You Make My London Bridge Go Down

My husband is wholly wonderful.  I am very lucky to be married to such a generous and kind man.  On most Saturday mornings, like today, he allows me to sleep late and then makes me a breakfast of choice upon my eventual waking.  Today, it was scrambled eggs and bacon.  Yum. Bacon.  (See? I promised you more posts about bacon.)

However, he is terrific in so many more ways than this.  He is an amazing father; my daughter is totally a daddy’s girl. Sometimes she starts crying just because he has left one room of our house for the bathroom.  When this happens, instead of comforting her, I state: “For Christ’s sake, Emily.  Your dad is just taking a piss.”   I’m fully banking on the idea that she won’t remember most of what I say to her while she’s this young. But she just beams whenever she’s snuggled up in his arms.  It melts my heart (I do have one; it’s not cold and black like one might assume). 

My husband also makes me laugh on a daily basis.  This is incredibly important.  More importantly, however, he finds me funny too.  He even laughs at the really stupid shit I do – like making up songs all the time for the most random of occasions.  His favorite is probably “Puppy Time,” for when we visit my parent’s house to play outside with their three dogs, bringing along our daschund for a puppy play date.  He also enjoyed “Pantsless Spaghetti,” a little ditty whose lyrics I invented after I woke up from a nap and decided I didn’t feel like putting my pants back on to sit and eat supper.

He also does favors for me that no one else in the world would do.  For example, he paints my toe nails upon request, and scratches my head when I get a really itchy scalp.  He also helped me shave my upper legs during my pregnancy when I couldn’t fully see my own inner thighs.   

He will even listen to me describe my dreams, although there’s a ten minute rule.  If my description goes beyond this time, I must accept that he has already zoned out on my bizarro review of my sleepy time cinema.  He recently had to listen to this one: Last night, Sam, I had a dream where Angie (my best friend – we have the same name – not me in third person) took me out to eat because she wanted to have an important discussion with me.  This dinner conversation was prompted by some concerns you had reached out to her about.  You didn’t know how to help me, so you asked for her assistance.  She let me know that you were really worried about me because I had been downloading and viewing Fergie music videos all day, every day.  Apparently, I also would not stop singing “London Bridge.”  You were getting really worried.

I tried to look up what this all meant in my dream dictionary, but surprisingly there was no entry for “fergilicious.”  That dream was also a bit of a time warp.  How relevant is Fergie right now?  The students I work with probably wouldn’t even know who that is! But I do know that my husband makes my londy, londy, londy go down (whatever that means, Fergie Ferg).

Diving in Deep

Whatever you do in this life, you should do it well.To fully realize such a rule, this often requires the acquisition of some new skill or knowledge.For example, when I was bartender, I wished to do my job well and therefore sought to familiarize myself with many new drink recipes. Even though I tended bar in Northern Wisconsin and therefore primarily served brandy and cola, and had to open a lot of bottles of beer, I still had committed quite the library of martini recipes to my memory.I should probably admit I liked vodka, so said recipes were used for personal more than professional use.Regardless, I committed myself fully and gained new knowledge and skills.I would also like to boast that I received recognition as “Bartender of the Year” for 2006 in our local newspaper.Okay, I did vote for myself more than once.

In my life, I have also committed myself to education.When I completed a university course entitled “Major Authors: Jane Austen,” I immersed myself in her literature.I read not only the required texts, but all of her novels. Of course I aced the class and was thoroughly praised by my professor. I also fell so ardently in love with her writing then that I later named my dog Darcy and gave my first child the middle name Jane.You will be happy to know that my first child was a daughter.

I’ve become a student of almost every position I’ve held in my life, hobby I started, or any pastime I participated in.To demonstrate this to its fullest extent, I even bought a few books on better sex after I first became active.I never received any “of the year” award or grade for this activity, but I’m pretty damn sure I absolutely excelled at this too, with or without the literature I had purchased.In fact, I don’t think those books helped one bit – and I never even fully read the book I bought about tantric sex. I don’t know why I bought that; I think Sting must have still been quite popular at the time.In my thirties now, I think tantric sex just seems like a chore. That requires a lot of clearing up of your schedule.At any rate, the point is that I have a personality that generally dives very deeply into all that I do, so why would this project be an exception?

For this blog, then, I had to begin by acquiring the proper knowledge for success.I conducted some research online, and discovered (to promptly ignore most of) the following advice from an article titled “Starting a Blog in 2012? Avoid these Seven New Blogger Blunders”:

1.  Making Your Blog All About You

The article suggests that the majority of your content be about a subject other than one’s self.I was about to end my research right here because I thought (actually I may have verbally vocalized this aloud to the computer screen), “Fuck you. I’m fascinating.” The author offers such advice so that the blogger might expand his or her audience base as ultimately “You might be the author, but the blog exists because of your readers.”This does appear to be wise advice, but I can be selfish. I feel like Adam Sandler’s character in The Wedding Singer: “I have the microphone, so you will listen to every damn word I say” (something very similar was said to friends and family when I gave a toast at my sister’s wedding).

2.  Writing About Every Topic Under The Sun

Here, the author suggests that you pick a subject and stick to it.Find something that you love and write about it. Well, I think I’m awesome, but I was just told to not write about myself.So, what else do I love? Bacon.Look forward to lots of posts about bacon.

3.  Confusing Your First Time Visitors

This is actually really good advice here, and a universal truth.It only takes a few seconds for others to form an impression of you, and you want to make it a favorable one.To ensure that you make a good impression, I here add my own advice on a few other things to avoid: Don’t begin your blog at 3:30 am during a bout of insomnia brought about by withdrawal from your anti-depressant medication.Don’t ask your readers to send you money.Don’t call them bitches immediately following said request for money.

4.  Not Paying Due Attention to your “About Me”page

Let’s be honest: my primary audience here currently exists of only my friend Jess –and she already “gets me.”I have not yet added any details to my profile for this page, either, so I imagine I should include some information about myself now. Let me begin with my youth …

When I was age twelve, a lot of my friends began dating.I didn’t have a boyfriend, and this made me feel like a loser.So, what did I do to remedy the situation?I made up an imaginary boyfriend, of course.He lived out of town, and his name was “Andy.”Once my mother bought me a necklace with a heart pendant on it, and I told everyone Andy had bought it for me.Having a fake boyfriend made me pretty cool.

When I was age fifteen, a lot of my friends started doing drugs.I just said no, but peer pressure once again made me feel like a loser.So, I filled a piece of notebook paper with some lawn weeds, rolled it up to look like a joint, and burnt it at the edge with a lighter I found in the kitchen junk drawer.Later, I brought this item to school and told my friends I had a “doobie” in my backpack. I was a total bad ass … and a complete idiot.

When I was age seventeen, I had my first real kiss. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel like a loser about the lateness of this event. What most novels had led me to believe would be a magical moment was rather disappointing; it was just wet and messy.I told my boyfriend, “Hmmm …that was really slobbery.”He replied, “That’s the way it’s supposed to be.You just don’t know because you’ve never kissed anyone before.”By the way, he was wrong about the way kissing was meant to be.

5.  Writing Like Your High School English Teacher

So, if I didn’t stop reading after this author’s first bit of advice, I really should end it all right here when she says not to write like your high school English teacher.Given that I am a high school English teacher, I’m totally fucked in this blog business. Wait.I would never write“totally fucked” in anything distributed in the classroom, so I might still be okay according to this web advice.And, you know what else … screw you, lady, for making the assumption that all teachers are rigid, dry, and dull. That’s stereotyping, and that is so not cool.

6.  Not Embracing Social Media

I have been on Facebook since its inception, when it was basically created just to check out chicks on campus.I was a non-trad at this time when it was initially available only to university students.I didn’t have a lot of facebook “friends”then, as I was older and no longer as attractive as I was at age twenty.Also, I was not a whore.I refuse to twitter because I think it’s a vapid site created for individuals who believe they’re far more important than they actually are.Yes, I acknowledge I’m a hypocrite because I’m writing a blog about myself where I publically declare that I am both “fascinating” and “awesome.”I did, however, add the pinterest app yesterday, and in fact used it to pin this article when I began my blog around 3 a.m. So, am I good with this piece of advice?

And finally ….

7.  Ignoring Other Bloggers

I read about Beyoncé –the giant metal rooster. Yes, I know that technically Beyoncé is a rooster, not a chicken. I’m all set.