Typically when I make a trip to the store I am listless, I have a general idea of what I am planning on purchasing, but rarely does it end up being strictly what I had charted out in my head to purchase.  Meijers, D&W, and Target are all stores that I fall into such a trap and frequently I will go in to such stores thinking I don’t need a cart only to end up trying to carry twelve items through the store in my arms.  While grocery stores are always a bit problematic when it comes to my tendency to over purchase, a store where you can buy a kayak, set of teflon pans, and crab legs all under the same roof has a tendency to exacerbate my enthusiasm for consumerism.   While Costco is truly amazing, as I have stated in prior blogs, the one issue I have with the superstore is that you never know if the item they are selling is going to be there the next time you show up to shop.  That’s why the last trip I took there I didn’t even hesitate as I walked through the entrance and saw a key chain alcohol detector for sale.  The official name of the product is the BACtrack and it says on the packaging that it is Perfect For:

• Easily Estimating Your Alcohol Level
• Staying Safe While Consuming Alcohol

I’ll get into wether the packaging is truthful in a moment, but I immediately threw the BAC device in my cart, yes I was smart enough to get a cart even though I was only planning on purchasing a couple boxes of turkey sausage breakfast burritos.  As I took the round about way to the freezer section I went past the liquor aisle, hmmm, I probably should pick up some liquor so I can test out my key chain alcohol detector, I have plenty at home, but just in case I may as well grab a 1.75 liter of Kirkland Canadian Whiskey (The good stuff) and a 1.75 liter of Kirkland Spiced Rum (also the good stuff), it’s not good because it necessarily tastes good, it’s good because it is quite inexpensive and still gets the job done as effectively as some of the more pricey brands.  Also, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the world of alcohol, those are the big bottles.  I also picked up a pair of USDA prime Ribeye steaks as I made my way over to the burritos.  Once I made my way over to the frozen breakfast foods I was enveloped in panic, I couldn’t find my breakfast burritos, I knew I should have purchase 18 boxes instead of 10 the last time I was at Costco!  Ultimately they were no where to be found and I had to settle for Jimmy Dean turkey sausage sandwiches.  Good thing I had 3.5 liters of hard alcohol to make me feel better when I got home.  Ultimately after checking out I discovered my bill to be about 8 times more than I was initially planning on spending.  Honestly, I don’t think I have ever gone to Costco and come out on the low end of things from a financial standpoint.  (Besides spending an astronomical amount of money for 6 things, I also got a nice laugh out of the check out guy when I put my two bottles of booze and BACtrack on the conveyer belt)

Was the BACtrack truthful? Sort of, but I would think that they would know most of the people purchasing these things are grossly out of shape, including my golf partner who had the privilege of trying it out the next day.  He had to blow for at least twelve seconds straight to get a reading and appeared to have a miniature stroke the third time he attempted to gauge his BAC.  It was somewhat discouraging that I was chastised for only registering a .06 on my first go at it but widely cheered once I hit the .10 mark.  As far as the staying safe thing, the level of wind required to get a “valid” reading makes me think driving home impaired may be the safer option.

As indicated earlier, Target is another store that always catches me off guard.  Just yesterday I went in there to replace my water bottle only to come out with three packages of gluten free pumpkin spice organic waffles as well as two large containers of Yogurt, bread, russet potatoes (I kind of planned on getting those), and granola.  I also bought some individually wrapped turkey bacon burritos, but they were not nearly as economical as Costoco’s version.  The waffles seemed like a good idea for Tod and Ted since they are still consuming breakfast cereal every morning despite Shirley sending me an article basically outlining why breakfast cereal is more unhealthy than drinking a raw sewage smoothy, and after sending the article claiming our kids are never eating it again.  What’s the alternative?  Oh something that takes time and preparation?  I guess we will stick with cereal.

Well this morning Tod and Ted each had a waffle, they didn’t complain about how shitty they were because they were watching something on Shirley’s phone and would have eaten a turd sandwich without a peep due to their level of engrossment in Wildcrats.  However, Ted had left a couple bites on his plate and the waffle was disgusting.  Guess what you need to make something taste good? Gluten and preservatives.  Honestly, I have never really gotten on the eat incredibly healthy band wagon because it sucks.  You need all the stuff that is bad for you so your food will taste good and that’s a trade off I am willing to take.  I love meat, you could show me every single piece of propaganda about how bad meat animals are treated before they become meat and I would say “give me seconds of that meat!”  I have a smoker, you know what tastes better than meat?   Smoked meat.

The people that give up gluten, stick to organic entirely, and don’t eat meat are pussies and to make it worse they are the type of people who think they are better than you because they are making the right choices, aren’t they?  Sorry, your making terrible choices, you are taking a big part of the joy out of life, eating delicious food, so that you can live a few years longer.  Guess what?  Those are the shitty years, where you have to get up eight times a night to pee, your testicles grow but your penis shrinks (not sure what happens to vaginas as they age but it can’t be pretty since they aren’t all that pretty to begin with), ear and nose hair become unmanageable and even the site of yourself naked startles you.  On top of that, you begin to talk about shit no one cares about and most people can’t stand to be around you.  In all honesty, you would have been better off dying years ago, but you didn’t eat meat and gluten, eating that was almost as unthinkable as bringing something with peanuts in it to an elementary school.  Now all you have to do to pass the time is chart how much your nose, earlobes, and testicles have grown since last week.   (it’s a fact old people are the worst, millennials are creeping up on them, but they are still the worst)

There are a few more things that need to be addressed before I go pick up Tod and Ted from school, and yes they will expect that I have at least two snacks for them and the first thing they say to me won’t be “how was your day dad?”  it will be “what snacks do you have for us?”  I use to joke around and say broccoli, but that isn’t even funny anymore, it’s typically two of these items: Cheetos, chocolate covered pretzels, muddy buddies, and gummy worms.  I typically make them eat a banana or an apple before they get their two good snacks.  So, am I a bad parent for this dietary indiscretion? Nope, I am a bad parent for a lot of other reasons but not because I cave in to their snacking desires.  When I was growing up my mom fed us sugar and when we ate all of that she fed us more sugar and then after that we ate something else that had sugar as one of its primary ingredients.  Unfortunately it wasn’t typically good sugar, it usually was something out of the little Debbie snack line, I was always amazed at how Little Debbie could screw up sugar.  My siblings and I ended up turning out fine, at least from a physical standpoint, from a mental standpoint we are still touch and go, but our childhood diet has had few repercussions on our adult life.

To even further cement my point is the fact that most professional athletes grow up in poverty and are likely consuming government cheese as their primary food group as they grow up.  They are all doing fine now aren’t they?  Guess what else those athletes and me and my siblings had in common growing up?  We ate peanuts.  We weren’t afraid of peanuts, in fact we ate peanuts like they were candy, and that’s saying something because I ate a shit ton of candy growing up.  I’d really like to know who it was that ruined peanuts for everyone, that person is almost as despicable as the guy who had sex with a monkey in Africa and started AIDS.  Regardless, we will probably never know who created the pandemonium over peanuts, but it has gotten to the point that you can’t even unknowingly pack peanut laced granola bars for your kids without feeling like a criminal.  Two weeks ago I sent chocolate chip granola bars, yes that is how they were labeled, with my kids to school.  When I picked them up from school said granola bars were in a zip locked bag with a note alerting me to the fact that the granola bars contained peanut bi-products.  WTF?  Do they have a peanut detector at their school?  Even if my kids had eaten them what would have been the catastrophic result?  Would them breathing on an allergenic (pussy) kid with peanut residue in their mouth result in the allergenic (pussy) kid’s demise?  I honestly felt like a loser for unknowingly integrating peanuts into what is suppose to be “a peanut free zone.”

The reality is that people who are allergic to peanuts should be put in special schools and forced to live in special parts of the world like Canada so that we can rebuild a society that isn’t susceptible to calamity when it is exposed to a nut.  My kids should be able to take a snickers (even though snickers suck and Milky Way are way better) dip it in peanut butter and encase it with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and eat away at snack time, but they can’t.  I would refrain from standing for the national anthem out of protest to our countries current peanut stance but I’d probably be sending the wrong message and people would think I was protesting about something that doesn’t matter.

 

 

This past Sunday was a truly glorious day.  The sun was shining and the temps were in the mid 80’s.  What was the Jansma family going to do? Well unfortunately for Shirley she was once again victim to her gender and invited to a bridal shower at 2pm, so she wouldn’t be doing anything fun.  There was chatter about going out to Green Lake to get the Wave Runner out for the third time this summer, but Tod wanted to go to the MVP pool to do the obstacle course, which he already knew required him to pass the swimming test.  Not sure how he was cognizant of this, but he was.  While I enjoy the MVP pool at Burton, apparently a little too much according to Tod which will be revealed later, I am hesitant because it is much easier to sneak the kids in the pool at Crahen MVP. However, since I avoided adding them to my membership this summer I figured I could bite the bullet and pay for them this once.  Typically my game plan for sneaking them in is to have them pretend like they are with another family when we are entering the pool, this is somewhat hard to pull off when they are both clinging to my leg.  I confidently made my way to the pool gate and scanned my hand, the 16 year old attendant merely asked me how many towels I wanted and didn’t request payment for the two kids.  “Should I say one towel so I don’t blow this or do I ask for 3?”  I decided to ask for 3 because I didn’t want to come off as a dick by only getting a towel for myself.

As we made our way towards the obstacle course I felt like a king, there is something special about sneaking your kids into a private pool, especially when you are Dutch.  My feelings of elation were short lived in light of the impending swim test.  Aiden, although cognizant of the swim test attempted to get in line for the obstacle course, but was told he needed a green wrist band which required successful completion of the swim test.  I asked what the swim test consisted of and was told: 1. tread water for 15 seconds.  2.  Swimming the entire length of the pool, which was at lest 25 meters.  I should have asked if we could replace 2 with “not pooping or peeing in the pool” because my kids are actually really good about that.  When they tell me they have to go pee I initially look at them funny, saying with my expression “you’re in a pool why would you go through the effort of getting out of the pool to pee.”    Besides pulling down a wet swimsuit and pulling it back up is the worst and my kids typically drop it at least down to their knees when they pee, if not their ankles.  Side note, when I was in college there was a guy who was a bit slow on the uptake, he was in college mind you so probably at least 20 but probably closer to 30 due to his slow nature.  He would pull his pants and underwear all the way down to his ankles when taking a leak at the public urinals, nothing like having a dudes hairy ass be the first thing you see when you walk into a public restroom.

The good thing about the swimming test is it takes place only once an hour on the hour, the bad news is that it was only 1:20 and Tod had already asked me about taking the swimming test 8,000 times.  I decided to run him through an impromptu swimming test, certain he would fail at least one of the two legs, if not both.  I’m not one of those parents that is unrealistic about things and says,  ok buddy you can do it, why not keep my mouth shut and let him prove or disprove himself.  I timed him by going 1,000 1 all the way up to 1,000 15 but dropped the 1,000 part at about 9 when it looked like he wasn’t going to make it, after about 16 “seconds” he looked like Leonardo Dicaprio at the very end of Titanic.  Now for the hard part, despite a year and a half at the Harvard equivalent of swim schools, Gold Fish, I was quite certain there was no way he was making it the length of the pool, it would be like me traversing the Pacific Ocean with only my four appendages.  Sure enough, he looked like one of those horses trying to cross an extremely rapid river, with his head just barely above water, performing a very rudimentary doggy paddle.  He made it about seven yards before I had to lend assistance to keep him from drowning.  Well, there goes that dream,  it’s good though to learn at a young age you will never be good at anything, saves you the time and heartache of trying things you suck at.  Unfortunately, Tod was not cognizant of the fact that he wasn’t going to pass the swim test, in fact he was on course to fail it miserably, or in the alternative, he just wanted one of the attractive lifeguards to save him after making it an eighth of the required distance. (Another side note, when we were on our honey moon in Costa Rica we went on a zip line tour.  There was a guide who took us through the tour 100’s of feet in the air with runs that were 1,000’s of feet.  One of the gay men in the group kept intentionally getting stuck in the middle of the run so that the guide would have to go “save” him, not sure Aiden is that smart yet when it comes to hot lifeguards).  He continued to ask me if he could take the test and I continued to tell him no.  What didn’t make sense to me is the inflatable obstacle course ran almost the length of the pool and only required about 4 meters of actual swimming and the rest was climbing and sliding.  Why did they need to swim the length of the pool?

The second somewhat strange thing about the obstacle course was that adults had to take the swim test as well if they wanted to participate in the aquatic dumbed down version of Ninja Warrior, and get this, there were actually people willing to take the requisite test so they could get a shot at the course, sorry not worth it.  What I decided to do was dive into the pool, that was my way of getting back at them for their stupid swim test requirement.  Unfortunately a 14 year old female life guard caught me mid act and when I came up for air she was immediately on me like a cop sitting in a speed trap.  “Sir, you can’t dive hear it’s too shallow. IT’s NOT ALLOWED!”  I have mentioned this before, but being yelled at by a girl who is 25 years younger than you and has to rely on her parents  for all of her worldly needs is quite emasculating.  Would a male lifeguard have done this to me? Probably not.  In all honesty they wouldn’t have given a shit.  Besides, I’m not in a wheel chair so apparently it is deep enough.

Overall, swim test not withstanding, it was a fun day at the pool and I used the money I was planning on spending on the kids to get in the pool on strawberry shortcake ice cream bars for them, all right who am I kidding, they would have gotten those regardless.  I took the kids home and had to run into my office.  When I got back Shirley informed me that Aiden told her that I was “Noticing girls” at the pool.  Oh shit, how do you respond to something like that?  Deny, deny, deny! That makes you seem awfully guilty (which I was) doesn’t it?  Besides, that was one of the benefits of not having Shirley present, I didn’t have to be as discreet as I usually am scoping scantily clad hot chicks at the pool, but apparently I did.  My play was to say this “he’s 6 years old how would he know if I was noticing girls at the pool?”  I’m looking forward to the day when the two of us can be noticing girls at the pool at the same time, possibly even the same girls, that is probably my only shot at fatherly pride based upon his exploits athletically up to this point.  I’ll probably have to create my own black ops ogle test when the time comes so he isn’t as easily detectable as his creepy dad.

When you are out and about as much as I am you run in to some strange situations that are often times remarkable.  The good news is I have my own blog that I can use to document peculiar behavior that I witness in society.  Typically, I put notes on my phone that reference the observed behavior so that I can circle back at some point and write about the encounter.  One such notation is “Receipt for a doughnut”.  I was on my way back from court in Ionia county and stoped at a farm stand right off of 96 on my way back into GR.  While I was purchasing  a tomato for BLT’s that night for dinner I ended up in line behind a retiree who was after a doughnut.  All he bought was one doughnut and was upset when he was not given a receipt for his doughnut.  Old people are the worst, what earthly reason could you have for requiring a receipt for a doughnut?  Pretty sure you can’t write off doughnut purchases on your taxes and the guy probably hadn’t actually worked in at least twenty years so a write off, if available, wouldn’t benefit him in any way.

Even more annoying was another incident involving an old person.  I was behind an elderly women at the U scan at D&W.  There are things that truly irk me, and one of those is people writing checks at stores.  Have you heard of a debit card?  Even old people have those so why are you writing a check?  While the check writing is befuddling some of these people double down on annoying by balancing their check book in their ledger after they complete their purchase, further holding up commerce at the store.  I figured the U scan was the guaranteed location to avoid check writing, but I was wrong.  Not sure how this old geezer even knew she could write a check at the U scan, but there she was putting the brakes on my shopping experience as she filled out her check.  On a side note, there are certain types of people you want to avoid if you are hitting the U scan, and old people are at the top of the list, so it is partially on me for getting in line behind this old bag.  However, I do think there are ways to really enhance the U Scan aisle.  First of all, you should be required to take a test to be allowed to utilize the U scan and once you reach a certain age you would be required to retest yearly.  This would weed out the people who clog up the U Scan like an oversized Turd in a low flow toilet.  I pride myself in my U scan prowess, I have had situations where my amazing proficiency U scanning has been put to the test by glitches in the system outside of my control, or on rare occasions I make a u scan mistake, when this happens I am immediately disappointed in myself and feel a great degree of shame.  (What’s confusing to me and could cause problems for even the most experienced U scanner is when you get Sweet Corn or Green beans, do you browse for the corn in the S section of the popular items look up or the C? beans in the G or the B?)

One of the most peculiar shopping experiences I have ever had occurred just a couple weeks ago.  I went to Costco for the sole purpose of getting butt wipe, we were out and apparently the only place we can get toilet paper is Costco due to the 2 cent per roll savings we receive by purchasing it at a warehouse club.  I was on the Dutch Christian Reformed side of town, the Ottawa County Kent County Border, and decided to hit the Grandville Costco.  It’s not my Costco and I am unfamiliar with the store foot print.  Not sure why they don’t have every Costco set up the same, my guess is they just like screwing with people.  Fortunately I didn’t get to the point of desperation that I asked an employee where the butt wipe was.  Regardless, while I was only seeking TP, I also was fortunate that one of Costco’s “random items of the week” was a water balloon sling shot.  In hind sight I should have bought at least three instead of two.  Shopping at Costco is similar to having herpes, there’s items they have there that catch you completely off guard and you never know if or when they will have them again.   A set of dumbbells weights 10lb’s through 45, why not?  I’ve always wanted people to think I work out when they go into my basement, I better buy them now no telling if they will ever have them again. A kayak? no time to price compare, they only have two left!

After locating the 36 roll pack of toilet paper I made my way to the check out.  In front of me were two Indian guys, what appeared to be a father in his 60’s and his son who was probably in his 30’s.  They were India Indians not Native Americans (not even I’m that politically incorrect to call an Indian an Indian).   Kind of weird for an adult son and his adult dad to go shopping together at Costco but that’s just the beginning.  The son was the member and the dad was the purchaser.  They were purchasing two packages of Craisins, as if Raisins weren’t awful enough Ocean Spray came up with a raisin knock off by using cranberries.  You know what would make raisins seem tolerable?  Nothing?  No, creating a cranberry raisin off shoot, we can call them Craisins!  The check out lady told the dynamic duo that because the purchaser was not a “member” that they had to pay with cash, the son looked at the dad with a “fuck no I aint paying for your Craisins look on his face” and the dad begrudgingly pulled out some cash and paid for the two packages of Craisins.

The Indians had set the record for fewest number of items ever purchased in one Costco trip with two packages of Craisins, there is no way in the history of Costco that anyone has ever purchased just one item.  I made my way up to the check out clerk with my toilet paper and two water ballon sling shots and the clerk said in a tone of surprise, “this is all you got?”  I wanted to respond, seriously?  You didn’t say shit to the guys who merely bought two packages of the worst fruit product ever created!   I kept my mouth shut and checked out making sure to keep my receipt so that I could get out of Costco without any hassle.  I have always wondered a number of things when I shop at Costco:

1. Why do I need to show my receipt to get out of here?
2. What would happen if I didn’t keep my receipt to show to the door attendee?
3. Will my life ever get to such a low point that I take my entire family out for a meal at the Costco cafeteria?
4. Do the people who hand out the samples get a cut of sales?  They always seem so upset when I give my kids samples and I don’t take one, the only earthly reason they could be upset is if they had some financial skin in the game.

 

 

“So, what can I help you with today?”

“I just wanted to drop this computer off, it took a dump on us and I wanted to see if it was worth repairing.”

“Well, we don’t do drop offs, you are going to need an appointment.”

“Did I just mistake what I thought was the Apple Store for a dentist office? Because I’m not looking to get a cavity filled or my teeth cleaned, I need to see if this computer is salvageable. Never heard of a dentist office in a mall, but malls are almost as lucrative as video stores these days so I wouldn’t be surprised if they are renting out space to just about any viable business that can pay rent.  My dog is taking a nap in my truck and it’s been about three years since she’s had someone sticks thermometer up her ass, well at least someone with an advanced degree, should I bring her in here for a check up, you guys take walk ins for that?”

“Computer?  It’s not a computer it’s a Mac.  And of course it’s salvageable and likely worth the cost it will take to make it right again, because it is the creme de la creme of technology.”

“Really, I have the latest I phone and I can’t even get my pandora app to play music, it just tells me it’s buffering, is that because it doesn’t approve of my station choices? or does your creme de la creme of technology struggle to run a rudimentary app?  I’ve been forced to listen to actual radio stations that play music and I’m about ready to get out my CD collection if I can’t get pandora to start working again.”

“Have you tried turning your phone off?”

“You can turn your phone off?  I have never dared do that out of fear that it won’t turn back on and, well I don’t even want to think about that scenario, can you imagine not having a phone?  How would anyone get in touch with me?  How would I communicate all my astute observations and intelligent thoughts to the world without my phone?  Regardless, yes I turned it off, and that didn’t fix the problem.  I am at a loss if that doesn’t work, but let’s stick to the primary reason for my visit to the only place to assemble a group of employees that makes the geek squad look cool, the desktop I brought in.”

“So you do want an appointment?”

“Yes, I want an appointment, do I have to carry this computer around the mall?  I already feel weird when I go into Victoria’s Secret under the guise that I’m shopping for my wife, obviously not weird enough to keep me from going in there, but it’s going to be even more awkward when I’m browsing through thongs with this computer in tow.”

“Yes, we can take your computer and put it in the backroom, it looks like it’s going to be an hour and ten minutes before we can get you in for your appointment.  Just give me your phone number and we will text you when we are able to get you back in here”

“Seriously?  I guess on the bright side that’s an hour and ten minutes I don’t have to spend with my family.   I’m sure I can find something to keep me occupied, I saw a Chinese acupuncture place over by the Korean nail place is it full service? I feel like you would know?”

“I’m scared of needles so I have no idea, we will text you when it’s your turn.”

…….. “We’ve held your place at the Genius Bar you’ll get a message when it’s almost your turn”

…… “We’re ready now please check in with a specialist.”

“Wow, that was quick looks like I’m going to need to come back to Hollister to get my full creep on, by leaving and coming back that should keep them from calling the Kentwood police again.”

“Excuse me, are you a specialist, you’re kind of ugly, at the very least you work here, I just got a text that you guys are ready for me.”

“No, I don’t work here, I do spend a lot of time here and yes it would be my dream job but I don’t work here.”

“How do I check in?  Everyone here looks like a complete loser, it’s hard to tell the customers from the employees”

“Just look for the I pad, everyone who works here has an iPad, track one of them down and they will get you put in place.”

“thanks for the tip sir.”

“I’m actually a woman, but that’s not the first time someone has mistaken my gender.”

“Sorry about that, got to go I see someone toting an I pad wearing pleated kakis, jackpot!”

“You have an I pad you must be a specialist, plus by the looks of you it appears you have yet to have sex with a real live human being, which seems to be a common thread with everyone who works at this place.  Can you check me in so I can get out of here before the sun goes down and things start to get really weird in here?”

“Obviously you are quite new to this whole set up, an experienced customer would have picked up a hot pretzel and sat in one of the massage chairs before they responded to their text.  When we said an hour and ten minute wait time we meant it, would you rather wait here at planet of the dorks or out in the mall where you can feel a sense of superiority to everyone you come across?”

“I do like going into the African American stores and watch them look at me as if I was an extra terrestrial, I want to say to them, what you never had a 43 year old white guy buy a pair of Yeezy’s before?”

“That does sound like fun.  Hang tight I’ll see if we can get you to the front of the line.”

“Ok sir, it looks like your hard drive is no longer functional, it’s going to be $125 to fix it.”

“If I give you the green light can you throw in a pair of those Beats by Dre, I want to wear them when I go to that African American store to pretend to buy a pair of Yeezy’s, that will really blow their mind.”

“I wish I could, but it costs $18 to manufacture those, wait a minute pretend you didn’t hear that, I’m not suppose to tell people that, I just can’t focus when I don’t have my fidget spinner.”

“Your secret is safe with me as long as you let me in back to see the sex bot, I know you guys have to have a sex bot, jerking off can only get you so far, and theres no way you guys haven’t already come up with a robotic way to solve that problem.”

“I guess you have me between a rock and a hard place, you can look but you can’t touch, follow me and pretend like you need to use the employee restroom.”

 

 

“You say you offer a free initial consultation correct?”

“Yes, mam, we offer free consultations up to 30 minutes in length.  We try to cover the basics and hopefully answer most of the questions you have about your case, what kind of case do you have?’

“I want to divorce myself.”

“Divorce yourself, do you have multiple personalities?”

“No, just one, I just couldn’t find that special someone and then I realized that special someone was staring right back at me… when I looked in the mirror.  It’s actually called Sologamy.”

“Sodomy sounds much better, but different strokes for different folks I guess.  Did you actually have a ceremony?”

“Did I?  I have always dreamed of getting married and I wasn’t about to let the fact that I have bit of a weight problem, cleft pallet that I never had corrected, as well as IBS that rears it’s ugly head at the drop of a pin, stand in my way.  So I found myself a mate, me, and put a wedding together by organizing it myself.   By marrying myself I was able to call all the shots, no one butting in and trying to tell me how I should have my wedding.  It was a little weird when I jammed the piece of cake in my own face instead of having a husband or wife do it to me, it could have been either, I”m not entirely sure what team I play for if you know what I mean.  Not to mention trying to kiss myself, probably could have kept that out of the ceremony, that was quite awkward.  Overall though the wedding was a smashing success because I planned it without interference from anyone else.  I wish the marriage would have been as much of a smashing success as the wedding.”

“No surprise there, most people peek about three hours after the wedding, it all goes to shit after that.  That’s why when homosexuals were clamoring for gay marriage I just laughed.  I thought to myself, those poor bastards have no idea what they are getting themselves into.  Pretty sure most of them wake up in the middle of the night after about six months in asking themselves WTF did I get myself into, wonder if we can put a constitutional amendment through banning this?”

“Yeah, I’m starting to see what you mean.  There’s that running joke where they ask what’s the one food that kills a woman’s sex drive?”

“Water?”

“No, wedding cake.”

“I actually started turning myself down once I got married.  I had the labido of a teenage boy with unfettered access to nudey mags and then I married myself.   You know how disheartening it is to get turned down by yourself?”

“No, I really don’t, I love jerking off and it has become somewhat of a necessity now that I have been married for 8 years to the day.”

“I just don’t get me anymore, and I tell myself it’s not me it’s me if that makes sense.  I suppose I have no one to blame but myself for things falling apart.  I just wish I was a better listener.  There are even times when I feel like I’m not even listening to myself and sometimes I  wonder if I ever actually loved myself or was marrying myself just on a whim because I wanted someone to love me for who I was.”

“I’ll be honest, I have never handled anything like this, this may be unchartered territory.  It made sense from a legal standpoint for them to institute gay marriage because they were allowing gay couples to adopt in some states so they had to have a mechanism to allocate custody of the children if the parties separated and they needed a way for them to legally split up all their shit.   However, you don’t have that problem since all your shit would go directly. to you and no one else.  Also, don’t tell my mom I said that about gay marriage, I can hear her right now saying “it’s Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve.”

“I just figured since I married myself and it wasn’t working that I would have to get divorced.”

“Now that tells me right there you know absolutely nothing about how marriage works.  Divorce is for quitters.  There are plenty of people who have been miserable for decades and they stay married.  Most of the people I see in here for consults think the grass is going to be greener on the other side I try to make them understand that there is someone just as equally crazy as their current spouse just waiting to meet them, if they haven’t already met that person which is typically the impetus that gets them into my office in the first place.  Once it dawns on them that I am probably right I typically never hear from them again.”

“Your’e probably right, staying married to myself is probably the safest bet, you know a good marriage counselor?”

https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/2912505/sologamy-marrying-yourself/

Happy anniversary to my wonderful wife Shirley!  6 of the happiest years of my life (we were married on 7/11/09). I can write that because she never reads my blog, one of the many reasons our marriage has survived this long.

 

“Well, that should do it, I just cut all the funding to the Great Lakes region.  Fresh water is vastly inferior to salt water in my opinion.  All my properties are on the Ocean or some type of salted body of water so why would I want to allocate money for something that doesn’t have the Trump seal of approval?”

“Well sir, the Great Lakes Region is primarily responsible for your election, I feel like you are doing them a serious disservice by cutting funding to the Great Lakes which is responsible for generating billions of dollars in tourism revenue as well as through commercial fishing.  On top of that, the Great Lakes are responsible for providing clean drinking water to millions of people.”

“Great Lakes?  What’s so great about a body of water that doesn’t have sharks, whales, I am particularly fond of whales by the way, or dolphins?  I think we are doing them a favor by cutting funding, now those Asian Carp should be able to infiltrate the Great Lakes, and if you ask me they are a lot like dolphins the way they are able to jump out of the water.  Have you seen any you tube videos of those things?  Fantastic specimen.”

“As your chief advisor, which seems kind of oxymoronic since you never heed anyone’s advice, I would strongly caution cutting funding to the Great Lakes, but obviously that’s your call, just like your allotment in next years budget to encase the entire exterior of the White House in gold.  Looks like that may be even more foolish and expensive than that damn wall you keep clamoring about.”

“How is that going by the way? I can’t wait to break ground on that thing.  You know how I love wearing those construction hats.”

“You somehow manage to get another term and the wall still won’t happen.”

“Well, let’s move on from this Great Lakes thing, we get rid of the Great Lakes and that will open up the door for my Trump ionization company that turns salt water into fresh water.   But even more important than me capitalizing financially on my presidency is my proposal regarding the yoga pants legislation.”

” I was just going to get to that sir.  Honestly, this is something I can get behind. It does appear there are no restrictions on yoga pants, people of all shapes and sizes have jumped on the yoga pants bandwagon, I have even seen men wearing them.”

“There’s nothing I hate worse than seeing some fat cow donning yoga pants.  I was watching the view the other day, specifically so I could hate Rosie O’Donnell even more, and she was wearing yoga pants, her humor isn’t funny and let me tell you her camel toe isn’t a laughing matter either.  Women wearing yoga pants is similar to being a gynecologist, for every attractive Vagina you get a peek at there’s ten of them that make you reconsider your selected vocation.  We definitely need to put some restrictions on what the manufacturers are allowed to produce when it comes to yoga pants.”

“Agreed sir, and the good news is Representative Ryan is right behind you on this.  He lives in Wisconsin and this is a subject that really hits home to him. I believe Wisconsin is the number one consumer of both dairy products and bratwursts, that’s a deadly combo for someone with the spending power to purchase an assortment of yoga pants.”

“The first thing we need to address is size, should we cap the manufacturers at a size 6 or do we want to go size 4?  All my wife’s and girlfriends have been a size 0 so I am going to need a little help from you on this, you strike me as somewhat of a chubby chaser. I know it sounds like I am kind of bragging about my hot wife and girlfriends, but the reality is they can’t stand me, if it weren’t for that common law thing where a husband is allowed to have sex with his wife regardless of consent because she’s considered chattel coupled with all my money, I would have no offspring to speak of.  Just keep that to yourself though, as far as your concerned I am irresistible to the opposite sex.  Now I feel like we are straddling a pretty fine line here and need to get this one right so that the American people can have renewed confidence in my ability to lead this country.”

“I say we play it safe and draw the line at a size 4, sweat pants for anyone above that size.  In all honesty I wouldn’t be disappointed if sweat pants were my consolation prize.”

“Size 4 it is.  Ok, can we also put an age restriction on this as well?  There’s nothing out there that counteracts my viagra than some granny rocking yoga pants. Nobody needs to see that, especially my boner.”

“I thought you were going the other direction with that and trying to keep young girls from wearing them, as a way to protect them from the judgment of their discretion-less parents and to keep them form eventually becoming whores.”

“I’m all for letting parents torpedo their kids lives, don’t want to get in the way of that.  Look at my kids, if it weren’t for the fact that I was never around and had nothing to do with their upbringing, they would be complete disasters, they still kind of are, but no prep school on the planet could have saved them from the irreparable damage I would have done to them.”

“So we addressed size and age sir is there anything else we need to put in this piece of legislation?”

“There most certainly is, have you seen some of the latest yoga pants they have? All different designs on them and they tend to keep the eyes from being able to focus on what really matters if you know what I mean.  Have you seen the pants that have the southwestern motif?  Those things are hideous.  We are going to have to implement monotone as a design requirement when it comes to yoga pants.  Black, Grey, even white.  I haven’t seen any white yoga pants but wouldn’t that be fantastic?”

“It could have been a disaster but now that we have age and size regulated it will likely be marvelous.”

“Speaking of disaster, there is one final addendum to the bill that must be included for this to be considered a success.  Gender restrictions, specifically, no dudes.  I am all about the properly shaped camel toe, but I definitely don’t need to see any moose knuckles.”

 

 

“Ok, you can take the kids to Chick Fillet for shakes but don’t go home, I might need you to come back and pick up the new camper.”

In my mind I was thinking, no way, even Shirley is not that compulsive, she just started seriously looking at campers this morning at 9 am, then I remembered she decided she wanted a PWC (personal water craft) one night and the following day she was the proud owner of a brand newYamaha Wave Runner.  That sales person probably didn’t know what hit him.  “Really, you want to trailer it away today, I think we can do that, and you did say you just started looking at these online last night?”

“Ok, I’ll touch base with you after we get done at Chick Fillet.  However, make sure you contact me prior to signing on the dotted line.”

No response because she was already engaged in further negotiations with Ron at RV world.   This text popped up on my phone while I was eating a 9 piece naked chicken nugget meal at chick filet.  (honestly, I don’t know what the big deal about Chick Fillet is, the shakes are tremendous but everything else is average, which is to be expected, all they have is chicken.  I don’t think I have ever eaten chicken and been awestruck by it, I feel good about it because it seems like a healthy choice, but it’s a full continent away from flavor country)

“So, it will be a total of $15,000 with tax and everything else out the door.  That’s base of $13,745.  The other camper south of town was not fiberglass frame.  What do you think?”

I think this is spiraling out of control. The camper subject has been broached every summer for the last few years.  In the past, I just ride it out a couple of weeks until Shirley’s attention span gets the best of her and she totally forgets that she wants a camper.  I probably could have stalled on the PCW and ended up with the same result, but the PCW was something I could get some use out of, the camper on the other hand is something I dread owning, because ultimately it will result in me having to camp.  On top of that, and in this scenario it may not be a bad thing, Shirley has a tendency to impulse shop and never use the impulsively purchased product as much as would be justified by the purchase price.  A few years back the impulse purchase was a treadmill, she assured me she would use it on a regular basis, I think she meant yearly, because since it’s purchase she has used it no more than three times.

Why do people want to camp?  I really don’t feel like traveling hundreds of miles away to sit around a camp ground with a bunch of creepy strangers where my residence is a 17 foot by 5 foot trailer.  I have a tough time tolerating my family and we live in a five bedroom house on an acre and a half of land, in those close quarters I may finally have a serenity now moment.

In Michigan the summer season is short and I try to maximize it by spending the weekends doing what I want, golfing,  skiing, avoiding my family.  How are any of these things possible if I am forced to camp with them?  Of course, Shirley claims I don’t have to go camping with her and Tod and Ted, but hey even I am not even that big of an asshole, I will complain about it most of the time, but I will begrudgingly go.

I asked Shirley why she thinks camping will be so terrific and her response is that she has so many fond memories of camping as a kid.  Guess what, I have fond memories of things that were probably in all reality terrible, but I was a kid and I didn’t know any better.  Ultimately, if I endured a shitty experience but somehow got ice cream at the end of that shitty experience, my opinion of that experience completely changed.  What do kids have to look forward to?  Absolutely nothing, everything in their world is controlled by their parents.  They can’t drive which means they can’t go anywhere unless someone takes them somewhere.  My kids actually think taking a bath or shower is fun, how lame does your life have to be to look at that as a form of entertainment?  (accompanied showers on the other hand…)  So, from a kids eye’s camping is going to seem somewhat worthwhile.  Or is it?

The summer before sixth grade my mom, dad, and brother went out East to Maine in a truck camper that was owned by my super dutch grandparents.  Not only was the truck camper horrible it was attached to an early 70’s Ford F-150 that may have been powered by a family of chipmunks.  On the way out East my mom made us stop by Amish Acres which is located in Northern Indiana, yes it was as bad as it sounds.  Amish people may be the most boring people on the face of the earth other than Mormons, ok I take that back when you have multiple wives your life can’t be boring, hell on earth, yes, boring no.  Regardless, whoever the genius behind Amish Acres was, thanks for letting my mom find out about it.  Seriously, there was no internet back then so I’m not sure how she found it, but if you googled “most boring place on earth” Amish Acres would undoubtedly come up.  On a side note, every so often you hear about a horse and buggy accident and it’s always the horses that gest injured or killed when a car runs into the buggy, why can’t it be the Amish, they are the ones stubbornly riding around in horse and buggies?  (When a person dies in a movie rarely am I sad, when an animal dies in a movie I immediately wish I hadn’t chosen to watch that particular movie and am overcome with grief).

Initially I thought to myself we have traveled to the apex of vacation hell having gone to Amish Acres there is no way this can get any worse.  Unfortunately, it did, due to there only being a bench seat in my Grandfather’s truck my parent’s had us riding in the pick up camper which I am certain was illegal. (My Grandpa was so cheap I’m sure if a steering wheel had been an option he had to pay for separately he would have made his own, in the thirty plus years I knew him I don’t think he ever had new clothes, he was wearing clothes from the 70’s well into the early 2000’s)  In order to make sure we didn’t try to jump out of the camper and make a run for it they put a belt around the door so that we couldn’t get it open as we were traveling.  One morning my brother and I woke up and we were in a McDonald’s parking lot.  My parents were no where to be found and had left the door locked from the outside.  I had to piss like a racehorse and began to panic, until I found a bag of red solo cups.  I filled up two solo cups with warm urine.  Parents could be so irresponsible back then, if I was raising kids back then there is little chance they would have survived past the age of 7.

Shirley’s upbringing could have been vastly different than me, but something tells me it wasn’t, she was probably just one of those glass half full types of kids.  I was more of a realist, and had my parents exposed us to anymore camping than that trip out East I probably would have had a nervous breakdown at American RV this past Saturday.  “Honey, why is that man curled up in a ball sucking his thumb in the middle of the show room?”

My parents couldn’t stand us or each other (My parents don’t read this blog, but if they did they would probably agree with that statement whole heartedly) when we were growing up so imagine the fireworks if they had decided to load everyone up in their wood paneled Caprice station wagon (that burned a quart of oil a week) and head out for some tent camping or even a pull along camper (that would have burned two quarts a week minimum)?  Shirley claims to have fond memories of camping and likely other things that took place in her child hood.  My only fond memory of child hood is finding my buddies dad’s stash of pornos.

It’s somewhat puzzling to me that people actually want to camp.  If I want to smell like a campfire I can have one at my house and then get the smell off me with a shower, that doesn’t seem viable if you actually are at a campground, the smell of campfire is perpetually on you while you camp.  If I want to sleep within feet of complete strangers and shower with them I will commit a crime that results in me going to jail, at least that gives me a chance to do something fun and exciting beforehand.

I had a text exchange this morning where I indicated to one of my faithful readers that I feel like I am the one always being asked to give.  I think it’s time I get something out of this whole blogging experience.  I have discussed camping with other people and most of the people I have spoken with also think it is horrible, at least horrible if you have to do it routinely, which seems like it would be the likely outcome if Shirley does actually purchase a camper.  Am I off on this?  What do my four regular readers thing about camping?

 

 

 

“Watch out or those BNI thugs will come at you harder than some Ron L Hubbard believers”

Tipskipper

A long long time ago I was solicited by a friend of mine, at least I thought he was a friend, to check out a BNI group (Business Networking International).  Unfortunately, at the time I had no idea the International Star Registry was a more legitimate enterprise than BNI.  What was even more problematic was that these movers and shakers met at 7 am requiring me to miss my morning hoops run if I was able to drag my ass out of bed, or even worse sleep.  Hey, I love awkward small talk and pretending like I am interested in the minutia of other people’s lives just like the next guy, but don’t ask me to arrive at 7 am to put on a fake smile and get introduced to people whose names I will never remember.  Does anyone else have this problem?  You get introduced to someone but you are so worried about the handshake going well that you don’t even allow their name to register in your cranium.  Granted, they typically have name tags at these things, but they have the adhesive power of a greased pig and you typically spend most of your energy trying to get it to stay adhered to your shirt.

Once I showed up I knew it was an epic mistake equally as catastrophic as the time I committed to going to Cedar Point with two buddies from high school only to find out by the time we hit Toledo none of us actually wanted to go.  The business types in attendance were almost as underwhelming as the venue, a stale room in an old church with folding chairs manufactured prior to world war II.  Window cleaning service, what the fuck am I suppose to do with that?  A company that makes signs, fantastic, I will never get a referral from you, but I am sure some day I will need your services when I run for County drain commissioner.  Here is the problem that I have, my referral sources are not exactly conventional.  If I could create a networking group of alcoholics, drug dealers, and serial philanderers this BNI thing would be well worth the money (that’s right, not only is this experience excruciating, they make you pay for it, it’s similar to a trip to the dentist but without the benefit of anesthesia).

Basically, they have people who actually work for BNI and are in charge of setting up new groups.  They over sell their value by claiming that if you were to try and generate the amount of leads BNI will generate for you in the regular marketplace it would cost you thousands of dollars, but it will only cost you a nominal fee of $500 a year to have the privilege of hanging out with all these cool cats.  Guess what, I would have a better chance of getting referrals from a room full of zombies than these losers.  What’s the screening process here?  The only place more pathetic and wrought with despair is a plasma donation center.  Not only do they charge you to  attend their pit of despair, there are attendance requirements.  Listen, I barely show up at my office on a weekly basis, you think I’m going to agree to pay money for the privilege of rubbing elbows weekly with a group of people I know I will come to despise in a matter of weeks?  The real kicker is that if you miss more than twice you get kicked out of the group.  I wanted to test this rule out but was unwilling to pony up the cash to see if they really stick to their guns on this rule.  Furthermore, if you do miss you have to send a sub in your place.  Let’s see who do I hate enough to have them attend a BNI meeting in my place, wait a minute, no one.  There is no one I personally know that I would send in my place out of spite, and that’s saying something because I dislike a lot of people.

What would truly be fun is to go with the express purpose of screwing with the leader of the BNI group, torpedoing the group before it gets off the ground.  The BNI group leaders I have encountered seem to always be an uglier fatter version of Sally Struthers, and they always claim to have had a successful business prior to going to work for BNI because it was such a “great opportunity.”  Exactly, selling the networking version of Amway for a living is a tremendous opportunity.  This is how I see it going if I had the courage to conduct a full frontal attack on a BNI group just starting to gain some momentum:

“So, how much would it cost for you guys to get this kind of marketing momentum in the regular business place?  Anyone? Anyone?”

No one answers because they have absolutely no idea, and awkward silence typically lasts 30 to 40 seconds before Sally Struthers pipes in with some figure that is complete bullshit.

“I have no idea how much it would cost, but this kind of smells like a pyramid scheme, we have to pay to be in it and you require us to bring new members into this thing on a regular basis, where is all the money going that we pay to be in this thing?  There better be one hell of a party at the end of the year with really hot strippers and top shelf booze or I’m going to be sorely disappointed.”

“Well, we have expenses, we cover those out of your annual fee, and then there is the  money we spend on coming up with new and fresh ideas for our groups that will allow us to increase referrals amongst our members.”

“Overhead, we are sitting on folding chairs that predate the birth of my parents in a room that smells like it doubles as a homeless shelter.  On top of that you guys have been rolling out the same BNI program for years.  Have you ever heard of Craig’s List, yeah it’s free to post shit on there, and you know what, I could easily start a referral group that is FREE, and it would probably have a lot more cool people in it than this lame group does.  Lot’s of interesting people to be met on Craig’s List.”

“That may be the case, but where would you meet?  We have a very unique structure that allows us to really add value to our participants already thriving business.”

“We could meet in the kitchen of an Old Country Buffet and it would be more appealing than this place.  Structure?  This is your structure:

1. Enlist the current members to bring in new members so you can make more money.
2. Current member makes a presentation that is mind numbingly boring and has no actual value to any of the other members in the group.
3. Petition current members again to bring in new blood, and close the meeting.

Not sure I can replicate that, you people at BNI have set the bar so high that not even a midget could do the limbo under it.”

I am quite certain that Heaven’s Gate started out as a BNI group, and when it morphed into a cult it became less restrictive and more worthwhile.  When the BNI folks circled back to try and get it back to a BNI group that’s when they all decided to drink the poisonous Kool Aid.

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.  I think that’s how the saying goes.  Regardless,  I did get bamboozled into attending another BNI group and it was just as intolerable as the first experience, if not more, because I attended more than one meeting this time around.  The new group actually met at lunch on Thursdays at a restaurant.  It started off horribly and only got worse as time wore on.  It had the requisite realtor who thought she was the life of the party and couldn’t stop talking about the real estate biz, everything that took place somehow related back to real estate.  “Oh, you own a funeral home, we need to get together after this, I am sure I can get you a ton of referrals, my client’s look to me for everything.”  The ironic thing is that my buddy who sucked me into my most recent BNI debacle is still in the group and last I heard they no longer meet at the restaurant.  It shut down, couldn’t keep their doors open even with the $12 a pop they were getting per lunch from the BNI attendees.

When I was growing up there was a show called Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom.  I enjoyed watching it but it pales in comparison to a current show focusing on nature and animals, that being The Planet Earth.  In one episode they had a Cheetah or some type of feline with spots taking down a crocodile, it was F#*&ing awesome.  We have a bunch of them recorded and one thing that sticks out is how even in the animal kingdom males are programmed differently from females.  Species after species one thing rings true, males have a razor sharp focus on procreating, and that’s about it.  Their entire existence seems to be centered around passing on their DNA to the next generation, even if their DNA is compromised.  Even in the animal world it seems like the second a male ejaculates it just wants to be left alone.  There was a particular episode in Planet Earth where they were following a female grizzly bear and her two cubs.  The narrator indicated that they needed to stay at a high elevation in order to avoid the father because the father would likely eat the cubs.  Hey, that’s one way to get out of paying child support I guess.  Regardless, the nurturing instinct seems to be much more prevalent in the female gender than it does the male counterpart.

The nurturing instinct is not the only thing that sets the genders apart.  Just last Friday I had the privilege of attending a couple’s baby shower.  Yeah, that’s right, a couple’s baby shower.  Unfortunately there was no way for me to weasel my way out of this thing because Shirley was one of three women “hosting” the shower.  I have never heard of men having a baby shower for a father to be, nor have I heard of men having a grooms shower for a guy who has decided he no longer wants to have sex on a regular basis and thinks blow jobs are non essential.  The day of the shower I had an all day golf outing where I played 36 holes, man were my hands beat up after that many holes, not sure how those professionals can handle such an arduous lifestyle.  Shirley was hoping I would get home in time so we could ride together, purely by accident I made it home after she had left.  In hind sight it was the best thing that could have happened because by driving separately I was able to leave the shower early.   For the twenty five minutes I was there I kept thinking to myself “there’s no way women actually like these things, this is more painful than a BNI meeting”.  In discussing the whole shower thing with a couple of my law partners one of them said “women love that shit.”   My exposure to bridal and baby showers in not just limited to the couples shower I was strong armed into attending, Shirley has hosted at least a half a dozen showers at our house.  I will say I love having a penis, there’s so many reasons it comes in handy, but I love it even more after I see what takes place at these showers.  Is it the estrogen that compels women to organize these things? Or is it a lack of having anything worthwhile to do?  I guess it could be a combination of both.

I have routinely gone on golf trips or trips to Vegas flying solo.  One particular trip was at tree tops golf resort and after a heavy day of drinking and golfing the guy who organized the thing, and didn’t drink nearly as much as my brother or I, thought it would be cool to play their par 3 course which has a shit ton of hills and undulations.  My brother was driving the cart down a hill and managed to roll the cart so that I was the meat on the bottom of the sand which.  We skidded down the asphalt cart path and eventually came to a halt.  It’s a good thing my BAC was at lest four times the legal limit or I would have been a goner.  I ended up with a raspberry on my forehead (which is hard to cover up when you have no hair) one on my shoulder, and my ring finger on one of my hands looked like ground hamburger.  The crazy thing about my golf trips and Vegas trips are that I never see a group of women getting away to do this stuff.  Shirley always says to me when I’m going on these trips “Sure wish I could go on something like this.”  I always call her bluff and say go for it.  Unfortunately, the reality is for her and a lot of other women is that they A. Don’t have friends (at least friends that are as fun as guys) B. would have nothing to center their trip around:

“Becky, I am sick of my husband always going on these guys trips, why don’t we put something together with all of our friends and get away for a weekend to do girl stuff?”

“Girl power!  who do you think we can get to go with us?”

“There’s Kate, she was in that book club with us a few years back, I really like her, and we have kids the same age so that would give us something to talk about for most of the trip, do you still have her number?  If not I can probably reach out to her on Facebook”

“Kate would probably work, I could ask my sister-in-law, I don’t really like her but if we are looking for warm bodies she can probably make it.”

“I can’t really think of anyone else off the top of my head but I’ll work on being more friendly when I drop the kids off at school and maybe I can snare a mom or two that have kids in my kid’s class.  Worst case scenario we put something on Craig’s List to fill out the invite list.”

My buddy actually has a wife who does go on “girls trips” and she has one coming up this weekend.  I asked him how many chicks were going on this trip and he figured about 8.  I asked him what they do on this trip, I indicated that if there are any pillow fights in their under garments taking place they should faceboook live it for their husbands and boyfriends, he doubted any of that was going to be transpiring and thought it would be mostly them just sitting around cackling like a bunch of hens.  If my wife were to go on a girl’s trip this is my guess as to how it would shake out:

83% of the conversation would be about children, probably their own.

11% would be about how they try to avoid having sex with their husbands (not taking showers, shaving their legs, or trimming what needs to be trimmed, farting in front of their husbands as frequently as possible, maybe even forgetting to flush the toilet on occasion)

5% would be about where they wanted to go out to eat.

1% would be about the pros and cons of engaging in a pillow fight in their undergarments after consuming copious amounts of wine.

Ultimately, my question is this, why did Bruce do it?  Being Katelyn has got to suck.

Yesterday I was minding my own business when I received a text message from Shirley regarding the nutritional value of breakfast cereal.  As I suspected, the article basically laid out a case that a bag of sugar has more nutritional value than breakfast cereal.  I thought to my self who are these Fascists that are trying to do away with breakfast cereal?  Right behind, hot dogs, apple pie, and blow jobs its pretty much everything America cares about, at least American males.  Off the top of my head I am not sure how many billions the cereal industry brings in every year, but I will say this, whatever it brings in in dollars it also brings about an equal amount of worthless cereal milk.  There is nothing worse than being forced to drink cereal milk, if you want to truly torture someone to the point of breaking, put them on a steady diet of cereal milk and Ellen, there is no human who won’t crack when faced with sugary milk and continual jokes from a middle aged white woman who can’t dance and makes Amy Schumer look like the white fat female version of Dave Chapelle.  (I love vagina jokes by the way, especially from someone whose vagina probably smells like a lunchable that has been left  in the  trunk of someone’s car in the middle of the desert for weeks)

The funny thing about this whole cereal article is the fact that I have pretty much known all along there is no way that shit can be good for you, but does it have to be?  Breakfast: the most important meal of the day.  The options for breakfast are shit, if it were the most important meal of the day wouldn’t we be coming up with some better options than something you can put in a box and they don’t even bother putting an expiration date on it for two reasons: 1. You will either eat it or throw it out to make room for other cereal your kid claims to want before it comes even close to expiring. 2.  Someone will inevitably leave the bag open causing it to go stale so there is no need for an expiration date.  3.  I know I said there were only two reasons, but the third reason is you could pull a box of life from an eighties time capsule, pour some milk on it, and it would be perfectly edible and wouldn’t bring about any catastrophic stomach issues.  Granted, you can go the route of eggs, bacon, or something more “healthy” which I will get to momentarily, but who has time to put a fully cooked breakfast meal together in three minutes.  Yes, three minutes, that’s the amount of time available each morning at the Jansma household for breakfast.

Here is how it usually goes at the Jansma household:

3:00 am: one or both of the kids come into our room and ask to get into bed with us.  I think to myself “hell no” but realize they will likely cry and carry on dramatically increasing the likelihood I won’t fall immediately back to sleep, so I let them climb on board.  Typically I make some veiled threat about putting a lock on their door if they continue to do this, but they know my threats are as empty as Donald Trump’s soul and they also know I don’t have the mechanical capabilities to switch out the door handles they currently have for ones with locks.

3:34 am: Typically I would go into the guest bedroom and sleep the rest of the night because Todd, Ted, Shirley, and Allie (our 10 year old Boston Terrier) had forced me to the edge of the bed and I was sick of fighting to get additional space so  I wouldn’t fall to the floor.  Now Aiden and Parker have bunk beds and the bottom bunk is quite comfortable so that is my new fortress of solitude when our bedroom is over run by Tod and Ted.

6:30 am:  I am typically playing basketball at this point, but if I didn’t make it out of bed this is when Shirley’s annoying apple phone alarm goes off.  She hits snooze.

6:38:  She hits snooze again.

6:46: She hits snooze again until she makes her way out of bed around 7.  The alarm has no impact on the ability of Tod and Ted to carry on sleeping and we are forced to drag them out of bed.  Cool thing is, on the weekends they get up way before 7 and bug the shit out of us.  Kids are great.

7:12 Tod gets on the crapper and takes his customary morning shit.  He is not a real big fan of wiping his own butt and has trained his body to avoid pooping at school.  He dumps in the morning and before he takes a shower at night.  I am somewhat ashamed that he can’t (won’t) wipe his own but, but my hat is off to his regularity.

7:28 After yelling at the kids for a solid twenty minutes they have finally made their way down stairs.  It hasn’t been without conflict with Ted thumbing his nose at two shirts, three pairs of shorts, and a pair of socks.  While hearing “wipe my butt dad” isn’t music to my ears, at least Tod doesn’t complain about the clothes I pick out for him.

7:29  “What do you guys want for breakfast?”  “what is there?”  “The same thing there was yesterday!”  I then list off every cereal we have in the cupboard and wait for them to make up their minds.

7:42 “Holy shit! what happened to the last 13 minutes, we are going to be late, really late. Get in the car NOW!”

Granted, if the Jansma family had their shit together we probably could fix some sort of “healthy” meal for our kids every morning.  Likewise, I am sure in her mind Shirley thought, wow, this article has a valid point, we really are doing our kids a disservice in more than just the areas of discipline and structure, they are going to turn into fat bastards if they keep eating breakfast cereal.  However, I will give you one guess as to what they ate this morning:  Breakfast Cereal.

The author of the article I mentioned at the outset of my post had this to say as what Americans should look to as alternatives to breakfast cereal:

What does she recommend for breakfast? Steel-cut oats, not cooked but rather soaked overnight with a dash of vinegar. I add whole-fat Greek yogurt and some nuts if I have them — it’s a satisfying small dish. Beans are great too. I had a delicious dish of lentils and a small amount of basmati rice, a preparation called kitchari, at the new vegetarian restaurant abcV in Manhattan, the other morning, and my companion had congee made with black rice and millet, in a seaweed and mushroom broth. Excellent breakfasts. An egg and some cheese are also a nourishing and satisfying way to begin the day.

There is nothing better to kick start your day than steel cut oats with a dash of vinegar.  How would anyone even think to put vinegar on anything in the morning?  Hey Steve, you know what this could really use to make it taste better?  Vinegar.  How bad does something have to taste for vinegar to make it taste better?  What kind of sadist is this women.  Beans for breakfast?  Typically I don’t like to get too terribly reactionary, but anyone who eats beans for breakfast isn’t part of my America.  I always question people who eat grapefruit for breakfast, but to opt for black rice and millet (I don’t even know what that is, but it sounds terrible) that is really doubling down to make your breakfast taste like a dog’s butthole.

Unfortunately, there is an all out war on sugar.  It isn’t just relegated to breakfast cereal.  You can’t go down an internet rabbit hole without running into some article about how terrible sugar is for you.  Guess what, it probably should matter to me, but it doesn’t.  If sugar is knocking years off my life, they are going to be the shitty years from like 85 to 90 where you poop your pants and can’t even remember your own name, in all honesty if those years get knocked off, sugar is doing me a favor.  THANK YOU SUGAR!   If something tastes good there is a 99.9 % chance it’s bad for you and it has sugar in it.  If something tastes awful, it’s probably good for you.  Not sure why God made it this way, my guess would be because Eve screwed the pooch, but it definitely hasn’t deterred me from taking opportunities to enjoy the sweeter things in life.

But back to the breakfast cereal thing as I close this out, when I was a kid I ate shit tons of breakfast cereal.  And to my mom’s credit, she initially tried to get me to drink cereal milk, but when I refused we either dumped it in the sink or the toilet.  Also to her credit, even though she is Dutch and has a Tupperware coupon box the size of glove box, she never skimped on cereal. It was always name brand.  I can’t imagine eating off brand cereal, if name brand cereal is bad for you, off brand cereal probably makes your testicles fall off.  That being said, having lived a child hood full of breakfast cereal and very few restraints on sugar consumption, I’m still awesome.  That’s right,  I run, I water ski, and I’m great in bed (at least I think so, and that’s all that really matters). My last physical my blood work came back and they though I was genetically engineered it was so phenomenal.  My point is, science may say this stuff is bad for you, but I’m doing fine (I will probably get diagnosed with diabetes tomorrow as pay back for my bold statements) but as long as you only let your kids eat breakfast cereal for one meal a day, ice cream once a day, and sugary snacks only after school, they should turn out just like me, but probably not quite as awesome.