Relationship | Page 5 of 5

Ed Hardy and aging gracelessly

The other night Mommy Mojo and I went to see the Gypsy Kings. It had been a while since we actually had a date and we were due for a night without the teeny tiny toddler.

On the way to the venue I noticed that many of the guys were wearing these black t shirts with what looked like a white falcon on it. These are tight fitting shirts that you’d see on Jersey Shore or at an MMA fight, needless to say some of the guys wearing them that night pulled it off and some didn’t.

Some of the guys just looked silly. They were a bit out of shape and the parts of the shirt that should’ve been pushed out with muscles, were instead being taunted by age, moobs or guts. Ladies, this would be the equavalent of your muffintop. We all know that when you see girls wearing tops that are too short and their jeans are too tight it produces the classic muffintop. Sometimes a little muffintop is OK, sometimes, but very rarely.

I didn’t get the whole Ed Hardy craze a couple years ago either. They are cool shirts, but they are just t shirts and there is no way I’m paying more than $15 for a t shirt. The only exception would be a Roger Waters concert t shirt for the 30th Anniversary of The Wall, something like The Wall is an event. Spending around $100 for a t shirt just to prove that I went to the mall would place me perilously close to being a douchebag.

There were even some Ed Hardy shirts at the concert. Apparently they didn’t get the memo that the MMA/white falcon t shirt had supplanted them as the trendy shirt du jour.

I’m not mocking too hard because I was wearing a guyaberra shirt with embroidered dancing people. Describing the shirt that I wore can sound as gay as the tight, black trendy shirts made the other guys in the crowd look desperate. So I guess to each his own in this case. My wardrobe has changed a bit through the years and becoming a father certainly helped in that department.

The Gypsy Kings were amazing and is a great concert if you get the chance to see them live. We had no idea what they were singing or saying, but it was a great night out. It also got me pumped for the next season of Jersey Shore.

I can't weight

Ladies, there is no easy way for us guys to answer the following questions.

“Is she more attractive than me?” It’s a loaded question and hopefully your fella knows to proceed carefully by answering, “Of course not honey. Oh and did you see that outfit? She’s gotta be over 30 and she’s wearing a news boy cap?”

“Honey, am I getting fat?” Tricky, tricky this question. Women can tell if the number on the scale is getting larger. They know the answer of the question when they ask it. “No sweetie, you look great to me, is everything OK?” This answer allows her to state whether her pants are feeling tight or if she just needs a hug from you. Sure, that answer is a punt of sorts, but it helps keep the peace.

Mommy Mojo officially lost all of her baby weight this week. She celebrated by wearing some pants that I hadn’t seen in over a year and doing her version of the happy dance around the house. I noticed that she was getting close, in addition to her frequent progress reports and in hindsight I should’ve said, “hey, you’re getting close to losing the baby weight I see’!

A statement of fact like that is laced with potentially dire outcomes, be careful here. We want to encourage her, but we also want to let them know that we love them regardless. For the record: we want to encourage them because, if they’re commenting on how much weight they’ve lost post pregnancy, then they want to lose the weight. Again, ladies, the encouragement isn’t from a male vanity point of view, its general encouragement, c’est sa. Sheshhh, even writing this I could feel the building wrath of moms giving me grief for encouraging them to lose weight.

30 sodas in a month — That bag of sugar is equal to one soda a day for one month.

So Mommy Mojo finally lost the weight by doing normal exercise and not drinking her daily sodas. How much is one soda a day for a month? This photo is a nice representation of what exactly that sugar looks like in bulk after 30 days. A friend of mine, Jolene Park at Healthy Discoveries has that image on her flickr stream.

In frustrating news, for my wife, I’ve actually lost weight since Baby Mojo came into the picture. As a stay at home dad I pick up the car carrier, stroller and all of the other activities that necessitate keeping up the house and taking care of Mojo. The other night mentioned to the light of my life that I was going to go for a bike ride this week. She asked me if I’ve been losing weight and demanded that I go weigh myself.

She then uttered words that I could never say, “I liked how much you weighed when we got married, so if you exercise just be sure to eat more”, she said.

Bacon Star Wars — Star Wars AT-AT, made of bacon, hmmmm.

“Sure, I’ll have lots more bacon, red meat and beer”, I said.

“I don’t want you to clog your arteries, just gain a little weight”

Thanks sweetie, so I won’t be eating this delicious AT-AT….you can see loads more bacon and guy time wasters at http://www.tifr.us/

Beijing showers, procrastination and dirty towels

Waiting tables in college taught me one lesson that I’ll always remember; never leave the kitchen empty-handed.

You leave the kitchen take something – anything – because it’s needed out front by somebody.

Since being a stay at home dad I’ve had to practice that lesson countless times, but it’s helped me keep the Mojo castle slightly cleaner. I’m leaving a room – I grab a bottle, cup or toy and put it in its rightful place.

This is basic stuff, but it’s light years from where I came from. Even tough I learned the original lesson in college, I went through The Dark Years (where dirt and procrastination where my best friends. )

The Shower

Before Baby Mojo came into the picture Mommy Mojo and I were dating and she was over at the house. She had to wash her face, went to turn on the hot water and was aghast that there wasn’t any. “Your hot water isn’t working, how long has it been out?”, she asked. To hear her tell the story, she was under the impression that it was something that happened a day or two ago.

“Oh, it’s been out a couple of months”, I answered with all seriousness.

“A COUPLE MONTHS? How do you shower? Can’t you get a plumber in here to fix it?”

“Oh, it’s not broken, I’ve got the parts to fix it in the other room….”. In hindsight I realize how silly it was to not have hot water in the bathroom. It was the worst case of procrastination I’d ever accomplished, I was busted and without an excuse.

“How do you shower?”, she said, which was quite a reasonable question considering.

“Well, I shower very quickly.”

“Why? When there’s hot water readily available?

“It’s not the worst place I’ve ever showered”

The worst place I’d showered was this hostel in Beijing. It was in the middle of winter, there was no hot water and there were multiple holes in the wall where I could look out onto various, smog covered buildings . It was cold, had broken tiles on the floor, a flimsy curtain with rips and one of those prison mirrors that cast a reflection but wasn’t really a mirror.

So, whenever I’d shower at home, I’d think of that awful, cold shower that I had in Beijing for that couple of weeks and it wasn’t that bad. The house was under renovation and the cold showers were a small price to pay for not getting on my stomach to light the pilot when it would go out.

Mommy Mojo didn’t see the logic in my story either and suggested that I stop procrastinating and get that hot water flowing ASAP.

The Dirty Towel

A couple of weeks after the hot water in the bathroom was fixed Mommy Mojo was washing her face and asked me to hand her a towel.

“Eww, this towel smells”, she said.

“oh. I might have accidentally given you the towel that I cleaned up the cat pee with”, I sheepishly said. She screamed and promptly threw away all of my towels. It was then that she washed her face for a second time and took a shower with our newfound hot water, using her towel.

On the positive side, I no longer have to clean up cat urine and we have all new towels.

Big knife pillow talk

The other night Mommy Mojo and I were going to bed. I was about to start reading my book when she had one of her questions that would befuddle Jack Handy.

“Sweetie, I decided that if an intruder comes into the house then I would take Jake, run out the house with my phone and call 911. What would you do?”

“We’ll, if I were stuck in the bedroom then I’d probably get the big knife”, I said.

I thought she knew about the big knife in the bedroom. “We have a big knife in the bedroom!?”, she said. At this point I suspected that my evening reading was probably not going to happen so I rolled out of the bed and proceeded to get the big knife.

It’s kept in my underwear drawer, so that way I can feign getting my socks or underwear when any burglars come in. ‘Oh, one moment Mr. Intruder, let me get some new socks on and I’ll show you where the valuables are…’, then I’d take the knife and get all Steven Segal on that predator.

I take the big knife out of the underwear drawer and my wife says, “Sweetie, that’s the big knife?

I wasn’t sure if I should run out and get the kitchen knife in my underwear drawer or lobby again for guns in the Mojo house.

Granted, in the kitchen, it’s not a big knife, but big is all relative. You put that knife someplace where you’re not expecting a knife, then it’s big. I put a tube of chap stick beside it so you can get a true scale of it’s blade.

Come to find out the big knife is a custom made cutter that can’t be duplicated. It was given to me on my 16th birthday, at the time a rather odd present I thought. My name is engraved on the edge of the blade and it’s something that I can pass down to Baby Mojo; so he can keep it in his underwear drawer when his wife won’t let him get a gun.

Mommy Mojo loves to ask deep questions right when we’re about to go to sleep.

True conversation

Mommy Mojo: Sweetie, would you still love me if I had amnesia?

Daddy Mojo: Yes, sweetie. I’d still love you if you had amnesia and when you asked me why we had 10 dogs I’d say, ‘sweetie, we had 10 dogs before you were sick, you don’t remember them?’

Since my big knife was ridiculed I’m going to lobby for something more effective to fight home intruders with, like a cross-bow. I’ll put a catherine wheel in the corner just in case I need to get all Sir Lancelot on that predator.