Been A Long Time...

It's been awhile since I've written a blog. I hate saying I've been busy because that's such a typical excuse. Everyone's busy. Or, that's the excuse people give when they've been avoiding you. I did have a major life change in the form of a 16 pound human being that lives in the room next to mine. Her name is Shea. My daughter. And she's becoming more and more interesting and cute with each passing day. My wife still does the majority of the work but I help out when I can.

Babies are hilarious. The amount of things that change in the first 9 months of life is amazing. When they first come into your life they are useless. Can't do a darn thing! Can't even hold their head up. Now, Shea is crawling all over the place, sprouting teeth (which can't feel pleasant), standing up on things, holding her own bottle, making noises that are cute but not coherent, eating mushy food which smells gross and a myriad of other things that really aren't that incredible but considering what they did for the first 90 days it's pretty cool.

OK, baby food is hilarious. When a baby eats 'bananas' it's not bananas, it's yellow paste. When a baby eats 'chicken with veggies' it's brown paste. Green beans? Nope. Green paste. Strawberries? Nope. Red paste. You get the idea. 79 cents a jar. Yum!

Another thing I've noticed... everything a baby grabs goes right into their mouth. My daughter seems to love the remote control, cell phones- working or not doesn't matter, car keys, and anything else you can imagine that might have 4.5 million germs. Apparently her fake plastic toy keys don't have enough germs on them. She like her keys made of medal and germs. She can eat fake chicken and veggies but she likes real keys. Weird.

And there are things that make no sense to me when it comes to babies. Like shoes and socks? Why do we put shoes on a baby? They don't walk anywhere. And socks? Why bother? My kid just pulls them off and tries to eat them. Hats? Aren't those cute. Nope, babies don't care for those. But they'll chew on them for a while.

Ever tried dressing a baby? That's an adventure. Putting pants on a baby is no walk in the park. Snap-buttoning a onsie? Yeah, good luck with that. I can never get it right.

Picture time.

We take lots and lots of pictures of our babies. Isn't this fun? We try everything to make the baby:

1) look at the camera

2) smile

It rarely works. I feel bad for parents that raised kids in the pre-digital camera age. Poor saps probably wasted roll after roll of film just to get 3 decent pics of their kid. We shoot about 400 pics to try and get a few solid pics so we can show off our pride and joy. It's daunting.

But I will say this... it's worth it. Any parent that's ever picked up their baby and got a smile will tell you there's no greater joy in the world. And there isn't. I love my kid. Hopefully the next 6 months will bring more teeth, some hair, words that make sense, and walking. Fun stuff.

What Have You Done?

First-

Congratulations to the Lady Ags of A&M as they won the 2011 NCAA basketball tournament. UCONN and Stanford were the favorites but they didn't even make it to the championship game. Go Ags!

Ok, now for the show...

Kids got it good! Really good. Especially babies. I thought my dogs were spoiled. Well, they are, but nothing comes close to how spoiled babies are. They don't do anything. They get fed, cleaned, kissed, held, wiped, cuddled and pleased every single minute of the day. Waited on like royalty. And all the while they get packages in the mail for them. Tons and tons of clothes they'll never remember wearing, toys to stop them from crying (that they'll never remember), diapers they'll soil, and cards they don't know how to read. Must be nice.

You know who should be getting gifts in the mail? The parents! Especially the moms. My wife deserves new outfits, cool toys and nice cards and a few balloons too. My wife can use the new clothes because her current ones get baby spit all over them. And my wife knows how to read so a card would actually be appreciated.

What has my kid done to deserve this praise? Nothing. Not a damn thing. It's really silly if you ask me.

And then for the rest of a baby's life we celebrate the day they were born. Why do we do this? It's not an accomplishment. You know what is an accomplishment? Going through labor for 30 hours and spitting out a 6 pound person. That's an achievement we should celebrate with gifts and praise.

I think when women give birth they should forfeit their own birthday and take their offspring's birthday and call that 'Labor Day' and then celebrate that every single year. They've earned it. Trust me, they've earned it! I witnessed my wife's labor and it deserves plenty of praise. My daughter didn't do much but cry and whine and now were showering her with gifts while my wife is gettting no sleep and spit all over her old clothes that should be replaced by 'new' clothes because of the work she did.

This in no way means I don't love my daughter. I do. She's awesome. But it sure does make me laugh when I see all the stuff she's getting for just being cute.

Dads don't really deserve much. We're awkward at best in the caregiving department.

Cute as a Bug...

I've been a dad for 2 weeks. One thing is for sure....I still don't know what I'm doing. I hold the baby she cries. I give baby back to mommy and the baby is fine. Maybe I smell weird or don't hold her right. Who knows?

A few things I've noticed the last few weeks that make me laugh. In our baby room we have a little quote on the wall: Cute as a bug. Seriously, what the hell does that mean? Very common saying, but there's one problem with it...bugs aren't cute! I hate bugs. I do everything to get rid of bugs. I pay a guy 20 bucks a month to kill my bugs. So, why on earth do we have sayings like "cute as a bug"?!? It's comical to me.

Another thing I've noticed is that a lot of baby stuff- clothes, toys, sheets, etc.- utilize the smiling bear. A grizzly bear. Really? It's one of the most viscious animals in the world. One swipe from a bear paw can kill a human. And yet we make this animal look cute and happy and we put it all over our baby stuff. Weird.

Here's a question- how come we stop wearing onsies? Babies get to wear them all the time. They're so awesome! Very practical. Usually one color or one pattern. Easy buttons. No need for pants and a shirt and accesories. No dry cleaning or ironing. Hell, if I could wear them I wouldn't even throw on underwear. I'd buy a onsie for each day of the week. Different color or pattern. Whatever I felt like.

And lastly I have a big problem with this silly little simile: sleeping like a baby.

Sleeping like a baby?!?! So stupid. You could replace 'baby' with rock, burrito, old man and it would be a better figure of speech.

Why would any rational human being want to sleep like a baby? Who wants to go to bed and then wake up crying every 1-2 hours? Who has the urge to eat at 2 a.m. and 5 a.m.? Who in the hell started saying this in the first place?

Well, hopefully I'll be a good dad. No guarantees. It's a lot of work. My wife is a natural. I am not.

Until next time...

Fatherhood...

It's been a while. A long while. I am now officially a father. Hold the applause. Dry your eye. I'm not even really sure what I'm doing but I think I'll get the hang of it. The whole experience, honestly, was incredible. It's something that is impossible to describe unless you have kids yourself. We were admitted into the hospital on a Monday. The birth was Tuesday night. The baby came home Friday night.

Shea Lynn Stafford. Beautiful baby girl. I'm biased but she's the cutest girl in the world!

My wife was incredible. I have a whole new respect for her. And she's even more incredible to me than the day we married.

A six pound human being is really an incredible sight. You can literally hold the baby in one arm. I think I would compare a newborn to a 98 year old man/woman. I guess we come into this world and out of this world the same way: neck is weak so a lot of bobble heading. Poopy pants. No teeth. Wrinkly hands and feet. Lots of whining and complaining. Funny smell. Glassy eyes. Lots of sleeping during the day. Less sleeping at night. Fussy. Grumpy.

So far, so good. I'm sure parenthood will make for some comical moments. For those of you that read I'm sorry it's been a while. I'm trying my best. Until next time...

Executive Assistant Barista Coach

Titles. Is it me or have titles become too silly these days? Job titles especially. Important jobs, meaningless jobs, management jobs, minimum wage jobs. Doesn't matter. They're some titles out there...

The other day I was at Walgreen's. I had to do a double take at the check-out counter when I saw the name tag of the guy checking me out. Executive Assistant Manager. Huh? What the heck does that mean? Assistant manager I get. But what is an 'executive' assistant manager? Does he have more responsibility than an assistant manager but less than a manager? Does he get keys to the cash registers but not the safe? Is he allowed to develop pictures but not allowed to do refunds? I don't know.

When I was at Best Buy last month I needed some help. A lady at customer service kindly told me she'd get me a 'CSR' right away. "Thanks' I said and thought to myself what in the hell is a CSR? Well, a zit-faced teenage boy came over to me and helped me. His name was Clayton. His title: Customer Service Representative. Wow! I couldn't believe it. That's a fancy name for a pee-on making 7.75 an hour. No offense, Clayton.

I've seen at restaurants lately this title: server assistant. Now I've been in restaurants all my life. My dad managed one. He was the general manager. So I'd like to think I know the restaurant business a little bit. It has only been very recent that I have seen the title of server assistant. Why? Because for the last 75 years normal people have been calling them busboys!

General manager. Head Manager. In-store Manager. Assistant Manager. Associate manager. Executive Manager. Good grief...


My profession: Teacher, Professor, Instructor.

My favorite? Guest Teacher. That's what my PC school district calls substitute teachers. Hell, I find 'substitute teacher' much too fancy. I call them 'subs.' Sue me.

Doesn't starbucks call their employees something cool? Like Barista Technicians or something? Nonsense.

It's in sports too. Assistant head coach? Huh? Associate head coach? Again, huh? Sports Information Director???

And I still don't know what a key grip does. Do you?

My Papa Johns Experience

Better Ingredients. Better pizza. That's funny.

I'd like to recommend a new marketing slogan for Papa John's.

Better customer service. More return customers.

Or....

Give us 90 minutes. We'll get you a pizza.

I guess mine aren't that catchy.

The other night I had a terrible experience at Papa John's. But as I waited more than an hour and a half for my mediocre pizza I could only laugh at the whole situation. And I will return to Paps John's because the help wasn't rude, they were just buried with orders. They didn't lose me as a customer.

As if our society isn't lazy and fat enough we can now order pizza via the internet. Don't even have to talk to a human being. Just a few clicks and your pizza order gets rollin'. What a country we live in!

I ordered 2 pizzas for carry out from PJ's the other night. The order time was 6:22 p.m. The wait time I was given was was 35-40 minutes. Hey, no problem! I got to PJ's at 6:58 thinking that was about right.

I paid for my pizza at approximately 7:00. The sweaty girl with flour on her shirt told me: 5 minutes, sir.

Sure, no problem. I'll just wait.

Fast forward to 7:24 and I'm getting a little annoyed. I'm sitting in an area no bigger than my house's food pantry waiting for my order. The place is a zoo. A zoo! 9-12 employees frantically trying to keep up with the chaos. I kept myself entertained by counting how many delivery orders went out and how many drivers would return and yell "Driver In!!!" right in my ear because there was nowhere else to stand. If I moved anymore to the left of this place I would have been inside the soda machine. I could have gone outside but I was afraid they'd forget about my order.

There was an older gentlemen who was hating his life that appeared to be in charge of the pizza zoo. He kept looking at me as if to say: i'm sorry, this is a little more than 5 minutes, please don't flip out on me, it's really not my fault, and if you do yell at me I'm not going to care anyway because I hate this job and hate my life.

7:32- no pizza order yet. I've counted 12 employees working. 8 workers inside the zoo and 4 yelling delivery drivers. The zoo keeps chugging. I'm starting to just hand out sodas to people.

7:37- manager guy says my order is just about ready. He's trying his best but I'm tired and want to go home. Had I not paid for my order already I would have been at home with Wendy's by now.

7:44- manager guy has my order! And this is when manager guy says to me:

Here's your order sir... I think you'll like it.... Looks good.... Please be careful, it's very hot, it just came out of the oven.


I started laughing out loud and thought to myself:

No sh!t it's hot and just came out of the oven! I've been standing in your sweaty zoo for more than a half hour now waiting for this order I placed an hour and a half ago. I watched you make my pizza and put it in the oven. I then watched you take it out of the oven and put it in a box and hand it to me. I know it's hot and yes I'll be careful. Just give me my damn pizza.

He was nice about it but I couldn't help but laugh at his silly comment. The whole experience made me realize why I don't ever really go to PJ's in the first place. The pizza's OK- perhaps a step above Pizza Hut- but it's not worth a 90 minute wait. And nothing is worth hanging out in that little zoo of a pizza shop.

All in all, I thought pizza manager guy's comment was great. Truly made me laugh all the way home.


Oh Big Papa, oh big papa!