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AUGUST
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Nope. The truth is, I've been one busy Mature Ugly Man for the last week or so, more than I've ever been before in my life. And not busy with some huge new career path or lifestyle choice. I haven't become a marine sniper or a DJ or a pipe fitter. And I haven't taken up motocross or deep sea fishing. The plain and sad truth is that my busy-ness stems from the two areas that many Mature Ugly Men come to grips with around this time in life. The Job and The Kid. First, The Job. I will try to follow the basic Blogger's tenet not to discuss work in the blog*, but let me just say that it has been crazy at the office over the last few days. Crazy-ass crazy, like a cross between Vernon Maxwell and Tom Cruise. Long hours, lots of mental stress, and I go home every day feeling like I've left 152 questions unanswered. The flip side is that I'm working on a project that I care about and that stimulates me creatively, and I feel like I'm making an impact on it, for better or worse. I daresay that my job has become, temporarily at least, rewarding. But I've been putting in twelve good hours a day and that shit'll wear you out. Especially if... ...you have a Kid. I am not going to pretend to be wise to the ways of parenthood after a month in the saddle, especially as my wife has done roughly 92.6 % of the work. There is nothing I hate more than know-it-all parents. As I was awaiting the birth of our li'l girl, at least 20 parents I spoke to** chimed in with their opinions about what I could expect. These opinions ranged from the crushingly obvious ("you can forget about getting the sleep you're used to") to the condescending ("you don't even know what tired is yet") to the offensive ("you haven't made a down payment on a house yet and you're having a kid? what the hell are you doing? you have to move to the suburbs immediately!") to the mind-blowingly unoriginal ("your life as you know it is over") to the just plain wrong ("you're gonna have a boy, because your wife is carrying low/high, etc."). Thanks so much all you douchebags. You added nothing to my experience. That said, Dan K. totally gets it right in his stunning softball recap this week when he says: "While babies are totally rewarding from an emotional standpoint, while they broaden your horizons immeasurably, giving you a new understanding of what love and being loved can be, while they give a rare sense of purpose and direction to one's life and make you want to be -- need to be -- a better person, they also really drain your fuck-around time." Ouch and amen. Especially in these early weeks, The Kid just takes up all your goddamn time. And again, my wife is carrying the vast majority of the burden. But even with the awesome job she's doing, The Kid needs some love, attention, and time from Daddy as well. So blogging, while still important and fun and something I don't want to give up, is gonna get squeezed out here and there. New parents out there, if you're having one of those beaten-down moments when you can't believe you actually went ahead and made a baby, and you're feeling hopeless about ever again experiencing that selfish joy that used to fill your evenings, here is a cool thing to think about: someday in the next few years, you're going to be able to take your kid to a water park. And the two of you are gonna slide down those water slides all day long, running back up the hill each time so you can do it again. I can't wait for that shit; I strongly feel that water parks are the answer. In fact, when somebody I know tells me they're expecting a child, that will be my stock reply: "Water parks are the answer, kid. You'll see." Another by-product of The Kid is that I have stopped playing sports altogether. That's a bad sign. I need to get back in there again soon, and I will, but in the meantime all I can do is think about sports. And in that thinking it occurred to me: the end of the line is nearing in terms of my participation in sports. I'm almost 36, I'm carrying around somewhere between 20 and 275 extra pounds, and I'm not getting a chance to exercise. It's not that I'm going to up and announce my retirement, pretending that my career has warranted such a dramatic conclusion. No, I am your typical weekend warrior knockaround plugger, and so I imagine that my career will end in the way most weekend warrior knockaround pluggers' careers end, with a painful and embarrassing injury. Maybe even in the next few weeks or months. We don't want to let that milestone event go by without pumping a little fun out of it. So we hereby announce The Official Verbungle.com Career-ending Injury Challenge. Here are the rules. Somewhere on the right side of this page, there will be a Trusty HaloScan comments box. In that box, you can leave your prediction of how the playing days of Hans Bungle will effectively end.***
1. Date and Time So a legitimate guess could be: 9/3/05, 7:52 pm, P.S. 41 gym, basketball, ruptured left groin. The closest guess in each category will receive a free verbungle.com button, courtesy of verbungle.com. And yes, Brian C., we're still working on that T-shirt from the lyric challenge. Maximum ten guesses per person.. *** Just a couple of notes on the comments from the previous couple of posts:
1. I didn't buy that Hard Rock T-shirt, I borrowed it that day to play ball. OK,
maybe I kept it after that, but I didn't buy it. Does anyone want to step up and
admit that they did? *** Whodat (22 points)?
* Yes, I am freely using the word "blog" in all its various forms and tenses. It
doesn't mean that I accept it, just that I am too lazy to present an
alternative. |
