remember once going into a Section 8 apartment that was pretty shitty looking on the outside and around the grounds, but this woman kept a clean home.  She had lovely photos and some art hanging on the walls and African masks and tapestries all over but neatly displayed; it was really a cool place.

The reason I remember the apartment is because as soon as I walked in, my nose was met with the most wonderfully smelling savory dish I’ve ever known.  I remember speaking to this woman about whatever it was I was there for (I can’t remember the type of call, it was a false alarm going off I think) and having to ask her before I left, just what it was that she was cooking.

“Ox tails, child!  You never had no ox tail?!” I remember her saying.

She was genuinely shocked when I told her I hadn’t  and was getting a bowl and spoon out without even thinking about it before I could insist that I had just eaten and wouldn’t be able to enjoy her food today.

She wasn’t the first to offer me something to eat on a call.  I always hated to turn that shit down and sound like I was being a dick, but come on, who wouldn’t want to spit on some food and give it to a cop, right?  People can be gross, so not eating at strangers’ homes is a good policy.

“Every Sunday I eat this,” she said.  “You come back anytime ‘bout this time and I’ll have some for ya.”

Of course I never did go back, and I’ve always wondered what her ox tails tasted like.  There’s no way the taste could have matched that smell.  I’ve still never smelled something that I can remember being so incredible, other than that time my wife cooked us a casserole when we were still newly dating and we were down in Dallas.  It smelled incredible for the wrong reason though.  It smelled like feet!  Sorry dear, but you know that’s true!!

This guy was a douche:

My coworker reminded me of this mini caper from last year.

My boss often has lunch with some of the attorneys at his old office.  Every Friday, he and a gentleman named Tom go to the same restaurant and probably order the same thing from the same waitress.  They like consistency, I guess you could say.

Anyway, before I must have pissed him off with something I said, Tom used to call me to go to lunch whenever my boss was off on a Friday.  On one such day, Tom, who is a larger gentleman to say the least, called me to go to lunch.  I was agreeable, but I insisted that we go to a place I like and not the usual joint that they frequented each Friday.  Their place is way overpriced!!  This clearly made Tom uncomfortable, but he came and picked me up nonetheless (their office is right across the street).

I told Tom that his Ford Taurus (not the first he’s owned…creature of habit) had a pretty good flat tire, to which he shrugged his shoulders.  After a few hundred yard, it was obvious that this car was struggling on the bum tire, so Tom pulled into an awful gas station positioned at the intersection of two sets of housing projects, a chop suey joint (is this a St. Louis thing, chop suey?) and a car wash where I’m sure you could get a dime bag before you could find someone to clean your rims.

He pulled up to the air pump and said, seemingly to nobody in particular, “There some fix a flat in the trunk.”

I assumed he was just talking out loud to himself, so we both sat there like a couple of honkey assholes in a clearly non-honkeys-are-welcome-here parking lot until it occurred to me that this fuck was expecting me to get out of the car and get the can myself!  WTF?

It was pretty warm outside and I think Tom is quick to perspire, so I did get his stupid can out of the trunk and got back in the car to offer it to him so he’d have another chance to go put air in his own tire.

No such thing was going to happen.  He handed me a quarter for the air machine instead.  I guess I should be thankful that he did that much.

Without ever saying thank you, we enjoyed our lunch as I secretly seethed inside and hoped he’d choke on a chicken bone or something.  I didn’t want him to die or anything.  I like Tom, but a good choking scare would have been pretty sweet.

Alas, he didn’t choke, and because the owner of the joint where we ate likes me (I work security there) our lunch was comped 100%.  I told Tom it was customary that we leave the waitress $5 each when we get our lunch comped, so he left $5 and walked away.

“Can’t cover my $5 too for fixing your fucking flat tire you big fuck of a fucking fuck!!???  FUCK!”  Is what I thought in my head.

Not only did he not cover my lunch, he never did say thank you.  What a rude douche.  It occurs to me that I may have unearthed a reason Tom is in his mid 40s and lives alone.

I had a whole story here that really pissed me off about a rich asshole treating a “poorer” person disrespectfully, but my wife pulled the plug on it.  She’s the only one who gets to pull the plug on my shit when she reviews something, and she nixed it for now so I got nothing more.

Well hold on, I got more.

Twitter.

I never really understood Twitter, but I have an account.  I happened to be on it while watching the hockey game and drinking tonight.  I can see how a person can get into hot water real fast!

I followed Wil Wheaton because his name showed up shortly after I followed that silly George Takei and I’d seen him on Big Bang Theory.  I never watched a single episode of Star Trek, so I don’t know him from that show.

Anyway, it turns out he’s a Kings fan and was tweeting shit about the game every 4 minutes!  I wanted to tweet him threatening messages all night long!  Then when the Blues started to get hosed by the refs, I promptly followed the NHL and then Brendan Shanahan.who I think is in charge of the refs!  Shanahan may have nothing to do with the refs, I don’t know, but I was going to Tweet my displeasure with every mother lover involved with the NHL!!!

Thankfully, I lost interest in that, but I can see how it’d get outta control fast!

Well fuck, I’m up to 1500 plus words and it’s 12:45am my time.

Good night, all!

I promise that I’ll try harder next time.

Posted in Humor, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 36 Comments

This one’s for Ace!!

Posted on April 30, 2013 by donofalltrades

So it’s dawned on me recently that much of this blog’s content involving my kids revolves around the boys. If you’ve only just begun following, you may be unaware that I have a daughter as well.

I call her Ace on this blog and it’s her real life nickname to boot, courtesy of her grandmother.

While the squeaky wheels get the grease, all Ace does is get great grades, helps around the house and with her little brothers, never gets into any notable trouble and is a complete joy to have around!

I’m glad the good Lord didn’t have me fill out paperwork asking what I wanted in a daughter, because I’d have been too bashful to ask for all that he’s given us in Ace. I’d have sold myself way short!

Wife and I were married in September of 2002, after many years of her courting and wooing me unmercifully. The very next month, October 20th or maybe the 22nd, to be exact, we got our drink on at the Schlafly Taproom in downton St. Louis with a couple of our friends, Matt and Joe. The beer of the night was Oatmeal Stout and it was quite tasty.

The short of it is that some weeks thereafter, the wife informed me that she was with child but not to get excited because it was early and her doctor thought it was an ectopic pregnancy or some such nonsense like that. Well, I most certainly did have my hopes up, and thankfully, the doctor was mistaken and the pregnancy went just fine.

I come from a family of all boys. My mother looooonged desperately for a daughter. I still remember the hair barrettes that she had painted “Tia” on in the hopes that her last son would be a girl. Alas, it was not meant to be for her.

So, her joy at having her first grandbaby be a girl was unbridled.

I was also pleased to have a girl. The worry isn’t that the first one will be a girl, it’s that the next one would also be a girl, but that’s for another time.

My mom promptly retired from her job of nearly 40 years and became a babysitter. While we were lucky to have her at the time, her and Ace bonded way too much.

They used to talk to each other like they were sisters instead of grandma and grand daughter. It was a little creepy.

When Ace was a toddler, she was just as cute as a little girl could be.

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Yes, that’s totally a Milwaukee’s Best box at grandma and grandpa’s house.

Her grandma was no cook and they’d eat out nearly every single day. This had some benefit, as she knew how to act like a civilized little human being in restaurants. We used to have people walk up to us all the time and compliment us on how good she was. How sad is it that she was the exception?

We never had any problem bringing Ace to happy hour with us as she enjoyed the video games and pull tabs while we consumed our mommy and daddy beverages.

The card she made for her grandpa when she was 5 is still classic to me.

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An oldie but a goodie still.

Thankfully, she didn’t recall the fine server we had at Hooter’s when she drew that picture! Hooters, yeah we’ve been there. Ace loves wings!

Daddy daughter day!

Daddy daughter day!

And drinks!

Delightful...

Delightful…

And more drinks…

Whose round is it?

Whose round is it?

She’s always been a great eater. Fruits, veggies, you name it, but her first love is bacon and all meats related! She’s a meat and potatoes kind of gal!

The girl loves her some breakfast.

The girl loves her some breakfast.

It’s not all fun and games and eating for Ace though, as she’s always had to pull her weight around the house.

They're never too young!

They’re never too young!

She’s a sweetheart to her brothers, most of the time.

Ace with baby Cool.

Ace with baby Cool.

Her and G$ look more alike than Cool, but sadly, he behaves nothing like her.

Ace and baby G$.

Ace and baby G$.

She’s the oldest of her cousins.

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The girl likes to read, even to her brothers.

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That’s right, Cool, he does not like green eggs and ham.

Still reading.

A thriller no doubt.

A thriller no doubt.

She’s a pretty little lady and quite a dancer

We were dancin' fools that night.

We were dancin’ fools that night.

But she’s never subjected me to a lot of things that most little girls love. She’s never made me play Barbie, and in fact, I’m not sure that she’s ever played with them herself. She had a Polly Pockets phase for sure, but girly things just never won her over.

The girliest she’s ever been for Halloween was a witch.

Scary witch, right?

Scary witch, right?

We let her do as she wants, and she’s much happier dressed as a pirate.

Arrrrrgh!

Arrrrrgh!

Or just like her brother to make him happy.

You're both pretty super!

You’re both pretty super!

She’s always enjoyed playing sports of all kinds. From soccer…

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She’s got moves!

to softball…

Totally paying attention.

Totally paying attention.

And anything involving water.

Water is her favorite.

Water is her favorite.

The girl can be goofy.

SpongeAce.

SpongeAce.

Hey, that's daddy's drinking hat!

Hey, that’s daddy’s drinking hat!

But she has a heart of gold.

Between G$ and Cool needing our help to cut their food or go to the bathroom or to hold them or make them a drink or this and that, Ace has to do a lot for herself. There’s nothing wrong with that for sure, and we make her do chores and do the things that she can on her own, but she’s still our baby girl and I sometimes worry that she feels like a third wheel.

She is so low maintenance and so gifted that I sometimes expect more from her than I should. We all have bad days and she’s entitled to them too.

I’m not saying she’s perfect by any stretch. She has a lot of me in her, so she can be sassy and lippy and pouty pouty pouty! Pouty isn’t from daddy, that’s her own gift.

But, sometimes when we take things for granted, we miss opportunities to remind them how we feel.

I love you, Ace. I love you more than my silly brain and mouth could ever conspire to tell you in person. That’s a shame, yes, but it is what it is. You’d probably just roll your eyes and say “Oh, Daddy, stop it!” anyway.

Know that when I tease you and test you and pester you and push you and urge you and offer you constructive criticism and ask you questions and give you chores and test your patience or tell you no or “because I said so” without explanation, I do it because I love you and I’m trying to do what I think is best for you.

Your mom and I aren’t perfect parents; we know that! There’s no book though, kid, we’re making this up as we go along!

You’re a sweetie and you have lots of friends.

I’m not your friend.

Say wha!!?

Say wha!!?

Mom is not your friend either.

Now you're just being an ass.

Now you’re just being an ass.

We’re your parents.

We love you and want what’s best for you.

You’ll always be my baby girl.

My first little buddy!

My first little buddy!

No matter how big you grow.

Not so little anymore.

Not so little anymore.

While I’m really eager to see what kind of woman you grow up to be, there’s no hurry. Let’s slow our roll a little bit with this growing up, ok sweetie?

My brain ain’t so good and I want to remember you as you are now and have been for the past nine wonderful years!

Thanks for being so great, kiddo!

Baby girl!

Baby girl!

Posted in Family, Parenting, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 58 Comments

To blog or not to blog…

Posted on April 29, 2013 by donofalltrades

WordPress has just informed me that I now have 200 followers. As I have been unmotivated to write anything recently outside of snarky comments on the posts of bloggers I enjoy, I can only assume that the last few enjoy a good, snarky comment from time to time.

I’ve checked most of my followers out and they all seem legit. I’d heard that others have seen some sort of upsurge in followers who may or may not be real people? I don’t know what that means, but whatever.

I’m fairly confident that 15 or so of you read my blog with a little bit of regularity. I assume 10 of you are reading in the hopes that you’ll finally read the thing that pushes you too far so that you can unfollow me without feeling guilty about it, while 2 of you were told I was funny by somebody who read my blog back when I was sort of funny, and the other 3 of you just want to make sure I’m not talking badly about you.

Whatever your reason, I appreciate it. 

Speaking of people who read just to see if I’m talking negatively about them, I want to congratulate my FRIEND, Margo! You may remember Margo from the Miracle of 2011.  Whereas I assumed that since I ran 13.1 consecutive miles without stopping to walk that I was ok to take the next year of my life to eat and drink whatever I wanted from the comfort of my couch, Margo continued to train.  She ran an entire marathon in Nashville this past weekend and I am really proud of her. I like to tease her, but I know she was really committed and worked her ass off training for this thing. Her husband, Todd, meanwhile was a total vagina as usual and “only” ran the half marathon.  Way to push yourself, Todd!!

Anyway, as I’ve spewed 70 posts and attained 200 followers, I assumed now was a good time to decide what to do with this blog idea.

It’s funny, but I think I was more comfortable when I had a lot fewer followers but knew who most of them were and could respond to them without having to go visit their blogs first to remind myself who I was talking to again.

I’ve been out of sorts with this blog for over a month now, ever since I posted about an old work friend who passed away unexpectedly and decided to throw in some memories about other police officers who had died as well.

I didn’t expect it to get viewed so often, but compared to my usual posts, it did.  See:

 

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It’s like a giant middle finger saying fuck you, Don, you’ll never get this many views in one day again!!

While I probably won’t, I really don’t care.  Since I’m hard to please, as long as I’m happy with what I post, I know that at least some of you will also enjoy it.  If one person smiles or cries or says “what a dick,” then I’ll be happy.  Way back in another life, I used to write “serious” things in school and enjoy them. Whether it was a short story or an interpretation of a poem or piece of literature, I enjoyed that crap.  I pondered whether to stick to writing things that are more serious or intellectual in nature (believe it or not, I can do that if I have to!).  I even thought about creating another blog to write that sort of stuff, but at the end of the day, it’s not what makes me happy. 

I’m donofalltrades, and that means, in part, that this blog can be all over the place if I want it to be.  I didn’t know what I was going to write about when I started, so I guessed that it’d be about all sorts of different shit.

So while I’m writing this and half wondering if I want to continue to write a blog, Le Clown just liked one of my earlier posts.  If there’s such a thing as somebody getting tired of being complimented, he would know.  He has a couple of great blogs and goes out of his way to make blogging something that we can all enjoy together.  I’m going to take his “like” as a sign from God to carry on with this thing!  Sorry, wife!

On to other things.

Guess who’s 2 now?

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Yup, lil G$ had a birthday yesterday.

You’ve not heard much about him recently because he’s been a pretty good boy as far as not hurting himself or eating anything outrageous.  Other than assaulting his older brother with a toy hammer from time to time, he’s been pretty well behaved as well.  That’s fine and dandy for our sanity, but it leaves me longing for blog topics.

Well ok, I didn’t really have anything to say, but wanted to get a post up to keep me interested.  I feel a little bit rejuvenated already.

Thanks for reading and who knows, maybe I’ll pull another epic post out of my ass one of these days soon!

Posted in Family, Humor, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 65 Comments

Sigh, I mean yay! Leibster Award!!

Posted on April 24, 2013 by donofalltrades

This post is for my blogging cohorts and won’t make sense to the 12 of you who follow me outside of WordPress (i.e. my lovely wife who may ask at dinner tonight if these awards include any sort of monetary presentation…uh, no, sorry dear.)

I’ve been presented with an award before and once I did a half assed job of trying to respond so I consider that one a fail that must be done over now that I’m a little more comfortable with how blogging works. I’m so sorry to whoever nominated me before when I couldn’t get around to responding!

I like that I’ve been recently nominated for two of these awards by fairly different styled bloggers. One blogger is more in your face and clearly enjoys the “F” word. In fact, motherfucker is her answer to a question she created for herself as to what her favorite curse word is!

The other blogger is more introspective and careful in her responses and I’ll start with her.

Thank you so much to A.J. Goode at A Good One for nominating me for a Leibster Award! A.J has three kids, just like moi and is a former hairdresser. Who doesn’t love hairdressers? Mona Lisa Vito was a hairdresser in My Cousin Vinny for God’s sake!

liebster-award

Anyway, her story about overcoming a very serious accident is touching and I wish her the best in her goal to have a novel she’s working on (you’re working on it, right) finished AND accepted for publication by June 21, 2014!

Now, on to business here.  There are rules, first and foremost, and they are as follows:

The rules:

  1. Thank the Liebster Blog presenter who nominated you and link back to their blog. – Done
  2. Post 11  facts about yourself, answer the 11 questions you were asked and create 11 questions for your nominees. – Fuck!  I didn’t realize I had to create 11 questions and come up with facts about myself!  This is going to take longer than I’d hoped.
  3. Nominate 11 blogs who you feel deserve to be noticed and leave a comment on their blog letting them know they have been chosen. – Christ, even more work…I should have read this first.
  4. Display the Liebster Award logo. – Easy enough.
  5. No tag back thingys.- I don’t know what this means, so I assume we’re good with it.

Ok now, 11 facts about myself…hmmmm.

  1. Yes, I am currently paying too much for my car insurance.
  2. I am currently a commissioned police officer and a licensed attorney at the same time.  I’m a lawyer who can carry a gun. This seems to confuse people to no end for some reason.
  3. I have three kids.  For purposes of this blog they are Ace, Cool and G$. (Lots of new followers may not know this)
  4. I live in Missouri.  Not the uber urban liberal part or the way out rural red part, but in the middle somewhere.
  5. I once tried to be a cat owner (I was single and living alone – Good God the stereotypes!) but it didn’t work out.  When I say I’ll never own a cat, I can at least say that I tried for several hours and failed.
  6. I’ve never taken a weeklong vacation anywere but to a beach.  Why a human being would vacation in the snow or where there is no sun and ocean is a mystery to me.
  7. My favorite numer is 9, but sometimes it’s 8.
  8. Not for any good reason, but I don’t have any tattoos or piercings.
  9. I’m the oldest of four boys, one of whom only lived a few hours.  We all have names that start with a D.
  10. My butt has a crack in it.  Hahahahaha!!  Shut up.

Ok, now here are the questions that Ms. Goode asked of her nominees (hang in there readers!)

  1. If you could be a superhero, what power would you want? -Hmmm…X-Ray vision would be pretty cool for the perv in me, and also useful as a police officer, but I’m going to go with being able to expand my body like that Fantastic 4 guy.  You’re welcome, wife!
  2. Coke or Pepsi? – I was always a Pepsi guy, but a Coke in the morning used to be the best.  Now I’m an ice tea drinker and don’t care which soda a restaurant serves.  I’m going to say Coke though since it tastes better with Jack.
  3. What do you believe in? – Ghosts.  For real, we had one at our old house.  She used to take care of Ace when Ace was a baby and freak the dog out.
  4. Who inspires you?  I don’t know about inspires, but I’m always impressed with people who can move me with words, whether it be a song or a poem or other.
  5. Are you an Old Soul or Young at Heart? Totally a young heart but I cherish the past and traditions too.
  6. What was your first job? I started making pizzas at a St. Louis joint called Imos when I was 15.
  7. Pick your own question here…..Ok, Do you like Feta cheese?  Yes.
  8. What is your dream car?  Currently, a limo so that I can roll that divider thing up when the kids won’t shut the fuck up.  That would change to a Ferrari once it’s just the wife and I cruisin’ to the beach Christy Brinkley style.
  9. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be? If it had meat in it, I might say salad, believe it or not.  Just to be safe though, I’m picking pizza.
  10. Dog person  or cat person?  See above.  Sorry kittens.
  11. What one place would you like to visit before you die?  Italy.

Now to pick 11 blogs.  I’m going to do more than 11 and I’m picking all female blogger blogs for this one just because I can!  I’m picking mostly randomly and looking at people who’ve followed me for more than a month, even though, if you’re reading this and I follow your blog, I love it too!  Please don’t hate me if yours isn’t listed!  If you have over 200 followers, I don’t think I’m supposed to pick you anyway.

  1. http://thoughtsofalunatic.com/ – Her story is incredible.  It’s not something everyone will be able to stomach for sure, but I think she can help others.  She’s been through a lot already and her best years are yet to come.
  2. http://ardenrr.wordpress.com – She’s addicted to someecards and is a funny paralegal.  No brainer.
  3. http://aliciabenton.wordpress.com/ – She’s funny and trying to raise two boys.  I like watching people try to raise sons, what can I say?
  4. http://ksujulie.wordpress.com – I’m not even sure why I like her blog.  She likes Kansas State for God’s sake. 
  5. http://fatbottomgirlsaidwhat.wordpress.com – Another person who lives in Kansas, presumably on purpose.  Her relationship trainwrecks are fun to follow.
  6. http://sassandbalderdash.com/ – Call her Katie, not Kate.  Geez…
  7. http://mythoughtsonapage.com/ – She’s both thoughtful and funny which helps make up for her being Irish.  A real Irish person who lives in Ireland!  Cork, Ireland!
  8. http://staggeringduck.wordpress.com – Filterless and funny.  Sounds like somebody I know.
  9. http://rantandrollallnight.com – She does stand up comedy and played competitive badminton!  How cool is that??!!  The standup, not the badminton.
  10. http://journeyintothespectrum.wordpress.com/ and http://fakingpictureperfect.wordpress.com/ and http://ihaveanopinionidliketoshare.wordpress.com/ and http://whinybaby.wordpress.com/ – It’s my blog and if I want to clump four blogs together because I like the bloggers then I will.  They’ve been with me a while and for some reason still are.
  11. http://momticks.com – Another person raising sons; that she hasn’t seen a Godfather movie makes me want to slap her, but she’s cool otherwise.
  12. http://mzamenski3.wordpress.com/ – I picked this one on purpose just to be nice.  I know her in real life and she and her children drive me fucking bonkers.  I hate them like they were my own blood.  Most of her posts will no doubt mention her oldest daughter.  She’s got that there Asperger’s and will let you know when you’re pissing her off.

So now here are 11 questions for my nominees:

  1. If you could introduce your husband or boyfriend to someone and had to tell his occupation during the introduction, what would you want that occupation to be?
  2. Pancakes or waffles?
  3. Favorite professional sports team?
  4. City in the USA not named New York, Boston, LA, Dallas, Chicago or Miami that you’d like to visit?
  5. Vacation time!  Where do you go if it can be anywhere?
  6. What’s a regret you have that sometimes eats at you?
  7. You can change one thing about your husband/boyfriend.  What is that thing?
  8. When’s the last time you were drunk?
  9. What would you do for a Klondike bar?
  10. If you could…if Jesus insisted that you murder one person, who would it be (I’m excluded please) –
  11. Best thing you’ve ever eaten?

A new blogger friend, http://sassypanties.wordpress.com nominated me for a Sunshine Award.  I may try to get to that another day, but please read her funny stuff.  She curses like a sailor, but that’s ok.

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