Here to stay is a new bird

I haven't forgotten the blog, it's just the crazy holiday season. We usually have things taken care of by now but this year we were very poor until about a week ago. Due to money constraints we are now forced to do all of our holiday stuff in the busy final week before Christmas. I hope this explains why we didn't send anyone Christmas cards.

It's funny because once we finally got some money there were things we needed right away. Christmas is less than a week away but I immediately went out and bought myself a couple pairs of jeans and a cheap pair of shoes. It was getting sad. Even my 4 yr old daughter was coming up to me, saying, "Dad, ALL of your pants are ripped." And I would just say, "I know" and then mumble angry things under my breath.

I hate to be materialistic, but once I bought the clothes I really did feel better. I think there was just a drastic switch between working my rough and dirty daytime job, which left me weary and with permanent screwed up hair from the hard hat, and finally being able to wear normal untorn, unfilthy clothes and not have my hair messed up all the time.

I don't think I'm stylish or anything, I just don't look like so much of a scumbag anymore. My daughter and I went to Costco the other day and bought my wife a present. My daughter looks like a little princess in her pink, wool, Christmasy trench coat thingy and people constantly look at her and then smile at me and say things like "adorable" and "precious." I think people always notice my daughter first and then they notice the guy standing next to her. But the other day we were coming out of Costco and two young ladies were walking in and one of them said, "I'm surprised how many really good looking dads there are." And I like to think she was talking about me because there wasn't really anyone else around and she really seemed like she was trying to keep her voice down.

And that's what I told my wife about it. When guys wear new clothes, people don't think "whoa, that guy is on the cutting edge," they just don't automatically generalize you as a scumbag in torn up, dirty clothes. Maybe girls are just attracted to guys that look like they've got things together while guys think, "How can I not be manly? I just moved that dirty 400 pound thing from here to there? This isn't sweat, it's testosterone. Raaahhhh!"

And my wife needs to take a turn getting pants and shoes just to get to an acceptable state but we're so busy working and Christmas shopping that she's just going to have to look like a scumbag for a little while.

It also feels good to pile up all my old ripped up clothes and get them ready for the trashcan. But I have one t-shirt that I feel is going before it's time. It's a shirt from the Solitude ski resort. I don't want to throw it out but it has holes all along the tops of the shoulders and the sleeves are unraveled on the ends and holes are appearing in random places. So when my wife told me to make a Christmas list with the things I want in order of importance, the first thing I wrote was "new shirt from Solitude" and we went up to the resort lastnight to get one but all the stores were closed. We just stood in the snow and watched people ice skate for a minute and then we came back home.

Anywho, I've got a ton to do today. Just because you haven't seen stuff on the blog doesn't mean I haven't been working on it. You'll get more soon. Maybe you'll see me on the street struttin' around in my new duds, hollerin' at the ladies, "That's right, baby, I shop at Mervyn's!"