2 Under 2: life as an amputee (#074)

I did not actually amputate a limb, but I may as well have lost an arm, considering how my life is basically spent handcuffed to #2.  And frankly, this post could’ve been titled life as a paraplegic, based on how her developing motor functions are teasing the evolution into baby death wish, where your kids actively try to lunge out of your single arm grasp, resulting in me needing two arms more and more often.

If it’s not obvious, this post comes from a place of angst and frustration, at just my sheer inability to accomplish, absolutely anything at all, because my entire current existence is primarily spent, metaphorically handcuffed to a 14 lb. baby. 

Of course, such is the utmost and most important priority, but I do still have personal goals and daily tasks that I’d like to even have a modicum of a chance at being able to do, but can’t on a regular basis, for the aforementioned reason.

But when your kid fights nap time screaming bloody murder for 45 minutes, and then only sleeps for 15, all I can think about is wanting to blow my brains out because I can’t accomplish anything at all because there’s no fucking schedule and just endless chaos and I’m trying to keep up a put-together facade when I’m just feeling so dejected and exasperated inside so I write about it instead since nobody reads my shit so it’s the perfect balance of expressing it but keeping it private still. 

Honestly though, I really shouldn’t be this aggravated. It’s not like I have any clue of what to do with my time when not on dad duty anymore.  Sure, I’d like to write more but it’s hard for me to start if I know I could have 15 minutes or I could have 45, and even the threat of interruptions is usually enough to deter me from even starting.  Same applies to watching the endless queue of shows and movies that I’d like to watch but probably will never get to because, kids.  

So I usually sit directionless unable to start anything that probably needs some attention like Christmas shopping or putting together my own Christmas list for all inquiring parties, but I can’t focus and I can’t get anything done because I’m pretty broken, and since I’m on the unpaid portion of my leave, I’m becoming pretty broke, and I end up feeling all dilapidated and like a failure because I’m caving to my frustration and I’m getting nothing done but bitching about how I think my life is so difficult. 

(Written on my phone.  With mostly one hand)

Zombie shark, est. 1979

When I saw the clickbait headline on social media for this, I of course clicked it, but I already knew that this was going to turn into a brog post: Dr. Mario releases what ultimately becomes a zombie shark, off the coast of Spain

To horror fans, all one has to do is say the words “zombie shark,” and literally only one thing pops into their minds: Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2 film, that very notoriously, contained a sequence, in which a zombie takes on, a shark.

Spoiler alert, as if anyone’s going to read this, drop what they’re doing and rush out to go find out how and where to watch Zombi 2, but the shark rips off the arm of the zombie and more or less “wins” in the sense that it swims away still living.  However, the zombie definitely succeeds at ripping a chunk off of it to eat, but it’s fairly unclear that it landed any actual bites onto the shark, since sharks skin are pretty tough.  But the zombie is all over the shark for some bit of time, so it is presumed that it probably had to have gotten some bites in before its arm is ripped off and the conflict is over.

Well, it only took 42 years but it looks like we’ve got our answer to that specific scene from that documentary.  Clearly, the zombie got some bites in, or perhaps it’s by virtue of the shark ingesting some of that wack-ass green zombie blood, but it clearly got turned, was caught by Dr. Mario, presumably studied because it was a fucking zombie shark, and then released into the wild, where some other sharks whooped its ass, leaving it to actually, ultimately die, finally.

Really though, I’m not sure why it’s some sort of shocker that a shark that’s all mangled open is still searching for food.  When they’re at full health, it’s all sharks do in the first place, I’m not sure why one being practically ripped open would behave any differently, than to seek out food before it eventually succumbed.

All the same, good on the internet for giving all us zombie fans reason to make the never-not entertaining reference to Fulci’s zombie vs. shark, because even to this day, there’s never been a more wildly insane fight sequence than this was.

I don’t really want to shop this year

In years past, I enjoyed holiday time shopping.  I would scour the interwebs in advance and come up with plans of shit to purchase for myself, for famiry, for friends and whomever might actually warrant getting a gift for.  And by the time Thanksgiving rolled up, I would go start going gangbusters on purchasing things from all the retailers that might or might not have had early, Thanksgiving day, or Brack Friday deals.  By the time December rolled around, I was mostly done with my holiday shopping, save for those closest to me that I’d want to keep getting things for maybe.

Obviously, the big variable in those years past was the availability of time, and having the time to do research, think about other people, and to come up with plans, and seeing as how this year can mostly be summed up that as far as time goes, I just never fucking have any, and as a result, I look at holiday shopping and gift giving as something more a nuisance and an obligation, as much as it’s something that I’m feeling enthusiastic and eager to partake in.

Yes I understand how curmudgeon and shitty that sounds, but that’s where I’m at right now.  Overwhelmed, overworked, exhausted and perpetually pushed past my limits, that I’m finding it incapable to enjoy things I’ve enjoyed in the past, much less any and most of the little things that might’ve lifted my spirits in the past.

Additionally, I’m not working now, as I opted to, and it turned out to be extremely essential, in taking my extended leave of absence from work beyond my normal paid paternity time, but that also means it’s 1.5 months of not getting paid, as my job is secure, but the paychecks stop.  So I have financial concerns on top of everything else, and I’m wondering what wells in which I should be pulling the necessary funds to make sure my famiry and loved ones can actually have some gifts from me, because we’re all capitalists and all feel obligated to buy shit for one another.

As the Thanksgiving week rolled around, my email box was bombarded by e-blasts and messages from retailers that I ordinarily would want to browse through.  Brack Friday prices now, extended, Cyber Monday, etc., etc., for an entire week.  Of course I wanted to look through and peruse and hope to find some shit for myself or my loved ones, but with what fucking time?  I don’t have any.  By the time I have any time to do anything of the sort, that time is spent cleaning shit and resetting shit for another day of parenting, before I’m too gassed and tired to do anything else.

As the week progressed, and in what fleeting moments I might’ve had that I could have done something so frivolous, I was basically at the point where every commercial website I’d go to had countdowns at the tops of their page ticking down the amount of time left that such deals would be in place.  And I hate working against clocks, much less visible ones, and then I’d remind myself, with what fucking money? And then ultimately just start closing browser tabs, and sink back into my general hole of angst.

Believe me, I don’t like admitting all this stuff as much as I am putting it in writing for it to be immortalized, but that’s where I’m at.  It’s like, I only want to shop for my immediate household, and would like to be alleviated from the feeling of obligation to shop for anyone outside of it.  Because that’s all my world really is these days, the people within my own walls, and I have no idea what anyone outside of it might want, or needing to exert thoughtfulness, because it’s just adding unnecessary stress and anxiety to me, and I really don’t need it.

Ultimately, I’m going to just start kicking down doors and demanding ideas for what to get people, because we’re still in a pandemic, I don’t speak or interact with people enough to have ideas of thoughtful observational gifts, and I kind of just want to be done with needing to feel like I have to shop for others.

Maybe, hopefully, in the future years, this’ll go back to being typical slaves to capitalism, where we’ll all be happy to throw our money around at shit nobody really needs, but at least we’ll be in better spirits.

Happy holidays!

Not feeling that thankful this year

Oversleeping was my fault. A lot of the day’s issues don’t happen if we don’t oversleep, but it’s simply something that can happens when living a life as exhausting and draining as ours of raising two under two can be.  But it’s how the rest of the day transpired that has left me feeling few emotions aside from disappointment, regret, and the polar opposite of what Thanksgiving is supposed to be all about. 

The irony is that even if we don’t oversleep, there’s no guarantee that we would’ve made it to the airport on time.  Airlines appear to have tightened up two hours in advance rules to where they don’t even check people in for flights once within 105 minutes.  Long appears to be gone the days of when I could roll in with 75 minutes to go, no checked bag, TSA precheck and be ready to board group 1.  But with kids, all the kids’ stuff, and checked bags, that creates a tremendous amount more room for complications.

Ironically, regardless of if we left at our originally intended time, there’s little chance we would’ve made it on time anyway, because Atlanta airport’s parking is basically the worst lot in the galaxy, and it took us probably 30 minutes to find a place to park, and we would’ve missed the check in window anyway.

At this point, I’m kind of ready to punt; our original plan was to get us there as efficiently as possible, and pivoting with kids and checked bags never seems like a good idea to me, but mythical wife seemed more determined to see my family than I was, so after a 47 minute phone call with the airline, $465 basically paying for a full fare, we’re rebooked for a later flight to a different airport that gets us in four hours later, which slashes my already short trip and I’m wondering if it’s even worth it. 

Calling my mom to give an update is met with more disappointment and aggravation at the change of plans instead of any modicum of empathy or understanding. After my mom asks if we can uber to dinner after the money and effort to make sure the girls had car seats waiting for them, I’m already having regrets for not punting and heading into this trip with more dread than any sort of anticipation or excitement, that my family is finally getting to meet my kids for the very first time. 

Continue reading “Not feeling that thankful this year”

2 Under 2: Sleep training, the sequel (#073)

Looking back at the journey of raising #1, I would have to say that the hardest part would had to have been the teething.  When she started cutting teeth, and the pain and misery sat in, there was pretty much nothing that anyone could to do alleviate it, leading to a helpless failure of a feeling as parents that we can’t take the pain away, no matter how much we want to.

Although we haven’t gotten to the teething stage with #2 yet, I think it would be a safe bet in a few months that I’ll still be in agreement that the whole sleeping thing, is probably going to remain the worst thing about the growth of #2.

Since the literal very beginning, sleep has been a challenge from day one, where upon arrival, her circadian rhythm was all jacked up, where night was her peak awake time, and the daytime was when she would conk out.  Much like her mother, #2 has demonstrated being a light sleeper, that has had a hard time staying asleep once down, and as I’ve written about in the past, every single nap is like going to the shores of Normandy, they’re that much of aggravating battles.

It’s like putting her head down in her bassinet is like plugging a Game Genie directly into her, with infinite stamina codes programmed into them, because no matter how tired, groggy, or even asleep she is when being held or laying in a lap, the second she’s put in her bassinet, her energy bar fills right back up, she’s not only not sleeping, she’s on the fast track to screaming bloody murder.

One night, she literally screamed and cried for nearly two straight hours before mercifully seemingly tiring herself out to sleep, but of course she still woke up like 27 times in the middle of the night and required physical intervention in order to go back down for another 30 seconds before repeating itself again and again.

Another night, she would fuss and require pacification to fade back out, and no less than five minutes afterward, the process would start over again.  I’m fairly certain I got maybe an hour of sleep that night.

We’ve begun sleep training, which is basically to establish a routine that we’ll try to adhere to as carbon copy as possible every single night, with the hopes that she herself will begin to associate the routine with sleeping at a generally set time, and if all goes well, sleeping for more consistent stretches or windows, that can hopefully provide some chunks of downtime for mythical wife and I to feel like human beings again.  Because it’s for this reason alone that we don’t have any semblance of lives right now until she learns to get her shit together, and there are sometimes some days where I feel like I just can’t take it anymore, and in spite of my determination to not cave into the frustration, I just get owned. 

Blet world problems

With the NXT UK Tag Team replica blet now officially on the radar and awaiting an adequate discount price away from me pulling the trigger on the one blet that I have been wanting for nearly three years, you’d think I’d be running out of blets that conceivably even want for my collection.  Sure, there are tons of blets in the independent promotions that might warrant a second look, but those would be a little too edgelord even for a snob like me.  And AEW, much like New Japan are taking their replicas a little too serious for me to even consider wanting to buy one (yet).  

I’ve gotten pretty much all of the old ECW and WCW blets that I ever wanted (which is basically all of them), blets to represent my interests in New Japan, Ring of Honor, as well as NXT and NXT UK, and I’m currently holding onto two blets for my daughters until they hopefully come to their senses and realize that they want their blets on their own walls one day.

So, at some point, there’s got to be an end to the madness of all the blets that I could even want, right?  Especially with the one UK Tag blet that I’d been pining for basically all but already mine at this point, what could possibly come next?

Well for years, I’ve had friends and acquaintances think they were being clever internet comedians when they’d be telling me that I needed to get a John Cena US Spinner title blet for my collection.  They all thought they were being funny, because the Cena US Spinner was a blet that was polarizing in the sense that most everyone hated it, and I admit that I wasn’t a fan of it either, originally.  But as time passed, and I occasionally actually looked at it beyond fleeting moving video of it on television, I kind of dug it.  Way more than the eventual John Cena world title he unveiled, which for this juncture in time, I still say that I wasn’t a fan of the design and maintain that any blet that was once held by Jeff Hardy doesn’t have much credibility in my mind, even if CM Punk did the lord’s work with it before the got all high and mighty and martyred himself into oblivion.

In the years that I’d been waiting for the NXT UK Tag to release where it never happened, there were all sorts of blets that crossed my radar in that span in order to satiate my perpetual want for moar blets.  It was in this window of time that I figured that I really should try to get my hands on a Cena US spinner, but as was often the case when I decided to go for certain blets, they were already no longer manufactured.

Figures Toy Company lost the rights to make WWE blets, and those that existed on the second hand market were priced to the moon, and I know what my limits are on a blet, much less one that I want more for a joke and irony than actual want.  I’d watch eBay auctions for legitimate ones whenever they’d show up, but then they’d all always soar past what I’d be willing to pay for it, and there were tons of Pakistani knockoffs of them that I had to make sure to not get duped on.

Eventually, I realized that the Cena US Spinner was a blet that probably had a high chance of getting re-released by the WWE Shop, seeing as how I’d observed a parade of older blets getting re-released instead of the NXT UK Tag, drawing my ire endlessly.  I figured the Cena US Spinner would probably see the light of day before the NXT UK Tag in fact, but I figured it would eventually be re-released at some point, because it seemed like all old blets were headed in that path.

Which brings us to today, just days after finding out that the NXT UK Tag blet was finally being replicated, I see a banner show up, announcing the pre-orders for the replica re-release of, the John Cena US Spinner blet.  

And just like that, after boasting about how the NXT UK Tag wouldn’t even be coming out of my blet money from surveys, the WWE Shop has to up and drop yet another blet that I had been casually keeping my eye out for, creating a scenario where I will eventually have to dip into my hard-earned blet money after all.

Also, I’m currently sitting at needing to mount three new blets to my wall.  The NXT UK Tag would make it four, and if and when I eventually get my Cena US Spinner, that’ll make five.  Which is a pain in the ass because then I’ll need to buy more wall snaps, which are only sold in packs of 25, which means I’ll end up with extra snaps enough for eleven more blets afterward.

I’ve basically given up on saying that I’ll ever be finished, because let’s be real here, there will always be new blets to come out, or a change in opinion, or a killer sale, that will result in me buying just about every blet there is out there.  

Such is the life, of a blet collector.