(My wife is gonna kill me for this)

So we just found out last week that we are expecting a little girl.

Considering all the comments I've made for years about wanting only boys, it seems only appropriate that now we'll have 3 girls. But there are so many positives about having girls. Hmm... I may need to think about those positives some more so that I can actually come up with some. (My wife is going to kill me for that).

Let me start again... the ONLY negative about finding out that we're having a girl is that all the great names I wanted to bestow upon my offspring are now entirely useless. My favorites were Sasquatch, Chewbacca, and Kron. I've been duly informed that none of these will work with a little girl, and this blog's purpose is to mourn the loss of these names. Not just the loss of the names, but the complete and utter waste of brain power that I put into coming up with them.




(I would have put a picture of Kron here, but I have no idea what Kron looks like. Probaby another sort of hairy carnivore. Just use your imagination.)

My hope is that I will be as happy with the birth of our pending girl as I am sad about the waste of these great names. (My wife is gonna kill me for that).

Now to the next item on the list: coming up with a name for this pending female grapefruit-sized creature.

There are really just two things I'd like to briefly discuss here.

1. Thursday, while at the ultrasound, we were able to witness a technology that scared me, and that I need to warn any future parents about before falling victim to its potential for evil. I believe it is called "4-D imaging", and it allows you to see the womb-baby as it would really appear right now. When I heard about, I thought it was a great idea... however, our womb-baby actually looks like a skeleton zombie right now (my wife is gonna kill me for that). I keep having nightmares with our skeleton zombie womb-baby crying and I have to keep changing its diapers while it tries to eat my flesh (my wife is gonna kill me for that).

2. We need a girl name. To put it lightly, I'm not really excited about coming up with a girl's name... even though I'm beginning to think after seeing the little skeleton zombie womb-baby that we may still be able to get away with Sasquatch or Kron (my wife is gonna kill me for that). However, in this, the hour of my deep mourning for the loss of my sweet collection of boy names, I have come up with a win-win solution to help us find a girl name. So what's my solution, you ask?

I want to sell the rights to naming our baby on eBay. That way, we get a little pocket change to pay my hospital bill after I pass out during my wife's labor, and we come away with a name that we can blame on someone else. My wife is gonna kill me for all of this.

You're Gonna Cry Like a Little Girl

When I got married last year, I went from having 3 guy room-mates to having 3 girl room-mates, 2 of whom were under the age of 6. Most guys would think that is a pretty sweet trade-off, and I must admit, I love all 3 of my new roomies.

On a somewhat related topic, when I was a young boy I heard and used the phrase "cry like a little girl" quite frequently. As in, "don't make me come over there or I'll make you cry like a little girl" or "we made fun of Matty until he started to cry like a little girl" or "I punched Brian in the stomach and he started to cry like a little girl" and so on and so forth.

I never thought much about "crying like a little girl"... I just grew up knowing that if a boy cries, then he may as well be a little girl. I must admit, on my first day of kindergarten I was walking to school with JD (who shall remain partially anonymous) when he started to run while I was still walking... about 15 seconds later the bell rang and I just started crying - mostly out of fear from stories I had heard about teachers beating kids who were late to class - and JD turned around and yelled (within earshot of a bunch of kids who were then running to class), "Look at Pete! He's crying like a little girl!" and then he ran on to class.

Well I ain't no dummy... and I learned my lesson that day and never cried again. And I intend on never crying again, for I have a deeply imbedded fear of once again being compared to a crying little girl.

Let me now connect the dots. Since trading my 3 guy room-mates for 3 girl room-mates, I have a whole new perspective on what it means to cry like a little girl. Over the last year, I've had MANY experiences that ended/started/contained crying little girls - and let me add that I love all of these experiences and all the female participants :)

I've come up with a Top 10 list of reasons underlying the "crying like a little girl" experiences we've had in our house recently. In each of these situations, I was surprised to hear a little girl crying (more like weeping in most cases), for what appeared to me to be no good reason at all... so in each scenario, I asked, "Why are you crying?" and these were the Top 10 responses:

10. "Because nobody counted for me while I was rinsing with mouthwash."
9. "Because I can't get my little shirt off over my head." (Yes, the child's head is disproportionately large compared to her body, like all other children's monstrous heads)
8. "Because I can't see any sparkles in my eyes when I'm sick."
7. "Because my tummy growled at me."
6. (Hiding behind her mom who was unplugging their toilet...) "Because the toilet started to overflow and I got really scared."
5. (The day after #6) "Because I can't flush the toilet, I'm too scared."
4. "Because my cookie had too many chocolate chips." (WHAT!?!?!?! This girl is a choco-holic!!!)
3. "Because too many tickets came out of the machine while I was playing and it scared me really really really really bad." (The machine was a Skee-ball machine...)
2. "Because I have too much poop and I can't get it out and ... can you help me?"
1. "Because, because, because ... I don't know why."

Yep, just crying like a little girl.

Get Your Nosehairs Here!

Ok, so in celebration (?) of my pending 30th birthday, I have been thinking about life. In the deepest sense you can imagine. My life really hasn't changed much since youth, except that I get excited about different things now. (And now that I'm mostly grown-up, I think He-Man is actually, really, very gay [seriously, go back and watch an episode now and you'll be convinced]).



So that's about all that has changed since my youth. And I have a few hairs now that grow where they didn't used to, but that's another story. Maybe. Now that I think about it, these two ideas come together in one beautiful celebration of my rapidly approaching 30th. Follow me on this one, if you dare...

The one thing from my childhood that made me the happiest:
Hearing people say, "Just wait til you grow up and can't play all the time" and thinking to myself that when I grow up, I'll just choose to keep playing, no matter what age. And thinking to myself that these old people were really dumb for not playing anymore. I like to think I was pretty easily satisfied as a kid.

The one thing now that makes me happiest:
Successfully pulling out nosehairs in my cubicle at work.



A successful nosehair pull is one that doesn't cause me to sneeze; doesn't cause my eyes to water uncontrollably; doesn't cause me to blow my nose at least twice; doesn't cause my face to distort for at least 10 seconds; doesn't take 12 tries to get it out, each try more eye-/nose-watering than the last; doesn't happen when someone walks by behind me; doesn't result in my elbow hitting the corner of my desk really hard and then having to explain to the guy in the cubicle next to me what the big bang noise was. That's about it for my qualification of a successful nosehair pull.

Am I alone? Does anyone else out there pull nosehairs in the privacy of their cube?

That's all I really want now that I'm old. er. Older. I just want to fade away gracefully, riding a horse into the sunset, having had another successful day at the office. Ridding the world of one nosehair at a time.

Factory Recall: All Calvin Stickers

We are issuing a formal factory recall on all "Calvin" stickers. They are not working as intended, and are causing inadvertent anger toward any and all proponents of these stickers.

It does not matter which type of Calvin sticker you have on your vehicle. Whether he is peeing on a Ford symbol, Chevy symbol, Dodge symbol, or your school's nemesis.

It does not matter how long you have had it on your vehicle. Even if you bought it used five minutes ago and the prior owner put it on.

It does not matter where you were born or raised. Hey, I say "squoze" and I know better than to have a Calvin sticker on my car. Heck, I know better than to have a truck in the first place.

It does not matter whether you knew your mother as a child or whether she beat you with a bamboo stick.

It does not matter when you were born. Even if you were born while your mother was watching an episode of The Dukes of Hazzard or The Fall Guy.

It does not matter how tall your girlfriend's hair is. That's not an excuse for anything anymore. Sorry. That used to be good for anything.

It does not matter if your father was Bill Watterson or if your imaginary pet tiger's name is Hobbes. In fact, if either of those things is true, then either your father or your imaginary pet tiger is exceedingly ashamed of you and they want nothing to do with you ever again so you should probably drive your truck off a cliff asap.

Whatever reason or excuse you have for that Calvin sticker, IT DOES NOT MATTER. If you have a Calvin sticker on your vehicle, TAKE IT OFF. No one wants to know how stupid you are. If you need it explained to you any more than this, you won't understand.

Stop being an idiot. If not for your own sake, then for everyone else's.

"Are you a redneck?" "Nope. I'm a Zen Monk."

I'm going to say something that will shock you. I've read a couple of books in my life. There, done. I know, you're amazed. But let me keep going... I've read a couple of books in my life about Zen Buddhism. Shocked even more? I read the books to help me find my "inner peace" and improve my golf game. This blog is not going to question my motives for learning about Buddhism... but yes, it was purely to improve my golf game.

Zen Buddhists believe in an "awakening". An awakening is when you remove the scales from your eyes and begin to see yourself as your real self. No contrived ideas about who you think you are, or who you think someone else thinks you are, or who you think Phil Jackson thinks you are... just the real you.




I had an awakening about a month ago.

It starts with sourdough bread. And actually, it ends with sourdough bread. My wife had told me of a type of sourdough bread she wanted to make one night. It involved the squeezing of grapes into the dough and letting the dough ferment for a few days before baking. Sounds great, right?

So she made the bread a few days later. This is where the story gets interesting. The next day, I was sitting in my cubicle at work eating a sandwich on this sourdough bread, and I was just saying, "Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm..." as I savored this delicious bread. My boss asked what was so good. So I began to tell him about this bread. This is where it gets more interesting.

I recall my retelling of the bread-making process going something like this:
"To start, she squoze the grapes..."

My boss stopped me there. "Squoze?"

"Yeah. She squoze the grapes..."

My boss stopped me again. "Squoze?"

"Yeah. She squoze the grapes..."

By this point, my boss was laughing. "Squoze? Squoze ain't no real word, y'all."

"Oh yes it is, I've said it since I was a kid. There's no other way to say the past-tense of 'squeeze'. What do you want me to say, 'squeezed'?"

After consulting three dictionary-type websites, the so-called word "squoze" was smitten, or 'smote', to the ground. In a big, bloody heap. And I was left feeling like a... (what is a nice way to say 'redneck'?)

This was my Awakening experience. It was just as amazing and peaceful an experience as I had read about. It was an out-of-body experience. I truly felt as if I was floating in the air, seeing myself from the outside in. As the redneck I really am.

Managing the Waste of Me

The other day I was just coming out of a Benadryl Low and was in this semi-drugged/ semi-hung-over state, when I began reminiscing about how great a person I am... (a favorite hobby of mine)

...and I realized that most of the people around me throughout my life had WASTED MY EXAMPLE. (Let that sink in for a minute - it's really deep, especially for me).

This saddened me. I felt almost as if I should cry. But rather than empathize with others (or sympathize? I always confuse the two. Maybe that's why I shy away from doing either..), I just decided that I need to do a better job at reminding those around me of how good an example they have.. in me.

So to all of you who read this, I would just like to say, "Please stop wasting my example. Use it for your own good. Use it for the good of others. Use your own discretion and conscience in determining how to use it. I trust you can and will use it for the betterment of everything in existence. Just PLEASE STOP WASTING MY EXAMPLE. Thank you."