Baby Daddy 22: Birthing Class

Ah, yes!!! I finally have another Baby Daddy story. And the topic for today? Shit is getting real! My wife and I just started birthing classes. Now the good thing is that the classes are designed more for me, than they are for her. My wife's job is pretty easy. She goes into labor, goes to the hospital, gets an epidural, and wakes up with a baby. Don't get me wrong, that labor part is going to be hard as shit, but it is a straight forward job. My job, however, is less so. As a partner, I am supposed to provide relief, motivation, support, and strength throughout the process. Now as a personal trainer, I know how to do some of that. In particular, I know how to work with a person and motivate them to push through their perceived boundaries. As a husband, however, I don't know shit about what I am doing.

That is where these classes come in. With the first class, I learned techniques to give my wife relief for back pain. I also learned certain techniques for how to lend support, as she goes into labor. What I also learned is that giving birth will be a very intense experience. I always knew it would be - how else would you expect to push a person out of your body - but I had never seen it. Unfortunately, I can no longer say that. During our first class, we got to see a natural birthing video for a 20-hour labor. Ho-ly Shit. That was a fucking intense show.

First of all, I liked that the video showed the husband taking a short nap. Why? Because there is no way in hell that I am going to be napping while my wife is in labor. Our hospital has a Starbucks in the lobby. The day my son is born, that Starbucks is likely to make $100-200 dollars off of me. I mean, seriously. I'mma crack myself the fuck out on caffeine for this event. My son's first memory of his father is going to be seeing his bloodshot eyes and jittery hands. The nurse may not actually be able to hand me the child. With the amount of coffee I plan to drink, there is a very real concern that my trembling hands would result in my inadvertently shaking the baby. Evidently that's frowned upon?

Something else I learned: while my wife is not supposed to have much solid food, she is allowed to have some. Or rather, science has shown that there is not an issue with her having very small, light snacks to maintain strength. I told my folks about this, and they said they were on it. My mom told me that, while I will have the bag for my wife, they will have the bag for us. They are going to pack cigars and bourbon, and will pick up a rotisserie chicken on the way up. God help the nurse that tries to come between my parents and their attempt to take care of us.

And the final bit that I learned? I am most assuredly going to vomit on my child. That's right. My son's first experiences with me will likely be to see my bloodshot devil-eyes, an earthquake from my caffeine tremors, and then an bile-bath from my puking. Why? Because HAVE YOU FUCKING SEEN A NATURAL BIRTH!?!?! Don't get me wrong, I recognize the natural beauty of childbirth. But even so, holy fucking shit!!! All these people fighting over birth control and contraceptives are fucking dumb. You want to prevent teen pregnancy, show middle school and high schools students a birthing video! I guarantee that they will never look at sex the same way again! Turn off the lights, tell them to watch a video on birth control, and then show a woman in labor push a child out of them.

(Unless you film that shit. In which case, no it fucking doesn't.)

Now I know that my son's birth will be different. One, my wife is going to be doped up worse than the Russian Olympic weightlifting team (yes, it's an old reference. Fuck you, I don't have a more current doping scandal). Two, I know that neither my wife nor I will be seeing anything below the waist. Even so, that shit is fucking intense! When we saw the video, my wife turned to me and said that it was good she was already preggers before we saw it. Otherwise our genetic lines would be done. 

Moral of the Story: Unless my wife decides to go the natural route, fuck natural births. Also, show kids birthing videos and you will effectively end procreation as we know it.

What the Shit, China? 5: New Year, New Penis Joke

Speaking of Communism, I have to say that Chinese government is fucking ridiculous. With the new year, the Chinese government decided that they would post an English word-search in the government sponsored newspaper. What is a government sponsored newspaper? Propaganda. It is also a direct insight into the government, if you look beyond the story to see the machine behind it. In this case, however, the Chinese fucked it up. They just so happened to use the word-search that my wife's friend, Cheese made. Now if you didn't know already, Cheese is a dirty motherfucker. He once drew a logo for a company, specifically designed to be an abstract penis and testicle. Yes, it was a Lance Armstrong logo, in that there was only one testicle. No, it was not actually used for Lance Armstrong.

Now why is it funny that the Chinese government used his word-search? Because Cheese filled the entire thing with dirty words. I mean, you could find the word "fuck", "testicles", "pussy", "asshole", etc. You could also find "Bieber", but that's a different story. Anyway, the Chinese government published this word-search in their propaganda newspaper, without actually reading what the words were. As soon as BBC and the world caught wind of it, Chinese government was caught looking foolish. They immediately retracted what they could, and claimed that an American was responsible for switching out the two word-searches.

This is What the BBC Picked Up

Do you know the only problem with that? Cheese has 7 Million followers, and that shit was posted to his social media. He literally shared it to the world (and to us), before China published it. What really happened? China tried to be cool, and plagiarized a popular celebrity's social media post. Because it's fucking China, they didn't think to look at what it actually said, and ended up coming across like the 13-year-old boy that Cheese is at heart.

Moral of the Story: If you plagiarize something from Cheese, expect there to be a dick-joke and/or Bieber reference.

Russia and Celebrity Cats

RUSSIA!!!! I need you to do something that I can poke fun at!! I haven't heard dick from you in weeks! I know you got a depressing-ass country, but what the shit?!

There you go. That was my shout out to Russia. It should also be noted that my friends started getting heavy into Harry Potter. They were already nerds about it, but it got more-so after they bought a Harry Potter board game. Soon after, everyone was trying to figure out what house they would be in. Yes, there's Pottermore. For those who don't know, it is the official (unofficial?) Harry Potter fan site. My friends, however, chose to try a different online test. One of the questions for that test was to identify the animal that we most associate with. Now while some surveys have typical animals (wolf, horse, tiger, etc.), this one had random-ass shit. They had a hawk, a chameleon, a fox, a frog, a flamingo, and a few other critters. Now when I looked at the list, I saw nothing that really "spoke" to me. As a result, I thought I would see what my gut said. As it turns out, my gut is an 80-year-old Russian woman, who kept telling me, "You are strong like bear."

Now why is my inner voice an 80-year-old Russian woman? I have no idea. I also know that I won't question. Old Russians are scary-ass people. Think about it. They lived through Stalin. You have to be hard to do that. I'm hesitant to fuck with Russians in general (except to make fun of the country), but I won't mess at all with an old Russian.

(This portion brought to you by Russia, chief exporter of Vodka, Communism, and the color Grey) 

In other news, my wife has gone full cat-lover. For her birthday, my folks bought my wife the movie Nine Lives. This was a children's movie, starring Kevin Spacey, the focused on cats. The premise is that Kevin Spacey becomes a cat, and needs to learn how to be a better father and husband. What I did not realize, however, is that there are actual, famous cats. I learned this, when my wife began naming each celebrity cat. As it turns out, she follows all of them on Instagram. What's more, she cares more about meeting them than she does meeting human celebrities.

While I thought that alone was....impressive...?....I was not prepared for what I saw yesterday. Yesterday, I got home to find my wife watching YouTube videos. Now this would not normally surprise me. A lot of Chinese shows are on YouTube, so I typically expect to see that on the TV. What I did not expect, however, was that my wife was watching cat videos. What's more, she was watching a Japanese show that is dedicated to cat videos. And on that show, they have Japanese celebrities watching the same clips. That's right. There is a Japanese show that allows people to watch cat videos, and see celebrity reactions to cat videos. I asked my wife why they had it, and she said it was to show that celebrities are "just like us".

Now I want to take a moment and look at this. My wife is a celebrity in China. What's more, she knows others celebrities in China. And despite this, she is excited to know that celebrities are "just like us" and watch cat videos. I'm not sure, but I think that is called irony? All I know is that they showed situations where the cat got pissed off and that shit was funny.

Moral of Story: I am strong like bear.

Baby Daddy 21: Archaea and 2016

The other day, I was driving home from work. As I am pulling onto our street, I get a call from my wife. She is all in a tizzy, saying that 2016 was not done. Now for those that are unfamiliar, there was mass hysteria over the pop culture shit that happened in 2016. A lot of celebrities died, and politics went straight to shit. Now before people say, "2016 was the worst", let's get real. The celebrities that died were either old, or had abused the shit out of their bodies. Everyone who's upset about David Bowie, Prince, Princess Leia, and George Michaels forget that those celebrities fucked themselves up. I mean, we are talking about hardcore drug and alcohol abuse. If they didn't abuse chemicals, they were caught up in some hardcore controversies. Let's be honest for a moment; 2016 didn't do shit to kill people. They did shit to kill themselves. It sounds harsh, and I am not discrediting that many were artistic losses, but goddamn. You cannot do a metric fuck-tonne of drugs and then assume that shit won't come back for you.

For those that don't know, the picture is of George R. R. Martin. He writes the Game of Thrones series, and kills every fucking character. A lot. But back to my story. My wife called me, and she was in a panic. She said that there were only a few days left in 2016, and the year was not going to end nicely. I asked her what was wrong, and my wife said to just get home and she would tell me. Now, let's be clear. My preggers wife called, telling me there was terrible news, and that I needed to get home before she could tell me. I asked if there was an issue with the baby, which (thankfully) she said "no". Even so, the news is so bad that it made her want to cry.  

I get home, and I ask my wife what happened. I'm expecting someone we know to have been seriously injured or killed. My wife comes up to me, tears in her eyes, and says that we are descended from archaea. Now for those who are not aware of what that means, let me explain. There are three domains, to which all biological life can be attributed: archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes. The first two are prokaryotes, meaning that they do not have cell walls. In fact, prokaryotes lack many qualities that eukaryotes have. That is not as important. What is important, is that my wife hated archaea. She considered archaea to be the lowest of all lifeforms. Yes, they were ancient, but they couldn't even build a cell wall. Eukaryotes were so good at building walls that China had a great one, and Trump won a presidency with the promise of one.

Why did my wife respect bacteria? Because those assholes could take a eukaryote down. Bacteria is incredibly effective at infecting and multiplying. Archaea? Archaea doesn't do shit. Well, as it turns out, new science suggests that an archaea once consumed a bacteria, and it caused a mutation to create eukaryotes. That's right, we share our genetics with my wife's least favorite domain of biological life. How serious is this? Imagine a Grand Wizard of the KKK finding out that they had a black grandfather. That's how serious this fucked up my wife.

Dave Chappelle's Clayton Bigsby Skit

(The above link is a comedy skit, based on the concept of a black, white supremacist)

When I stared at her - confused - and then started to chuckle, my wife hit me. She said that this was not funny, and asked me how we would tell our son that he is genetically linked to archaea. Now I can tell you, I had no fucking clue how to discuss this. I thought we had discussed "big reveals". We had discussed what we would do if our kids end up being members of the LBGTQ community. And yes, I worded it that way because I have no fucking clue how many different sexual identities and orientations there are. We had discussed what we would do if our kids chose to believe in a faith that was not our own, or chose not to believe in any spiritual/religious construct. In pretty much every case, we agreed to support our kids. Yet, when it comes to telling them that people are descended from archaea, my wife had an identity crisis. 

Moral of the Story: My wife is still pissed about being related to archaea, and still pissed that I am not more outraged. 

Happy Birthday, Chanukah

Holy shit has it been too long!! Between holidays, work, and all the other stuff that goes on in life, I just could not find the time to write! That's okay though, because I have some stories! 

Now for those who don't know (I'm looking at you, gentiles!), Chanukah ran from Christmas Eve through New Years Eve. Now we had a wonderful Chanukah. We spent several nights with my folks, and we even hosted a Chanukah party. I'll tell you what was an issue, though: candles. Friday night, the seventh night of Chanukah, we ran out of candles. Now living in the region that we do, Chanukah candles are a fucking treasure. I called every grocery store, arts and crafts store, Target, and Walmart, hunting for some goddamn candles. And every time I asked, they said that Christmas ended a week ago and their shit was on clearance.

Now let's just take a moment to appreciate this. I recognize that I have a shit-tonne of privilege. I am a blond hair, blue-eyed, white male in the Untied States. All I need is another 30 years and a cross, and I will be the definition of privilege in America. BUT! Even with the privilege I have, I do not have that cross. I know I don't have to worry about the cops trying to kill me for a speeding ticket, or checking for immigration papers because I "talk funny", but I do end up having issues with privilege in America. The privilege I face? Jesus. 

That's right, I said it. You don't see me bitching and moaning about having to take off work on the High Holy Days, Pesach, or any other religious holiday. Why? Because none of my employers want the inherent lawsuit that comes with that type of discrimination. But some people do have those issues. And then the Christians bring up their stupid fucking war on Christmas. You know what? I saw goddamn Christmas decorations in the store on November 1st. Do you know what people should be worried about? The war on fucking Thanksgiving. Stick a fork in it, because that turkey is fucking roasted. 

But I digress. No I don't. Just because everyone celebrated Jesus's birthday was not a goddamn excuse to put all the Chanukah shit on clearance. Don't get me wrong, I love a great deal. They had some shit for dirt cheap. To be fair, I am probably one of the only people who would actually buy that shit. But you know what the stores did not have? My goddamn candles. They had a "Make Your Own Menorah", candles not included. What the shit, Jews? I know we like to make money, but seriously?! 

(Check the small print under the menorah. Assholes. Not you, them.)

As it was, I ended up having to buy birthday candles. Why? Because I needed candles for a menorah and those were the best I could find. Do you have any idea how awkward it is to say a prayer of the candles, praising G-d for commanding us to kindle the birthday lights of redemption and hope? I didn't know whether to say the blessings, or to sing happy birthday.

"Happy birthday, to you!

 Happy birthday, to you!

 The temple was destroyed thousands of years ago,

 and nobody here has candles for the Jew."

Moral of the Story: My folks brought us some candles the next day, and I have enough birthday candles to last for a year.