#23: If it had come out sooner, it probably wouldn’t be #23

Nearly three years after it debuted on television, it was finally released as a replica, and I managed to wait it out until it was nearly $120 off its retail cost to snag it at a price point that I could digest: an NXT UK Tag Team Championship replica blet.

I can finally put this chapter of my collection to rest finally, and go back to pondering on whether or not I’ll ever consider getting moar blets for my ridiculous collection.

The funny thing is that had the UK Tag blet come out sooner, there would probably have been a good chance that I wouldn’t be up to 23 replicas in my collection.  It’s because it was never available, that the itch for new blets was never sated over the last three years, and how I ended up with probably 4-5 more blets than I probably would have considered getting.

Seriously, I wasn’t really that interested in the NXT UK blet, but I ended up getting it anyway, because it was on a ridiculous Brack Friday sale price, and I bit on the sale price fallacy.  Plus, I had gotten really into the NXT UK scene, and wanted to have any blet to represent the brand in my collection.

Same goes for the WWE US Championship, the only reason I ended up buying it was that it was on a Wrestlemania sale price, and I wanted to spoil myself to a little retail therapy to soften the reality check that fatherhood was proving to be.

The NWA and WCW Television blets are prime examples of just wanting new blets for the sake of having new blets to add to the collection, and I probably never would’ve ever searched for them ever if my collection were in a state of satisfaction, but I gave them the old college tries and eventually tracked them down and plunked down for them.

And frankly, the Ring of Honor World Championship, I probably never would’ve made it a unicorn blet in the first place had I had gotten an NXT UK Tag replica to sate the itch earlier.  But once I found out that official replicas of it existed, I knew that I had to have one and some Pakistani knockoff would not suffice.

Lest it not go unmentioned, #22 was also recently acquired, being a white strap WWE Intercontinental championship, which has the dubious distinction of being the first time I’ve basically bought the same blet twice, seeing as how I already had a black strap WWF Intercontinental championship.  The plates are nearly identical in both, and for lack of better term, the only real difference is the strap color.  But it was yet another sale price fallacy, and seeing it nearly 45% off made it very easy to pull the trigger.

Which brings us to the long-awaited UK Tag blet that I’ve wanted for three years.  Now that I have it, in a previous life I would say that my collection is complete, but as I’d already mentioned before, with the gaudy John Cena US Spinner back on the market, I’m only a waiting game away from having #24.  But once that one is acquired, I actually really can say that I don’t know what I’d want afterward, however I won’t say that my collection is complete this time.  There’s always a blet, or an idea for a blet, to make it happen again, where I plunk down hundreds of dollars for these useless toys, no matter how cool I can make them look, all hanging from my wall.

But as it stands, my wall is pretty much full, and nothing short of a massive reconfiguration (a second row) is going to give me the room for expansion that I need to go beyond 23 blets.  Never say never, though.

2 Under 2: A very different story this time (#076)

As I wind down my second paternity leave, I feel pretty much not much from the dread of returning to work, and a lot of anxiety at the uncertainty of what life is going to be like in the coming weeks.  I went into this paternity leave feeling burned out and exasperated from the combination of a job that I’d soured on plus the rigors of parenting two under two.  I conclude my paternity leave feeling burned out and exasperated, except this time there is no work to blame for the overflow of stress and in fact, I’m going back to it.

I had hoped that taking the working part out of the equation would alleviate a lot of pressures of daily life of parenting, but things just didn’t really work out that way, much to my disappointment.  A vast combination of parenting factors, such as sleep issues with #2 that are wildly inconsistent and persistent, #1 entering a very precarious stage in her life where basically everything is a hair trigger to a crying meltdown, the fact that I have basically little to no help on a regular basis, and have spent an inordinate amount of hours doing double duty on both kids at the same time.

Most every day over the last twelve weeks has had at least one instance where I get upset or exasperated, and by now I’m often feeling so over parenting and as I’ve said numerous times, just want a single day where I can not have to be a parent so that I can appropriately recharge, but know it’ll never happen because my circumstances are precarious and difficult for anyone to really handle plus I don’t trust anyone to do all the ungodly amount of chores and tasks I do on a daily basis as well as I do.

Make no mistake, I feel like shit and am endlessly guilty admitting to all of this, but inherently therein lies just how difficult the journey of life with two children under the age of two is, and made more difficult in the midst of an endless pandemic where we can’t send #1 off to daycare or have a larger pool of people to trust with child care that isn’t the family that lives 3-10 hours away from us.

But at the same time, I’m not going to sugar coat it, lie and say everything is fine, because it most definitely isn’t.  Parenting is hard.  Parenting two kids is even harder, especially when I’m having to do it on my own as often as I do.  Multiply that by difficult behaviors, a lack of sleep, no breaks or times to unwind, and you have me.  Obviously, it would be arrogant to think that I am a genuinely unique instance as dads throughout history have undoubtedly matched my circumstances if not worse countless times, but I sure as shit don’t know anyone who is or has, in my little bubble of life.

I don’t have enough help.  My wife and I do not have enough help.  The state we live in, in the country it resides in, isn’t doing enough to help us much less themselves, based on the rise of Omicron and the endless existence of coronavirus.  Child care is expensive and bleeding us, especially since the last six weeks of my leave were the unpaid portion of it.  I really didn’t want to go unpaid for six weeks, but the needs of my children still come first, and seeing as how we still have no fucking clue to what’s going to happen once both mythical wife and I are both working, there is no light at the end of the tunnel right now.

I want to enjoy the last moments of this leave with my second child as I did with my first, but it’s proving to be difficult to do so.  Time is never on our side, and I am always against a clock somewhere for some reason.  Again, it sucks balls writing all of this out and admitting to just how upset I’ve gotten more than I like to admit, but shit, life has been hard, and there’s no reason to deny it.  One of these days, I hope that it won’t be as much so, but I’m definitely struggling to navigate things beyond a few hours of each day at a time.

Maybe in the near-to-distant future, or later on down the line when this post shows up on my On This Day, I’ll re-read posts like this and cringe at just how stupid I sounded, because life then will be so much better, or hopefully not, still be in this depressing state in the future.  But true to the brog, this is where I am at in this juncture of time, and shit ain’t easy.  And with going back to work on the near horizon, it probably won’t be getting any simpler any time soon.