No really, why am I the only one that gets spit up on all the time?!?!?

So I had this problem when Adrien was born where I was the only person to ever get spit up on. The time my mother was alive she never got it. My dad never got it. Kim's family never got it. Hell Kim rarely got it. Now with Eevie, I guess I had forgotten the pattern. I mean Kim nurses and burps, minimal spit up. Kim nurses and I burp, spit up all over the burp cloth, all over my shirt and occasionally my shorts. How am I this unlucky? It's not so much a problem to Eevie. She just does it and smiles at me, just like Adrien did. Why was I not more prepared? How come I didn't think ahead and keep a hazmat suit lying around for burping? It doesn't even have to be burping either... Changing diapers I get projectile spit up on me and then laughed at. I kid you not, I have to change shirts at least 3-4 times a day. Unless I'm not going anywhere. Then I just smell it and if it doesn't smell sour, I just let it dry... Don't judge. Oh the things you do as a parent. All this to say, it's really hard to keep a little girl looking super cute when you have to keep a bib on her to keep her outfits clean.... It's all just one big damn spit up conspiracy in this household I tell ya!

I've seen plenty of sunrises and sunsets in my day....

So here we are, 30. Nice to meet you. Who would've thought we would've ever met? I know for a fact that I have almost sold myself short several times from meeting you. But, I made it to 30, have been with my wife for almost 7 years, been married for a little over 5 and a half years, my son is 3 and a half years old and now I have a 2 month old daughter. Who the hell saw that coming 10 years ago? ::raises hand:: Not I, that's for sure. I've had my share of a life in 30 years. My parents split and then got back together. My mom got cancer twice. Beating it once and losing the battle the second time. I've checked myself into a mental health facility for being suicidal. I've battled addictions. I've loved and I've lost. But all in all, I've made it 30 years. I've had the opportunity to stay home with my son and now sent him off to preschool. I'm now getting the same opportunity to do the same with my daughter. I wouldn't trade any of that or this for the world. But do you ever wonder what makes up a full and complete life? If I died today, could I say I have lived my life to the fullest and was it complete? Obviously the first no comes to leaving 2 small children and a wife behind. But the question I ponder most, have I actually impacted lives.... Be it good or bad. I can't think of any instances where I was astonishingly overcome by feeling like I have. So where does that leave me? Do I have another 30 years to do so? I'm sure I will have an impact on my children's lives in some way. Hopefully good and not bad. But will there be anyone else? It isn't something that keeps me up at night. I'm not worried if I don't impact your life, but I'm sure its a good feeling. But how do we know? I'm not much of a christian anymore so its not like I plan on getting up in front of a podium anytime soon to give my testimony. I don't even think I have had my AH-HA moment. Hell, I don't even know what I want to be when I grow up. I can tell you that I am a great father, an awesome husband and I love a cold beer. I also can make some mean mashed potatoes but thats just if you're asking me..... So I guess I have 5 more years to really figure a lot of things out. Eevie will be in school by then and I will have no other option but to figure out what to do or who to impact or where my life will go from that point on. So I guess here's to waiting until I'm 35 to fully understanding and completely figuring my life's dreams and goals. This isn't much of a post I know, but hell, its my first one in 9 months or so. Hopefully I can get back into it. I like "blogging" about real life shit. Maybe my next one will be tomorrow about why I'm the only one in the house who gets spit up on and has to change their shirt 3-4 times in a day. Or maybe it will be next week about how lonely those 3 hours of not hearing Adrien's voice are. Either way, I hope to keep them going.

The life most of you don't know I live on the inside...

First of all, this is mostly about friends and mostly about a side of me that people don't really know. so with that being said...

Things this blog is not:
- A cry for help
- A reason for a pity party
- A reason for you to feel bad for me
- A reason for you to ask me to hang out
- A reason for you to send me a message saying you're here for me


Things this blog is about:
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Thoughts of suicide
- Almost attempting suicide
- My lack of friends
- Losing friends
- Knowing how to hide and fake the emotions I really have on the inside


So if none of this appeals to you or you feel the need to do any of the things in the first column, stop reading now. I have dealt with depression for a long time. Since my teen years. Maybe a little earlier. Someone telling you at the age of 10 or 11 that your mother is about to die doesn't settle well. She made it through and I thought all was well. From the ages of 13-19, as I have said before were years of nothing but drugs and alcohol. I only used it to numb the pain I had inside. I didn't know why I had a pain or depression. Maybe it just ran in my family. Either way, the ages of 18-19 I had one friend that I actually hung out with. But right before that he had left and went across the state to attend college. I had  no one. I felt alone. I got my brother to buy me pints of liquor and I would sit in my room and drink them straight from the bottle, sometimes the entire bottle. Just to drown my misery. I would pack bowls and tell my parents I was going to go for a walk just to get high and float above the pain I felt within. I've always had friends at places that I have to go to. Like work or friends of friends. But I have never had a friend that I could call on at anytime to say, Hey lets go get a beer or Hey lets go do something. On the inside I dont have the confidence to do that. Not to mention I work 6 days a week and I feel like my day off should be family day and if I choose a friend over my family then I am this terrible person. That if I choose me time over family time I am a bad person. But I die a little on the inside every time I deny myself that option. Since this summer my depression and anxiety levels have sky rocketed. Mostly for reasons I would rather keep to myself. So I tried the whole therapy thing and the entire time I'm sitting on the couch I feel like the Therapist is working around my issues and asking me about other people in my life. When I started, I went down the whole run down and told her my entire past and present and I felt like it was time to talk about my problems. But that didn't work. So I never got to get my feelings out. Around that time Kim went back to school so I stopped going. I still see the lady who works with the medicines in the practice though. So they started me out on an antidepressant and an anti-anxiety medication. The first week or two I felt kind of like I was supposed to feel. I am happy, for the first time in a long time. I have what some people would kill for. A wonderful family, a wife who loves me and a little boy who adores me. But in no time the depression takes back over. I walk around and put on a happy face and go to work and act like this fun, funny easy going guy but all the while all I feel on the inside is pain. Pain from what, I dont know. Pain from losing my mother after her second battle with cancer. Pain from feeling like I have no friends. Pain from having to hide my real emotions. Pain from the issues it causes in my marriage. So recently, we find out that Kim is pregnant again. I'm elated. It keeps me happy for a few days but I'm right back in my slump. I get so depressed that I start thinking about suicide. My wife would be better off without me and I didn't want my son to watch me going in and out of mental hospitals because I couldn't keep my depression or anxiety under control. The doctor I see has gradually raised the dosage of my medications in hopes changes would come from that. The anxiety is under control for the most part but I still feel bouts of that. My depression just goes up and down. One night at work I was having a bad night. I had been really mean to Kim and left for work in a rampage. When I got to work no one would have ever known because I try to keep my emotions separate from work. On the way there I made remarks of committing suicide. Kim did what she knew best to do and called my father and the sheriffs dept. I dont blame her for that. She did what she felt like she needed to do. That night I stayed in a hotel room close to work because I had to work that morning anyways. I got home and Kim and I talked and never came to much of an agreement because I was being to hardheaded and I was letting the depression get the best of me. All of this was just a day or 2 after upping my medications the last time. So that night when I got to work I contemplated again. I had taken too many of my anxiety medications and was feeling like I was in control of myself and could do it. I texted a friend after I "practiced" with a razor blade on the top of my arm. I felt like I needed to figure out how much pressure to apply and on what part of that blade so that I could do maximum damage when I left work and applied the blade to my wrist. The friend I was talking actually talked me out of it and gave me a lot of good advice. I appreciated it very much. This was a friend I was just reconnecting with and the very next day she stopped talking to me and hasn't talked to me since, which threw me in a whirlwind. But what she said stuck and I have just been relying on my wife and child and unborn child to keep me happy. That next day I posted these lyrics on Facebook from Florence + The Machine,

"And I am done with my graceless heart
So tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart
'Cause I like to keep my issues drawn
It's always darkest before the dawn"

I actually felt that way. I felt like I was going to cut this dark and depressed heart out of me and start it all over. The song is right, It's always darkest before its dawn. So now I feel like my sunshine is rising and I am getting better. It took me hitting rock bottom to realize everything I would be throwing away. But I feel like I'm back on the upswing and this higher dosage of antidepressant is working and since Saturday I have been the happiest I have been in a long time. I'll never know if it will come back. But if it does then I will just have to work through it again and again. The hardest part of all of this has been losing my friend. The easiest part has been reconnecting with my family....

Why can't we all just get over ourselves and value love and not hate?

I feel like everyday I wake up and I see something on the news that makes me stop and think. Whether its some sort of Gay Rights Activists, NAACP or even Religious protestors. If everyone in this world would get over their prejudices and what their books tell them, this would be a much happier world to live in. First I'll touch on the issue of being Gay or being a Lesbian. What's the big deal really? Just because the book that you believe tells you its wrong, you should go against the book you believe in and hate these people. Personally, I have no problem at all with it. I have friends that are homosexual and guess what? They're pretty normal. Just like you and me. They prefer something other than you. You may prefer yellow onions while I prefer to use sweet onions in a recipe. Does that mean because your cookbook calls for yellow, I'm wrong for using a Vidalia? Get over it. Everyone in this world should learn equality and put it in their everyday life. So what if they want to get married. Why shouldn't they be able to? They have the right to get a driver's license or become a doctor or pay the same taxes as you do or be able to be on the same healthcare plan, but you want to deny them the simple act of saying their partner is their husband or wife? It just doesn't make sense to me. My next topic is racism. Did you know most racist are also bible believing christians? Which doesn't make sense to me. The way I understand it, God created Adam and Eve and everyone in this world came from them. Incest is an issue here with me, but I'm not going to touch that.... So if this entity that you believe in, created all humans the same, why can't we just be the same? Why does color have to be an issue? You think I don't know about prejudice because I'm white? Ask my Grandmother about the night the Germans stormed into her home and tore her from her family, to never see them again when Germany invaded Poland. Ask her about how she "worked" for German families whether she liked it or not. Ask her about how she met my Grandfather in a German work camp for "Polaks" that were similar to concentration camps for the Jews, less killing though I assume. FYI, for anyone who doesn't know, calling someone a Polak is just like calling a black person the N word... So get off that shit.... So what I'm getting at here is its sad that a country that was founded on freedom, cannot free itself from hate. Be it race, religion, beliefs or anything else. When slaves were freed, people were outraged. When schools were integrated, people were outraged. All because of someone's skin color. I don't see color myself. I see people. I see a person for who or what they are. So why is it so hard for everyone else to do the same. Now the next thing I will touch on is religious beliefs. Whether you're Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Atheist, Jewish, Taoist, Dudeist or any other entity or lack there of that I have forgotten, can't we all just get along? Now I will say this, the extremists can go the fuck on. Like people who want to bomb abortion clinics and blow up America as a whole. You people are ridiculous. To me you are going against everything you believe in. Like when the Muslims wanted to build a Mosque in NYC, people were outraged. I'm pretty sure they weren't doing it to, as what you all called it, slap 9/11 victims and families in the face. Christians aren't wanting to keep God in everything he has always been in just to piss off Atheists. Its called believing and having faith in something and valuing it and keeping it sacred to oneself. I have a lot of beliefs that I won't particularly get into as to not cause a commotion. Some of these beliefs are about the very subjects I just talked about. But it doesn't stop me from loving everyone for who they are or even what they could be.

Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it.
-Frances Wright

What happens when you fall asleep on the job.. The baby watching job.

Yes, I will admit it. I have fallen asleep a couple times while watching Adrien. Its hard not to sometimes. Working 40 hours a week, 6 days a week and watching Adrien from the time he gets up until its time to go to work takes a toll on me when it comes to sleeping. So it has never been a problem until the last two times it has happened. Before I don't even think he realized what was going on. Its never more than 10 or 15 minutes, But after these last two times, it probably won't happen again. I say this because I'm pretty sure he plots to kill me when I do fall asleep. So the first time was 2 weeks ago. We were playing with his big green ball, just tossing it back and forth. I was sitting on the floor with my back against the couch and I decided he had gotten bored with that because he got up and went into his play room. I could hear hit sit on his little zebra thing and start playing. So I stood up and sat on the couch. Feet on the floor still and I just kind of laid over. I can assume it was only about 5 mins later because the same show was on when I was awakened. Thats the best part is he woke me up. So I assume he came back into the living room ready to play ball again to find his daddy snoozing on the couch. So how does he wake me up? By hitting me in the face with the ball. For anyone who hasn't seen him throw his ball i will explain how he does it. So he takes the ball in both hands and brings it behind his head and throws it. Well when the ball hit me and I woke up, he was standing directly in front of me. So really, the ball probably never even left his hands. Its too bad there wasn't a camera running because that would have made a great youtube video. "Boy hits dad in face with ball to wake him up". So after this time I told myself not to do it again. Well last week I let it happen again. What was I thinking? So Sesame Street was on and we were playing and acting silly. Well as always, Elmo was coming on and he stopped dead in his tracks and sat to watch. I proceeded to just lay back on the couch for those few minutes because I always lay him down at 11 for his nap. So I'm laying there and I can remember right at the end of Elmo the song being sang. So I know this time I was only asleep for maybe 2 minutes. So I had been having a problem with snoring the past couple weeks because I had been fighting a cold, so I can only assume that I was snoring and this is what provoked what happened next. My head was laying facing out towards him. I wake up, Adrien's face is literally touching mine. I can hear like a muffled giggle and thats when I wake up enough to realize that his pursed lips are inside of my mouth. He is laughing like crazy and I'm just like wtf is going on here. I felt like a baby and a cat was trying to lick the milk off my breath and kill me. My son was trying to steal my breath. Doesn't he know all he has to do be his cute self for that to happen? I guess not. So after these two instances I really hope that I can hold it together in the mornings and make it to his nap time so I don't get hit in the face with a ball or wake up to my son trying to kill me. I hope this makes you laugh as much as it made Kim and I laugh. No more sleeping on the job for me.... Booooo to that!

Life as a retail associate... sometimes really sucks.

So out of the past 10 years that I have been working, almost 8 of those have been in retail. So I guess you could say I know the ins and the outs and the good and the bad. The first thing you should know, if you don't already is that when you are "welcomed" to the store, its because the company is making us. I prefer a nice, "Hi, how are you doing today". Saying Welcome to Blah Blah sounds way to generic. But studies in the company show that people prefer that more. Studies in California also show that pretty sure anything there is in this world, will give you cancer. So I'll let you decide.. There are good days, there are bad days and then there are just plain shitty days. Or rather I should say nights. Which is when I get all the disgruntled employees who have just left their job and are on a rampage. So my first topic I'd like to touch on is, in a Pharmacy, there is what we call a Front End and then there is a Pharmacy. Most people don't understand this concept. Therefore there is a Store Manager/Shift Supervisor and then there is a Pharmacy Manager. This is the biggest misconception I deal with. When a customer comes and complains to me, I kindly tell them that if he is working, that all complaints should be directed to the pharmacy manager. But no, its too much for them to walk back there, even though they are about to pick up their rx and look directly at said pharmacy manager and complain to him about his associates. The only thing I have to do with the pharmacy is counting their tills at the end of their shift and occasionally helping them locate an item, which I happen to be damn good at. So that brings me to my next topic, me asking if you if you need help finding something. Asking someone if they need help, they reply no, and then proceed to ask me where to find this item brings me to a spot I don't like to go too often. That spot is the pissed off zone. But what is even worse is being called a racist for asking someone if they need help. Yes, I said it, a racist. The first time it happened a black lady comes in, asks where the perms are and I respond, aisle 2 which is where the ethnic hair care is. She called me a racist for sending a black woman to the ethnic hair care section. I just work there, i don't make the decision to keep it separate. The second time it happened with a black gentleman who I kindly asked if he needed help location anything. He responded with no, I think I got it. No biggie right? Well a white woman came in right after him whom I welcomed to the store with no response, not even an acknowledgment. So when he comes up to check out he proceeds to call me a racist because I asked him if he needed help but didn't ask the white lady. To me, I was actually for once trying to give good customer service to someone who deserved it over someone who didn't and got called a racist. Fail.... Anyways so my next topic would have to be, just because I work in a pharmacy doesn't mean I'm a licensed doctor. So my advice is just that, advice. Most of the time I just send them straight to the pharmacist. Next would be the gentlemen, usually older white men and middle aged black men who feel like if they slam the pen into the sigcap (debit/credit card machine) that it will make it work better. At best it is doing nothing but making the machine perform less and making me more annoyed. I mean every one that I have ever used, i use my finger and it works perfectly. Maybe slamming the pen into the screen makes them feel more manly, but usually just makes them look dumb because it doesn't work 9 times out of 10. So the final topic I want to touch on is, neatness of putting products back on the shelf. I have worked there long enough and considering I straighten every single night, I can tell what had been shopped and what people just throw back on the shelf knocking 6-7 other items over to you. Yes it seems easier, on you, but makes my work harder as I have to make this look good every night in case the usual district or corporate visitor comes though the next day. So when I come to a section that looks like the aftermath of the Haiti earthquakes I get a little pissed off. But what pisses me off even more is when someone is on the same aisle as I am, sees me doing my thing, and continually knocks shit off the shelf and just throws it back anywhere they see fit. Thats when I want to smack a bitch. Like sometimes I actually daydream of going to the people who do these things places of work and just throwing shit I find all over the place. Kicking a trashcan. Going to their bathroom and pissing on the floor. Lots of things really. These are just a few items that I really dislike about my job. Don't get me wrong, there are customers that when I get to see it brings a smile to my face and I chat with them and shoot the shit with some of them. But there are actually some customers that, well, I run from. So they don't bother the living fuck out of me. Ohh yeah and for you couponers out there, just make sure you have you're shit together. I'm all for saving some money. But don't tell me I'm wrong when I read you company policy after you rant off some shit you read on the internet. I could find plenty of dumb shit on there within 30 seconds that is wrong but could swear to you that just because I read it, its true. So hopefully this rant doesn't offend anyone. Maybe it makes someone realize, hey maybe I should be more careful while shopping. Or maybe to some it makes you want to come into my store and knock shit off the shelf and laugh to your buddies about it. To you, I say, Fuck you sir/ma'am and have a shitty day/night.


So I must have bad karma rolling with me. I posted this up last night and I had one of the worst nights ever tonight. Like 7 or 8 little ass cunt teenagers come and just wreak havoc all over the store. I heard them as soon as they walked in and knew there was a situation in the making. So first they start playing with the big rubber play balls, which one accidentally hit me. Like, at this point I'm just telling myself to take deep breaths. I was about to go Walter Sobjack in this mother fucker. Like they were over the line and I was ready to pull a loaded pistol to make sure it was marked a zero. But I went more with The Dude and just took deep breaths and went with the china man just peed on my rug, which really tied the room together, man. So I keep my cool. Then I hear them over by the condoms and lube playing and acting really immature and what have you. At one point I hear the other shift supervisor ask one of the girls if they had just knocked something off the shelf to which she replied, no, but I will pick it up. You're god damned right you will. So the finally leave and all is back to normal. So I think. Until we see the messes they have made and the snow globe they wrapped a condom around. Like what is wrong with teenagers these days? When I was that age I was out smoking dope and drinking liquor. I didn't have time to go play in pharmacies and act like douchebags. So hopefully I have no more bad karma and my days in retail get better and never have another one of these. Stupid little ass cunts.... Sorry just had to say it one more time.

How I went from a believer to a nonbeliever...

So I was baptized somewhere around the age of 5 or 6 or something like that. I went to church before then, I had an idea of what I was doing. I kept going to church and learned a little more the next couple of years after it. Then there were some unfortunate circumstances in the family and we stopped going to church. At this time I was in 4th maybe 5th grade. So for a year or two I didn't go to church, which at this age I didn't really think much about it. It just meant more fun on Sunday's. So I started middle school and made a new friend. She eventually invited me to church, I agreed and this began many years of this being my second home. I learned the ups and downs of being a christian. There are lots of questions a teenager can ask and many answers to be handed down to this individual. Therefore I was at church every sunday morning and night and every wednesday. I can't say I ever really changed my ways through my teens. I started smoking pot when I was 13 and was drunk for the first time that same year. But even after cussing all week, drinking most nights and smoking all week, I was still at church when I could be. All because I believed in what I was hearing. It sounded so good. You sin, God forgives you and then all is well right? Not quite. When you get older you get smarter, or dumber, polls are still out on that. But your brain doesn't work the same way it used to. You see more of the world through an adults eyes than you do a teenager or adolescent eyes. The world seems perfect when you're younger. Its not until you get older that you see how wrong and grimy it can really be. So the drinking and drugs went on pretty heavily until I was about 19. I figured it was about time to stop (kind of) and I was even closer to God at that point in my life. I went on summer mission trips called World Changers for four years. The first two years I saw a lot of great things happen there. You go and work on people's houses who need it badly during the day, then praise Jesus a lot at night. Some of my dearest friends I have met through those summers. Well something clicked between the 2nd and 3rd years that I went. I didn't know what it was. It wasn't long after my realization that I wasn't really living right. But I started having more questions and was getting less answers. The next couple years I went through life thinking that for some reason God had given up on me. I sinned too much and he was tired of forgiving. I know what you're saying... God is always forgiving and will always be there for you. Will he though? So then I started thinking, ok, so if everyone gets forgiveness then what is wrong with this picture? Thieves, rapists, child molesters, murderers... These people are forgiven too? Really? You've got to be kidding? But people always say these people are going to hell where they belong, right? Well according to the Bible, no, if they accept Jesus Christ as their savior then their sins are washed clean. My mind goes straight to the you've got to be fucking kidding me zone. (yes I actually have one of those.) So there I am, early twenties and completely turned off by this Christianity situation. Its not that I stopped believing in God at that point, it was more, I don't want to be in the same heaven as these people. More time went by and I slowly started separating myself from church. The further I got, the less I believed there was a God. So then my mother gets sick. Here I am, no religion to fall back on and all my faith in the doctors. Until they said those dreadful words, It is terminal and fast moving. Fuck me.... No faith, no help and soon to be no mother. However, my mother had a great faith in God. She accepted it and fought her best and kept her faith in God. I always admired her faith. While mine was withering away, hers always got stronger. Nothing could slow her down. These reasons are the reasons I never told her my true feelings on the faith that we used to share so strongly. I had kept these feelings to myself up until mom died, other than talking to Jack, my old pastor at the time. My friends didn't really know. Kim knew, she saw the changes. But that was about it. So to this day I still get questions about what if Adrien got sick, well I tell them, all of my faith will have to go into the Dr's. To put my faith in the hands of God wouldn't get me very far. I have seen too many people, young and old, taken from this world for no reason. Last year when The Roots came out with their new album, it had a song called Dear God 2.0 on it that i related to a lot. I'm pretty sure Black Thought was on a different page writing it as I was listening to it. I get his message but interpret it another way. The line that I always look back to is this.... "Why is the world ugly when you made it in your image? And why is livin’ life such a fight to the finish?" It makes sense if you really think about it. So for my mom's sake, I hope there is a God. I guess at least it made her feel better about her situation. Which she needed. As for me, I'm still here, doubting the existence of this God. So I hope this explains a little about my situation. I am still very respectful to religious people. I don't want to take God out of everything in this world like some do. This country was founded on, of many things, religious freedom. Which means I have the right to not believe just like anyone else has the right to believe. If Adrien gets to middle school and finds a friend that invites him to church, I won't stop him. I also don't plan on telling him Santa Claus isn't real. Just like I did, I'll let him find out on his own what he wants to believe in.....