You know what I am? A real horrorshow, oh my brothers. It is with a deep sense of shame and a complete lack of self-satisfaction that I admit that it has been TWO. FULL. WEEKS. since I posted anything on this blog. Now, don't get me wrong, I have a bevy of excuses chambered and ready to fire off at the slightest provocation (but to be fair, these are just my general excuses that I always have ready for any situation) but I have to admit that there have been at least 17 free minutes within the past two weeks in which I could have strung a few words together in something resembling a paragraph for you poor bored folk to read while getting paid not to work at whatever business has the misfortune of employing you. You see kids, what you don't understand is that I work very, very, hard. I work six days a week. I work 50+ hours a week. I have a wife, two cats, a garden, and an unborn child to fawn over every day. I have books that need reading, movies that need watching, and wine that needs drinking. On top of all of that, while being supremely O'Dellicious may not be quite as difficult as it looks, it still requires a lot of time and effort.
Paragraph Two, Professor: My excuses, in calendar form.
- Saturday: After work my darling wife and I went to visit my parents and youngest brothers. I took the ten year old to see Thor, but it was too packed and he was too scared so we went into the lobby and played arcade games for an hour and a half and, honestly, I'm pretty sure that was better than the movie. Afterwards we went fishing and then Mag and I went to Olive Garden (which sucked).
- Sunday: My dear old buddy (DOB) and heterosexual life partner (HLP), the dishonorable Captain Black came to visit. He used to be an unrepentant drunkard, but after an unexpected visit to the emergency room and 48 hours on suicide watch (that's quite a habit, when doctors decide your drinking is so excessive as to reach the levels of attempted suicide yet you just consider it a Wednesday night) he now drinks not at all, and can't even eat fried foods. We play a lot of Halo, and go to Piggly Wiggly and buy some bacon and cinnamon rolls and cook both breakfast and lunch together, then he goes home.
- Monday: Margaret and I both work, and then I suppose we do nothing, as this day has been erased from my memory.
- Tuesday: My old friend Jake is back from the beach and suspended in the purgatory of Georgia, halfway between heaven (the Gulf Coast) and hell (Missouri) so Mag and I meet he, his lovely wife, his obese son, and our old friend (and roller coaster anthem [We scream his name at the top of the biggest hill on every coaster]) JIMMAYYYY FORDHAMMMMM at a mexican restaurant a couple of towns over. We socialize or whatever, and then hug and kiss and swear we'll be better at keeping in touch (although everyone knows I never keep in touch with anyone, and have trouble living in any other moment or place asides from the one my body currently finds myself in). I play with ol' John a lot. He's like a year and a half, and that means DADDY PRACTICE. While everyone knows I'm obviously going to be the best father since Chubby Checker it doesn't hurt to polish your already gleaming shoes once in awhile. After we leave the restaurant and return to our town we swing by Bruster's for some ice cream and then by MAC and Toph's to say hey.
- Wednesday: My super sweet sixteen brother Clayton comes over along with my wife's old friend (and by old I mean young, and by, 'wife's friend' I mean, 'everyone's friend') that we've known since like...I don't know, eight years ago or something. I, being a supremely sexy husband, cook a beer butt chicken (and describe the recipe only in terms of dry anal rape, which was obviously descriptive enough as Clayton made it for his friends the next Saturday). We play cards, and I lose every single game so horribly that I have to pretend that I'm losing on purpose.
- Thursday: Getting bored yet? Well I'm not! After a long day of work we head up to the local outlet mall and do some shopping to prepare for our forthcoming vacation. After that, we get some pizzas and head over to MAC and Toph's so the lady's can wedding plan and Toph and I can do everything else that has ever been invented EXCEPT for wedding plan. Obviously, the guys came out best in that deal.
- Friday: Something definitely happened this day, but for the life of me I cannot remember what. We had to go out of town (again) for something, but it escapes me at the moment.
- Saturday: My ridiculously buff little brother rolls into town like a thunderstorm and stays the night with Mag and I. We go out for wings to one restaurant that we haven't tried yet. We walk in and all these caricatures of rednecks turn their creaky necks and stare at us. We walk up the counter, confused as to whether we order first or sit down first, and then I turn to Mag and TT and say, "Let's bail." (words I've uttered thousands of time) and we all run out of the restaurant as if Nazi hunters are bursting through the back door and we're expatriate Nazis (we're not though, for the record). We go to a different wings restaurant and then to the bowling alley. I've been a good little boy and haven't drank all week, so to reward myself I get two beers while bowling. That is, two pitchers of beer. We play a couple of games and of course, Mag wins one and TT wins the other. I try skee-ball. TT wins. I try that little basketball game. TT's hoop doesn't keep score (but I definitely won by at least a thousand baskets). We play some other game, like CarnEvil or Jurassic Park III (like I said, I had two pitchers of beer) and of course TT wins that as well. At home I have the clever idea to play Halo, since TT hasn't played in months I have to be able to beat him by now. We play two four man teams, winning score: 50 kills. Our team wins...TT had 34 of our 50 kills. I retire to bed, weeping into my pillow.
- Sunday: TT stayed the night so he's around until early afternoon, when my mom and lil' bros (LilBros! coming to you this fall on the O'Dellicious network! You will believe a boy can ping pong!) came and picked him up and took him back to the unforgiving terrain of the golden gulf coast of the Florida panhandle.
- Monday: What?ask you. You've been busy for an entire week, poor Andrew. Don't you deserve a day of rest? Even God himself couldn't last seven days! Well kids, I mean what I say and I do what I meant, an elephant's faithful one hundred percent. After a filthy day of hot and sweaty work (during which offices full of women took Diet Coke breaks to watch my muscles bulge under the midday sun) Maggio and I truck on over to my sister's house, to surprise her husband, who got run over by a Mexican (allegedly, my lawyers tell me I must add) in Los Angeles one year ago. He should be cold and rotting beneath the unforgiving soil, as he was thrown 70 feet and his bike was folded in half, but somehow he didn't even break a bone and made his way back to the fabulous state of Georgia. We eat hot dogs and drink scotch and have a giant debate on racism (par for the course) and generally celebrate his existence. It was evening and morning on the first day.
- Tuesday: After another harsh day of labor Mag and I drive down to our old home county to visit her parents. We eat dinner, talk a lot, and tour the garden and the chickens. Her parents are getting old and all so they're creating farming habits to take up their spare time. They recently got some wild chickens and I have yet to tell them about the time I wrung a chickens neck (the only animal I've ever killed, unless you include insects or fish). It was a truly horrible experience and, if I think about it I can still fill the bones breaking in my hand. After dinner we drive down to Columbus and visit with her brother, his wife, and their two daughters. They're giving us a bunch of baby stuff so we load it all into my truck and then drive the long lonely road back up to our house.
- Wednesday: I don't have to work this morning, but I've made myself a long to-do list and spend a few hours getting it done. Once I'm finished I head down to the po-dunk backasswards town where I grew up and meet ol' Captain and his ladyfriend (you know that on-again-off-again love you have when you're a teenager and that clings to you like the plague no matter what you go through or how much situations change? Yeah her.) and we go down to the river. We walk, and swim, and talk to rednecks, and honk our horn and wave to strangers and enjoy ourselves to the nth degree.
- Thursday: This was going to be our off day, but having an actual afternoon of rest just seemed to fanciful and bizarre so instead we headed on over to yet another nearby town to meet up with a darling friend's fabulous sister. You see, we're on vacation to night and staying with darling friend (DF) and fabulous sister (FS) needed us to be couriers for something dark and nefarious (or innocent and trivial. How would I know? It was in a plastic bag). From this location we head to yet another town to do what we swore we'd never do - 4D ultrasupersonicfantabulousfuturisticsound. It's a crazy little thing in which you can see your baby in vivid detail (that is, if your baby was dipped in wet clay) and find out whether he or she is a he or a she (to be revealed in the next Fatherhood Blog...and in a dozen Facebook statuses already). We came home, I bought a bottle of scotch in celebration, and thus our day ended.
- Friday: That's today folks. I worked, a lot. You see, we're leaving for vacation tomorrow and I did all I could today to make tomorrow easier and put in a good ten hours. Actually, I'm about to head back in and do another hour or so of work. After work I went and picked up our lawnmower from the repair man and then came home and packed. Mag left with her soon-to-be-married friend to pick out flowers, and I came to the basement to cry over my little kitten, watch Tombstone, and write this blog.
Life is busy kids. This was going to be a Fatherhood blog but turned into the, "Great Excustations" blog instead. Tomorrow, as early as possible, we leave for the beach for a full nine days of celebration in the last ditch vacation before we have a child. I think we'll have Internet (thanks Al Gore HARHAR) for at least the first few days so I solemnly swear to post a Fatherhood blog about my daughter/son.
Errybodyloveerrybodyamen.
- Friday:
