Dry Stag Party For One

 I know I've been out of the blogging game for quite some time now, but I know that writing will help me get some thoughts out and feel better. When I go down a mangy rabbit hole of self-loathing, one of my plaguing thoughts that pops up is, "and you never write on your blog anymore, a-hole." So, it's good to get back on here more often.

I'm down in the basement . . . of our new house! That's right. We saved up and bought a house in Chicago. Certain things are really nice to have, like the unfinished man cave basement I'm typing from. I got a projector so I can watch the Bulls games on the wall, and there is a mini fridge and a bathroom down here. Mostly there are exposed pipes, laundry machines, Hot Wheels and Thomas tracks . . . So, it's a man and kid cave. But after 8pm it's like a stag film man dungeon down here.

"I think that's a booby!"

We also have a garage, and a lawn, things like that. We aren't talking a big lawn or anything. The people who lived here before gave us a lot of stuff in their garage, like the plug in lawn mower I use to mow the weeds, I mean grass. Mostly weeds. But, it's just nice to have storage to put things. In the condo we were always having a battle of how to pack more stuff in there, and we even had a storage unit at the end.

COVID is getting old, huh? Jesus. Our older son, Erik, has both his vaccination shots. He's 5-years-old now. Desmond is only 2-years-old, so there are lots of things that we are scared to take him to. This can make it tricky to find things to do for the whole family, especially in the winter where you can't be outdoors as long

Erik is a really good artist. He will come home from school and go right to an art project, and we have him in an art class on Sundays. He's also really good at math. We don't really teach him much; he just picks stuff up. Desi (that's what we call Desmond) is talking a lot more, which is great because we were worried when he seemed delayed. Being able to express himself better has greatly improved his behavior, but he is still bonkers and full of energy. Beating my old ass is hilarious to him. I turned 45 the other day, by the way. Jesus, how did that happen?

Sorry it wasn't too funny this day, and I'm not the writer that I used to be. But I need to start somewhere. 

Oh, one more thing I wanted to talk about: Dry January. The first weekend was brutal for me, and I was extremely crabby tonight too. I have a weird relationship with alcohol. I feel so at ease when I have a couple, but then I really don't get a whole lot done. Then the next day I'm hungover, and then Monday I'm tired as hell. I have been walking by various forms of booze in the house and my mind plays tricks on me, just like the little devil on my shoulder in the movies. "Why are you even doing this dry January? What will it prove? You'll feel better if you just have one craft beer." So I eat a lot of junk food and cheese instead. And I knock down sparkling waters like you wouldn't believe. And I'm only 10 days into the month! I will say that I'm working out a lot more, and on Saturday I cleaned the entire house. I have been starting to think to myself if this is super hard for me to do, then maybe I should do a dry every month? I'll see how I'm doing at the end of January. The problem is that there is a wedding to attend next weekend. Those are tough to do sober. You'll be the first to know how that goes, Seven Readers. See you next time.