Today is the 8th anniversary of my wedding. In roughly seven months, I will reach the point at which a full third of my life has been spent with my wife (including our time dating). We've been together for over 3,500 days, lived in four apartments and two houses, taken in and found homes for seven cats, taken in ten dogs and kept six of them. Since we started dating, I've worked as waiter, a disc jockey, an advertising salesman, a warehouse grunt, a carpet cleaner, a photocopier installer, a mail clerk, a tech support rep, and a programmer. We've owned six different cars, two of which had their engines explode and one of which had a short-lived career as a submarine.
In the last eight years we've rejoiced in the arrival of our beautiful daughter, struggled with becoming a single-income family, retired a bunch of old foolish debt, picked up some new foolish debt, and learned to love Ramen noodles. We've lived with my mother-in-law for several months, lived apart for several months while I looked for work, and lived on opposite schedules for several months while I was working third shift. We beamed with joy as we welcomed our son last year, then cried for fear of the cancer that was found in our daughter the very next day. We have held her hand through surgeries, tests, scans, x-rays, and blood work, and we consider ourselves richly blessed to have a healthy daughter today.
When comparing the last eight years of my life with all the years previous, I can say without hesitation that they have been the hardest eight years to date. There has been more stress, more pain, more worry, more tears, more work, and more fatigue in these years than in any years prior. That said, there has also been more joy, more happiness, and more love in these years than I ever thought possible.
This morning my son, who is teething, chose to celebrate our anniversary by crying his eyes out at 4:15am. As she is prone to do, my wife got up and tended to him without waking me up to ask for help. Several hours later, as I finished getting dressed for work and started heading for the door, I stopped to give my wife a kiss and wish her a happy anniversary. She offered up a feeble smile, clearly exhausted from the short night. In that moment, with bags under her bloodshot eyes, hair a mess, in a wrinkled nightgown covered with baby drool, holding our son, she was to me the most beautiful woman in the world.
We've been through a lot, and if we're lucky, there's a lot more to come. I love you hon. Here's to the next eight years... May they be as wonderful as the last.
A little overweight and long overdue
It was August 8th, 2010. That was the day... The first day that I really looked at myself and cringed. I'll explain.
I'm overweight. Most people would tell you I hide it well, but that doesn't change the fact that I can watch the NFL draft and wonder to myself when pro football players started getting smaller. My eating habits, at least until very recently have been pretty chaotic. I ate when I was hungry, I ate when I was bored, I ate when I was sad, tired, happy, wound up, worn down, or war-torn. The only time I didn't eat was when I was asleep, and I'm pretty sure I regularly dreamed about it. I love food. It's so... delicious. I love pasta, I love bread, I love cheese, sugar, salt, grease, fat, and pretty much anything that can be fried. Comedian Louis C.K. said in a stand-up routine once, "I don't stop eating when I'm full. I stop eating when I hate myself." That was pretty much me as well. I knew I could stand to lose a few pounds, but it wasn't a priority.
Now it is. On Sunday, August 8th, I took my wife and kids to DragonLand, a water park in Pekin, IL. We laid out our blanket in the grass, slathered the kids with sunscreen, and got ready to jump in. As I was taking off my shirt, I felt something crawl across the top of my foot. When I looked down to see what it was, my view was obstructed by my gut.
Let's just let that settle into your head for a moment. I was unable to see my feet because my rotund belly was in the way. To be fair, I was all relaxed and just letting it hang out there, and a quick sucking-in of my massive middle was all it took to restore visual confirmation that I still had feet, and that there was an ant crawling across one of them. That said, it was still upsetting. I had never noticed myself needing to visually negotiate my way around my own gut before. This was new. This was no good. I wanted more than anything else just to put my shirt back on, for fear of scaring the children with my Jabba the Hutt impersonation. I went on anyway, playing with Bella and Brady in the water, but that moment stuck with me for the rest of the day and into the evening.
The next morning, I got up at 5am and took my dog Simon for a walk, and I've done so every day since. Wait, let's temper that last statement a bit. Simon takes me for walks. Simon is our largest and least-well-trained dog. As such, I'm quite sure that my caloric burn is directly proportional to the number of rabbits we see each morning. I downloaded an app for my phone that lets me keep track of every single calorie that I consume, and I've gotta tell you, the math is sorta liberating. Previously, I could not have even approximated my daily caloric intake. I couldn't have remembered what I ate for the previous meal, largely because I had eaten a meal's worth of snacks since then. Now, I can pull up my caloric budget at a whim and punch in foods while I'm at the office or out and about. I feel better. I'm a little tired, but I understand that's mostly because my body is required to eat my gut to compensate for the sudden decrease in calories.
My wife, either inspired by my sudden lifestyle change or somehow guilt-tripped by it, has started working out and watching her food intake as well. We both have set calorie budgets, and work to come in reasonably under-budget every day. We made several new dinners this past weekend, all low-cal, low-fat options that we would have felt no urge to try just two weeks ago.
All of this is well and good, but will I stick with it? Well, I don't know. I'm trying not to refer to this as a diet. I'd rather consider this just a new way of thinking when it comes to eating and exercise. I'd like to think that even if I hit my goal weight, I'll just recalibrate my calorie budget with a "hold steady" plan in place. I guess we'll see how I do. I will say that at 8 days and counting, this is already the longest I've stuck with any exercise/eating plan.
No, I'm not going to turn this blog into a health journal. I'll still post largely my passive-aggressive musings on the world in general. I do reserve the right to boast if I hit any major milestones, however.
Two-year-olds and nuclear reactors
This is my daughter Isabella:
Looks like a sweetheart, doesn't she? Most days I'd have to agree. Check that... I'll always agree that she looks like a sweetheart, and on most days she actually is a sweetheart. Recently, however, she's hit that age where even the tiniest amount of discipline is met with a meltdown that makes Chernobyl look like an overheated XBox. Not being experienced in these matters, my wife and I aren't yet convinced of the right way to deal with Bella's constant sobbing. Right now the prevailing methodology is "send her to her room until she calms down", but I can't really tell if it's all that effective.
Here's a typical exchange. Bella and I are sitting on the floor in the family room, playing with her substantial army of My Little Pony toys (seriously, she has enough of those things to invade a small country). My wife calls out from the kitchen to let Bella and I know that dinner will be ready in a few moments, and that all likely diners should make their way to the dining room in an orderly fashion and find their places at the table in order to expedite the serving process and make full use of the relatively small window in which the evening's culinary delights will remain at an appropriate temperature for consumption. Usually she relays this message in a more concise fashion than what I just wrote.
Bella, either not counting herself among the "likely diners" group or simply unable to hear over the din of her equine troops shelling Liechtenstein, fails to respond my wife's announcement. I take a moment to remind her that it's time to stop destroying small German-speaking nations and go eat dinner. She replies with a succinct "No." I take a deep breath, knowing full well what's coming, and say something along the lines of "Bella, Mommy and I have both told you it's time to go sit at the table and eat. Are you going to obey us?" This is usually met with a distracted "Not yet."
At this point, the physical intervention begins. I reach out, take her hand, and attempt to lead her away from the battlefield. She responds by wrenching her hand free, shouting "NO!" at me, collapsing onto the floor, and sobbing as though I had just murdered Santa Claus by bludgeoning him with a dead puppy.
Honestly, in some twisted way, I can sometimes see how executing the nuclear option would be an unreasonable-yet-understandable choice when being asked to discontinue playing with one's favorite toys. The real confusion for me lies in the fact that this is her response to absolutely every single human interaction over the course of a day. I tell her I have to go to work, she loses it. I tell her she needs to wash her hands after using the bathroom, she sobs. I tell her that Ron Paul doesn't realistically have a chance of winning the presidency but I'm voting for him anyway, she wails like a police siren. It's non-stop, and it's maddening.
From what I can tell, the only thing that can consistently and reliably stop the crying is the promise of watching a Ni Hao: Kai-Lan cartoon. I don't know what it is about this watermelon-headed Chinese girl that is so enticing, but it's like a potent tranquilizer to Bella.
Here's a typical exchange. Bella and I are sitting on the floor in the family room, playing with her substantial army of My Little Pony toys (seriously, she has enough of those things to invade a small country). My wife calls out from the kitchen to let Bella and I know that dinner will be ready in a few moments, and that all likely diners should make their way to the dining room in an orderly fashion and find their places at the table in order to expedite the serving process and make full use of the relatively small window in which the evening's culinary delights will remain at an appropriate temperature for consumption. Usually she relays this message in a more concise fashion than what I just wrote.
Bella, either not counting herself among the "likely diners" group or simply unable to hear over the din of her equine troops shelling Liechtenstein, fails to respond my wife's announcement. I take a moment to remind her that it's time to stop destroying small German-speaking nations and go eat dinner. She replies with a succinct "No." I take a deep breath, knowing full well what's coming, and say something along the lines of "Bella, Mommy and I have both told you it's time to go sit at the table and eat. Are you going to obey us?" This is usually met with a distracted "Not yet."
At this point, the physical intervention begins. I reach out, take her hand, and attempt to lead her away from the battlefield. She responds by wrenching her hand free, shouting "NO!" at me, collapsing onto the floor, and sobbing as though I had just murdered Santa Claus by bludgeoning him with a dead puppy.
Seems like a rational response.
From what I can tell, the only thing that can consistently and reliably stop the crying is the promise of watching a Ni Hao: Kai-Lan cartoon. I don't know what it is about this watermelon-headed Chinese girl that is so enticing, but it's like a potent tranquilizer to Bella.
Lithium, only with a Princess Leia haircut.
We're doing our best not to react sharply or beat her with a chair or sell her to the circus or anything rash like that, but it's difficult, as I really enjoy administering chair-beatings to future circus freaks. Of course, even when she's acting completely insane, we love her endlessly. It's just easier to show her that love when there are no chairs nearby, that's all.
A place for my stuff
This blog has sat untouched for several years, but I've recently found myself in need of a place to deposit my more lengthy random thoughts. I've become a pretty prolific Google Buzz user, but its format isn't conducive to longer essays, and I'm a notoriously wordy geek. As such, I'm unearthing the old blog, dusting off my keyboard, slapping on a shiny new template, and starting from scratch.
More than a few things have changed since my last post in August of 2007. I now have two kids, a new job, I live in a new town, I've started my own side business, and perhaps most importantly, I have managed to earn all five sparkle stars on my "New Super Mario Bros Wii" game. With so much happening, it'll certainly take me a while to get caught up, so bear with me if I post mostly old news for the first few entries.
This used to be a lot of fun. Here's hoping it can be again.
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