12am: A crawling sensation on the back of my neck. I tell myself to ignore it.
12:15am: Slapped something that felt a lot like a bug and threw it across the room. Couldn’t tell if it actually got away from me because we are all sleeping in the same room and Cool Baby would wake up if I turned the light on. Cool Dad says it’s “just my imagination.”
Rest of the night: Itching, telling myself to ignore, getting very frustrated because I am so tired, then itching some more. Clearly, my mind is playing tricks on me. Not being able to turn on the light doesn’t help at all.
5am: Cool Baby wakes up. In the complete darkness, I happen to notice a half-inch dark, roundish thing about 6 inches from where I had been sleeping. It’s not moving, but I grab a random shirt from across the room to pick it up. I move to the light of the bathroom to inspect. Yep. A roach. At least it’s a small one. And somewhat cute, as roaches go.
Nevertheless, I was indeed sleeping with a roach last night.
Tam described the Carlos Whittaker body pillow idea as “so incredibly disturbing.” But I know that you all have dreamed of squeezing a fluff-filled likeness of your favorite bald blogger while you sleep. The question is: Which hairless hero would you choose?
Choose sides now and choose wisely: Seth or Los?
I was recently on an elevator with Cool Baby, going up to a higher floor at the indoor play place. The doors opened and a few feet away, staring up at me, was a baby girl less than a year old. She was tiny, but walking pretty well for her age. Her lips were smacking away as I looked to see what she was holding.
As I identified the object–hard-boiled egg bigger than her fist–I remembered the strict “no food” policy at the play place. One of the reasons for the food ban was to protect children who may be allergic to certain foods. Another thing I noticed as we entered the room was that pieces of the egg yolk were falling out absolutely everywhere. After every bite, loads of crumbs fell on the floor, then she stomped on them by accident, and wandered to the next clean spot. And this girl was covering some ground. Literally.
I looked around for a responsible parent. I saw a father in the corner with a 2-foot-wide cooler filled with ice and snacks in plastic bags. Wow. I have to say, I really admired the planning and frugality involved in packing that thing with the day’s food.
Thirty minutes later I revisited the scene. It was amazing to see how much damage egg yolk crumbs could do after being trampled into carpet. The Egg Family was nowhere to be found and hopefully Mother Egg never found out what happened in her absence. (Okay, I know, not all dads would let this happen. But you know a lot would!)
Has anything ever gone wrong while the dad in your family was on baby-duty?
There’s a cheap pizza and fried chicken place (and writing that confirms that I should never eat there again if I care at all for my arteries) that offers slices for $1. That’s at least a 50% savings off the usual $2+ slices around the city.
However, as is often true: you get what you pay for. My coworker kindly referred to it as “crap pizza.” I tried to justify eating it, but it’s true. Sometimes it’s undercooked, sometimes it’s burned. And always, it’s gre-he-hee-heasy.
CM once told me that you can slash the fat content of pizza by patting the grease with a napkin. This dollar pizza saturates around 3 small napkins per slice. Yum. Sadly, sometimes I would forego the fat patting because I didn’t want people to see me do it. Arteries, please forgive my vanity.
It’s funny how I order junk food, and then try to make it healthier. I’m better off doing it than not. But it’s kinda like putting lipstick on a pig, or whatever that euphemism was from the election. I should start with something healthy, instead of trying to make something bad for me slightly better.
Today, I vow to my circulatory system that if I ever eat there again, that I will pat away regardless of who’s watching. Oh, my heart has something to say: 
Do you pat pizza or do anything else to knock down the un-nutritional content of your junk food?
OK, the BBFF analysis took a little longer than expected due to the holiday (boy, they party HARD for Thanksgiving in Sheboygan), but the results are in!
After analyzing your answers using a detailed, scientific method involving a factorized quadratic igneous algorithm, various fill colors in Microsoft Excel, and covering one’s eyes and pointing at random, the following table shows who has been determined to be your Best Blog Friend Forever.
You’re under no obligation to actually be friends. We don’t want to be responsible for setting up new friendships, only to have them break down when a Facebook poke does not get returned in the socially-accepted time (3.2 days). However, you may want to leave a quick comment on your BBFF’s blog like
“Hi, I’m your new BBFF. Funny, that, huh? Have a nice life.”
or maybe something a little more cordial. So enough dumb jokes, here’s your new BBFF!
photoqueen takes good pictures with RyAn
cool mum is cool with Lisa
Brenda and Amy Wright can’t go wrong
Sarah reminds me of MCC
cool dad gets his weather report from Raquel TWG
Justmatt knows Katherine from a past life (not that we believe in that kind of thing here)
Timothy and Brody should go on tour
Rachel gives Patrick Hardy a high-five across the blogosphere
Luke Mundy and Phillip would rule tag-team wrestling
portorikan and Tam beat Venus and Serena in doubles tennis yesterday
richies would loan Kyle Ray Booterbaugh a dollar any day
Paul Merrill freestyle raps with Gene
Reese and ScottMocha hang out at the local Starbucks
Congratulations on meeting your new BBFF! I hope your life feels a little more complete now.
When I said that there was one more set of questions for the BBFF Search, CM whined a little “More questions??” Well, they this is scientific research here, so I have to do my due diligence here, right?
If this set of questions really is an annoyance, then just lemme know. My algorithm can theoretically be adjusted to use just two sets to find your Best Blog Friend Forever.
- What is your favorite color?
- What kind of car do you drive?
- What state (or country) do you live in?
- Where did you (or do you want to) go to college?
- Do you have a job?
- Do you snore?
- Do you wear glasses/contacts?
- Beach or mountains?
I’ll spill the beans on what I’m trying to do here. I thought it would be fun to ask a bunch of questions and then try to match each of you up with your BBFF: Best Blog Friend Forever!
Well, maybe you won’t become BFs, or even Fs, but it might be amusing to see who you most resemble here in the Cool Readership. Once all of the questions are posted, we’ll send the answers to our secret lab in Sheboygan, WI and hopefully learn who your kindred spirit in the blogosphere is!
Here are more scientifically-selected Qs:
- Have you ever jumped from a high place for a thrill (skydiving, bungee, rock diving…)?
- Do you have any tattoos?
- Do you play video games?
- Cookies or ice cream?
- Are you married?
- Who’s your favorite band?
- How many pairs of shoes do you own?
- Movie night or game night?
- Pizza or hamburgers?
Time for another idea which I have no clue whether it will actually work out the way I’d like it to work out. So, just humor me, ‘kay?
Hopefully this’ll be a bit fun. Here is the first of three sets of simple questions. Please answer them in the comments and humor an ol’ cool dad.
- What color is your hair?
- What do you like on your pizza?
- What size shoe do you wear?
- Do you have a Mac or PC?
- What blogging platform do you use?
- What web browser do you use?
- What decade were you born in?
- What color are your eyes?
- Morning person or night person?
- How tall are you?
- Are you a righty or a lefty?
- Do you use Twitter?
Seen on the walk to work this morning. (I didn’t do it!)
And yes, this means that we have an actual cell phone plan with actual camera phones! It’s like I don’t even know who I am anymore. Believe me, we tried to scrimp and save, but they didn’t have any 35mm film camera phones.
The weather is getting cold. Which, I’m learning, this means more burgers in Cool Baby’s nose.
Why burgers, you ask?
It started with a cute mispronunciation from one of the Cool Grandmothers (who wasn’t born in the US).
CG: “He has burgers in his nose!”
CM: “Really? Burgers? Like hamburgers?”
CG: “Look–burrrgers!”
I looked up in there and saw what I would call “mucous.” I prefer not to use the word boogers.
Then I got to thinking…Burgers! That’s genius!
The name stuck because 1) I don’t like to say that italicized word above, 2) I prefer not to hear Cool Baby say the italicized word above, and 3) perhaps he will forever have a negative association when he hears the word burger in the future, leading to more fruit and vegetable consumption for the rest of his life.
Think it will work? At least until he is school-aged and learns about the italicized word above?
