Wedding Knocks Kenneth Hard Off The Wagon

 I talked myself into allowing myself to skip one day of the Dry January for a wedding I was attending. I allowed myself to take in input from people, knowing full well no one was going to say, "Stick with it!" No way. Everyone was saying, "Oh you got a babysitter overnight and a hotel? Just drink, man! And they just said what I needed to hear. 15 Miller Lites and a couple edibles later and I was hungover for 2.5 days. 

So, I'm back on that damn Chuck Wagon. 30 out of 31 days of the month still wouldn't be too bad. I intentionally bought and intentionally drank my first six pack of non alcoholic beer tonight. I just wanted to feel like a man with my beer in front of the TV for a must win Bulls game. I opted for Beck's non alcoholic skunktastic crappola slop. Wow. Mrs. Noisewater said to me, "You never go with a green bottle." Dang, she's right. Heineken, Becks, and Rolling Rock are all yucky. They taste green.

Green Hell

You know what else? 45-years-old feels old. The other night we were watching that Peacemaker show on HBO and that actor from Terminator 2 was in it, the T1000. Mrs. Noisewater was like, "Wow! He looks old." I told her, "Yeah, he is old. That came out in like 1991, and I was 14. You figure he was was like 30 then. And I'm 45 now, so he's gotta be . . . God damn, I'm 45? The T1000 is old and so am I. He can't run like that anymore and I never could.

T1000 vs the T45

But, I think this not drinking thing is going to be good for my health. There are even abdominal muscles trying to poke through. They're like, "Hey, there's no IPA and greasy hangover fat in here, now's our chance to shine!" Sorry abs, your asses are going right back into hiding in February when I go right back to my horrible patterns. Or will I? I just need to assess at the end of this month.

The family is good. Desi is a wild man still. We came home the day after that wedding to a freezing home. We went into panic that something was broken, but nope. That little two-year-old impish gremlin turned off the heat switch in the basement. Erik is still hilarious. Tonight when I was tucking him in the top bunk he was in was creaking like crazy. I said, "What is that?" He goes, "That's just my weight. I'm Lord Humongous." I love when my kids say goofy stuff back to me that I don't even realize I say. Lord Humongous is the big bad guy in "Road Warriors" who may or may not have been into some homosexual S&M stuff, but I think he got the name for having bulging muscles all over the place.

Just. Walk. Away. and Just. Go. To. Sleep, Erik Noisewater.

Okay, I'm out of here. Hoping to keep up these basement posts every few nights. I need your support, Seven Readers. Let's keep each other motivated. I'm off to do the rounds on the blog roll. Let me know if there's anyone else I should be reading. I've been out of the game too long and have lost tough. Bye.

Dry Stag Party For One

 I know I've been out of the blogging game for quite some time now, but I know that writing will help me get some thoughts out and feel better. When I go down a mangy rabbit hole of self-loathing, one of my plaguing thoughts that pops up is, "and you never write on your blog anymore, a-hole." So, it's good to get back on here more often.

I'm down in the basement . . . of our new house! That's right. We saved up and bought a house in Chicago. Certain things are really nice to have, like the unfinished man cave basement I'm typing from. I got a projector so I can watch the Bulls games on the wall, and there is a mini fridge and a bathroom down here. Mostly there are exposed pipes, laundry machines, Hot Wheels and Thomas tracks . . . So, it's a man and kid cave. But after 8pm it's like a stag film man dungeon down here.

"I think that's a booby!"

We also have a garage, and a lawn, things like that. We aren't talking a big lawn or anything. The people who lived here before gave us a lot of stuff in their garage, like the plug in lawn mower I use to mow the weeds, I mean grass. Mostly weeds. But, it's just nice to have storage to put things. In the condo we were always having a battle of how to pack more stuff in there, and we even had a storage unit at the end.

COVID is getting old, huh? Jesus. Our older son, Erik, has both his vaccination shots. He's 5-years-old now. Desmond is only 2-years-old, so there are lots of things that we are scared to take him to. This can make it tricky to find things to do for the whole family, especially in the winter where you can't be outdoors as long

Erik is a really good artist. He will come home from school and go right to an art project, and we have him in an art class on Sundays. He's also really good at math. We don't really teach him much; he just picks stuff up. Desi (that's what we call Desmond) is talking a lot more, which is great because we were worried when he seemed delayed. Being able to express himself better has greatly improved his behavior, but he is still bonkers and full of energy. Beating my old ass is hilarious to him. I turned 45 the other day, by the way. Jesus, how did that happen?

Sorry it wasn't too funny this day, and I'm not the writer that I used to be. But I need to start somewhere. 

Oh, one more thing I wanted to talk about: Dry January. The first weekend was brutal for me, and I was extremely crabby tonight too. I have a weird relationship with alcohol. I feel so at ease when I have a couple, but then I really don't get a whole lot done. Then the next day I'm hungover, and then Monday I'm tired as hell. I have been walking by various forms of booze in the house and my mind plays tricks on me, just like the little devil on my shoulder in the movies. "Why are you even doing this dry January? What will it prove? You'll feel better if you just have one craft beer." So I eat a lot of junk food and cheese instead. And I knock down sparkling waters like you wouldn't believe. And I'm only 10 days into the month! I will say that I'm working out a lot more, and on Saturday I cleaned the entire house. I have been starting to think to myself if this is super hard for me to do, then maybe I should do a dry every month? I'll see how I'm doing at the end of January. The problem is that there is a wedding to attend next weekend. Those are tough to do sober. You'll be the first to know how that goes, Seven Readers. See you next time. 

Is It Nice Out?

Doing laundry isn't so bad when you have access to weapons-of-mass-time-wasting like kindles, iPods, and smart phones.  With my laundry machines around the corner of my building in my complex of apartments, it's really not worth going all the way back up to my place through the snow, so I just hunker down there and get it all done at once.  And it's pretty enjoyable when I can listen to retro rock guys from Germany with big beards, text three or four friends, stalk 6 or seven others on Facebook, and read a book about a messed up Italian family in the Bronx on my Kindle.  All at once!  Plus the sound of the machines running (at least what I could hear over the amped up and distorted guitars) can be really relaxing.  

I was certainly feeling at ease sitting down there doing all those activities, but I was also a little cold, and oddly just in one area.  My penal area.  So acutely cold in fact that I had to look down to see why, and that's when I saw my dingus dangling out of the fly of my "Dark Side of the Moon" pajamas and flopped onto my lap.  I tucked that sucker in as quickly as I could, but would if someone came down there before I could do put it away?  My neighborhood is by a big University in Chicago, and let's say a young coed came down there to see that?  I could never explain that it must have just slipped out when I crossed my legs, which I'm guessing is what went down (or what came out).  No one would believe that defense.  

And what would be the nail in the coffin of my indecent exposure conviction and potential death sentence and/or loss of all wiener privileges was the that fact that I was wearing a Purple Mountain Unicorn shirt.  Let me explain.  We had a Zubaz party one night where there were like 50 people in awful Zubaz pants and jackets like the one seen below.  My good friend, Oates, found that when you search for Zubaz on Amazon.com, for whatever reason the Purple Mountain Unicorn shirt is on like the second page of the search.  Try It!  Oates decided this would be a good accent, or perhaps more his centerpiece.  Southie and I thought it would be hilarious if he walked into the place to find us two wearing the same awful shirt, and here we are with our faces blurred out to protect our identities (read dignities).  

If I ever could explain why I was lurking in the corner with my pilly-packers flapped over my jammies, after anyone got a good look at this shirt, there is no way in hell anyone would believe the donger out was a mere coincidence.  Only a real deranged pervert would wear this in public.  

Behold.  Three guys in bad shirts.