The Mystery Shot

I brought you, my seven readers, into the office with me for a blow-by-blow account of my vasectomy a while back, and did you know that you have to go back in to test out if it worked? COVID-19 hit so I never went in to have the test; just assumed it all went to plan. 

Then I started hearing from friends where people they have known have had something-or-another grow back or fuse back together, or whatever the heck happens, and they ended up with one kid too many. I don't want to sound insensitive to anyone who is trying to have a kid and cannot, but the idea of being responsible for a third child right now sounds like an absolute nightmare, so I made a point to finally book my test to see if there were any baby-makers in my baby batter.

It turns out Mrs. Noisewater needed to go to the same hospital for something around the same time, so we rode our bikes there together. That morning some guy in Chicago tried to evade an arrest at a police station and shot three police officers, one of which was taken to the hospital we were going to, so every intersection within a square mile was swarmed with cops, probably amounting to fifty cops in all - not exaggerating. So it was tough to find a route in, but I was not going to let a tragedy stand in the way of my nut inspection. No way.

The nurse took down my information, handed me a cup, and said that I could go to the bathroom back down on the first floor. In all the movies they provide you with a nice room that is just for wanking, but that just is not the reality anymore. Maybe they just figure that if people got all that information on their phones, then why provide archaic DVD's, VHS's, and sticky magazines? I get that part, but why make me use a bathroom that everyone else needs to do their #1 and #2? Because while I'm in there doing a #3 all that knocking on the door is going to throw off my concentration. I had to rule out anything with sound because how do I look a someone in the eye who needs the bathroom for an emergency when I'm making them wait because in there pleasuring myself standing over the fold-out baby changing station? Don't judge me about the baby changing station. It's where they sent me and that was the best flat surface available to set down my phone and the vial. 

Nothing like this was afforded to me.

I won't go into too much detail (Yes, I will), but when I was eventually able to finish, I don't want to brag, but because of the recommended three days of abstinence, I powered off a blast Peter North would have tipped his hat to. The initial shot missed the cup, but thankfully I was able to dribble the majority of it into the test tube. When I was cleaning up I felt like Ben Stiller in Something About Mary because that first fleet out was nowhere to be found. That's when the knocking started at the door, but I really did want to get everything tidied up good so that some poor baby's head didn't lie his little head of hair directly into my joy juice. I had a backpack with baby wipes on me knowing I would need to do some clean up, but what good was that when I couldn't find some of it? 

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9NesjZbF1Ls" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I guess where that sucker landed will just have to be one of those mysteries for the ages. Hey, the fact that an old man like me can still have a Bermuda Triangle sneaky turbo jettison like that is something to hang my hat on. Or something hanging off someone's hat? 

How you doing out there readers? Sorry for the delay in posts, but I'm going to try to make sure I get around 10 posts per month, even if I'm off to a rough start. Been to any doctors lately? Any good indicators that you're not quite as old as you thought you were? Anything else at all you want to share - doesn't have to be gross like what I have told you?

The Vasectomy Monologues: Part 1

I took the day off of work to go in for a vasectomy yesterday. They asked that I shave myself. Down there. I thought at first they should have a nurse do that, but I guess they don't want the liability of the possibility of a little knick with a razor and the patient to bleeding to death from their tescticles. That's no way to go. So I got that done in the morning and headed in for my 1PM appointment. When my time came up they called me into a room and asked me to strip from the waist down and lie on the table with one of those paper sheets over my business.

The first thing the doctor said when he walked in was, "Where's you phone?"

I let him know that it was still in my jeans which were slung over a chair and he says, "Oh, you're going to want to go get that before we get started. You'll want a distraction from what I'm doing to you down here."

I trusted his judgment. He's done a lot more of these than me. Now I'm lying on the operating table with my phone in my hand sending texts to my wife as a doctor and a nurse are prepping the twins for surgery. Then it occurred to me that with access to a phone I could do live Tweets of the experience. That would be really funny if I used Twitter, which I don't. What I do have is blogger, so I give you Part 1 of The Vasectomy Monologs.

1:20PM - I'm glad they have this curtain down on my waist so that I can't see what they're doing. I don't want to have any idea what they're doing. My father-in-law said that he looked down during his and saw smoke rising from his nuts. Smoke?! Do they burn the ball tubes off? No. I don't want to know. Don't look down. Don't. Look. Down.

1:22PM - Might be funny to send a picture the the wife.

Medical professionals shouldn't drink Diet Coke.

1:23PM - I had no idea my phone would make that picture noise when I snapped that. Hope they don't take it away from me because this is too much fun.

1:24PM - I hear the doctor say "The machine isn't heating up the way it is supposed to, so I didn't want to take a chance." 

What? Why isn't the ball machine working? What are you doing instead? I don't want the Plan B version of this whole thing.

1:26PM - I have to admit that when I was all alone before the doctors came in I was smacked with sudden blast of sadness and regret. I know all the practical reasons not to have another kid, and they all make sense. We don't have the money, we don't have the space, and consequently we don't have the money for more space. We are getting a little bit older, and Mrs. Noisewater's last pregnancy was really hard. Desi Noisewater, our 4-month-old, was born with a missing kidney. Did we get off easy here? What might the next one have wrong? Plus these kids are a ton of work, we hardly sleep, we both work full time, and there is just no way in hell we could start over with another baby again.

These are all reasons that make perfect sense, and I know I'm doing what is best for my family right here. But we can't help what we feel in the moment, and those feelings were the following 2:

 1. "But I want a little girl!" My sister had 3 boys, most of my close friends only have boys. There's something about that relationship between a dad and his daughter that I guess I'll just never know, like in all of the weddings I have been to (including my own) where a father walks his daughter down the aisle. Well, there is no turning back now. They say this procedure is reversible, but there is no way I'm doing this again. This is it. But it's sad and just feels kind of wrong to me. I can't imagine what a woman having an abortion must feel like because I'm mourning what could have maybe been, and they're mourning what actually would be if they just left the clinic and didn't go through with it. That has to be tough.

2. "Would if the zombie and/or Terminator apocalypse comes and I need to repopulate the earth?"

Both 1 and 2 are important to consider.

TO BE CONTINUED . . . Stay tuned for the next installment, my Seven Readers.

I feel like I can level with you people. Some of you I have known for over ten years. This is why I think I can come clean and let you know that I have been having major league ass problems. It got to the point where I was dreading every time I had to go number two because it was like pooping shards of hot glass, and that's no picnic - let me tell you. Pretty soon it started hurting when I was sitting down. I remember a long conference I had to sit through where I opted to stand up for the majority of it. Many probably speculated I was having back or knee issues. Nope. Try Major. League. Ass. Problems. Then other nights it would hurt when I was lying on my back trying to sleep. That is when I knew this thing was serious and wasn't going away.

Turns out I had what is called an anal fissure, or a small tear in the lining of the anus. You can read all about it this particularly nasty affliction with the link provided if you want, but I think I can best sum it up this way: You don't want it. I got a friend to watch Baby Noisewater while I went to the doctor because at 1 and a half years old, he is getting a little too old to be in the same room seeing a man peering into and probing around his daddy's butthole. I would hate later in his life for someone to ask what his first memory was and that to be his answer.

I like my butt doctor. I figure you have to be a guy with a good sense of humor, and someone who can  easily put someone at ease because patients coming in there, if they're anything like me, are scared and miserable. He asked me to get in one of those robes and he would be right back. I asked if I could clean house a little back there before he was going to be taking a look, and he said, "Honestly, it's an occupational hazard at this point. You wouldn't clean the trash cans before the garbage man came, would you?" I really do like this fella. If you need a butt guy, I know the guy.

So the procedure he recommended is injecting botox into my anus. That's right, friends. I had botox done. I asked if they could use any remaining botox and squirt a little into my forehead, with a different needle of course. You never go ass to forehead. They couldn't do that for me. But, I will say that when everything starts to get old and wrinkly on me, my anus will remain pulled tight and smooth all around like the highest quality imported, Italian leather.

Believe it or not, one has to be put under for this procedure. I remember being wheeled into the surgery room, and one lady saying,

"Whoah! Almost forgot (insert major important term I've forgotten here). Jeez. Hello! Haha."

And then,

"Okay, Mr. Noisewater. Now count down from 10 . . ."

I remember thinking:

"No! Wait! I don't think this gal is functioning at her Sunday best today if she is forgetting things. And she thinks it's funny? This is my ass we're talking about here! Can I get someone else up in here. I'm so sleepy . . ."

Is this problem I have been dealing with any excuse for taking a month off of blogging? No. Not at all. I could have typed standing up just fine. I'll get back in the game more regularly because this was helpful getting this off my chest and sharing this embarrASSing situation with you fine folks. Gotta run. I'm on a vacation from work, spending time with Baby Noisewater all week, and we have a music class in a minute. I keep him very active and engaged, so I'm grateful to have this rear end issue all straightened out. Take care of your butts, my friends.

Baby Erik's Birth Story

I wanted to sit down and write the story about the day Mrs. Noisewater gave birth to Baby Erik because I thought it would be cool to have it all on record to look at years down the line. Two months have gone by, and I'm finally sitting down to write it. I figured out that I couldn't wait until I would have lots of time or when I'm not super tired because I NEVER have any time, and I'm ALWAYS super tired. So while he takes an hour nap right now, this is the time to write it all down. It's a long a long one so I understand if you skim through it.

Our doctor kept telling us every visit that the baby was basically ready to go because Mrs. Noisewater was dilating, and the baby's head was right there, knocking on the door. She told us just to come in on Thursday, September 8th and she could induce, even though the due date was on the 12th. We thought it would be a good idea to go out for dinner the night before the induction so that we would have a nice night out together, just the two of us, before the baby came. We had Tapas, so who knows which item it was because you sample so many with that type of cuisine, but something likely gave Mrs. Noisewater food poisoning. Bad idea eating anything risky around the time of labor. Now we know. Our appointment was around 8AM, but at 5AM Mrs. Noisewater was throwing up and had daihrrea. I called up the hospital, and they said to get her in right away so that they could get her on an IV so that she wouldn't get dehydrated. I was in a panic when I drove her into the hospital, but it was go time.

Here's my big homie at 2 months old.

It turns out all those stomach problems induced the labor on its own. Erik was due on the 11th, but he was coming out on the 8th one way or another. Things were very, very scary for quite a while because Mrs. Noisewater was still having to get up to go to the bathroom to throw up and go number two quite often, and even after multiple IV bags had pumped into her, the nurses were surprised that she wasn't more hydrated. We could see the heart rate of mommy and baby up on the screens, and both of them were too high. I was a nervous wreck watching those monitors and spoon feeding my wife ice chips. Mrs. Noiswater's body temperature and heart rate eventually came back down to normal levels, and so did baby's.

Our doctor is a really laid back cool hippy type of doctor. She makes you feel very relaxed when you're around her. I felt like I have known her all my life, and she seems like the kind of gal you just want to sit on a back porch with and drink wine all night and contemplate the universe. We had a baby birthing mix on, and when the doctor heard a Wilco song, she said, "Oh, I can't believe you have this Wilco song on here. I delivered both of Jeff Tweedy's kids." What!? How amazing is that?

This is us out for some tiny beers. We are starting to have lives again.

The doctor said, "Okay, dad. It's time for mom to start pushing. You'll be grabbing that leg and pushing her knee back towards her shoulders each time she pushes." What? I mean, I know it's not the old days where the men smoke cigars in the lobby, but I had no idea that the daddies got so hands on nowadays! Mrs. Noisewater was to push as much as she could for the duration of each contraction when the monitor said a contraction was coming (because we couldn't tell at all if she was having contractions because she an epidural. Get one of those by the way, everyone. It's the only way to have a baby). Mommy is really fit, so she was good at doing a stomach crunch/sit-up while the nurse and I pushed her legs up, and baby came out quite quick once she started pushing.

Once the head is out, the rest just slides right out because the shoulders can wiggle from side to side. I just remember seeing how long his torso was and how his legs just kept going and going as the doctor slid him out. A number of people said, "What a big boy!" He was 9 pounds and 20 and 1/2 inches long at birth. We didn't know going in if we were having a boy or a girl, and I remember looking at his beautiful little face, not even having taken a glance towards his genitals when the doctor announced, "It's a boy!" God damn. Everyone always says it's the best moment of your life, and it is. No doubt.

But then they said there was fluid in his lungs, and they had to rush him to the NICU to get that taken care of. I thought that would be a quick process, and they would bring him back. It turns out Erik stayed the night of the 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th before finally going home the afternoon of the 12th (his actual due date). We would sleep in our room in the hospital, but every other minute we could, we were with little Erik in the NICU, holding his hand, rocking him, and feeding him. I remember the first time Mrs. Noisewater saw him with all those tubes hooked up to him, she started crying. I wanted to be strong for everyone, but when she cried I wanted to as well. Erik's breaths per minute were still a little high, so he had to get some assistance with his breathing for a while. Even when that finally came down, he still wasn't eating enough. They wanted him to reach a certain number of milliliters, and if he didn't get it all down, they shot it up his nose. This was just a sad process to see our little guy go through. It made me think of a force fed farm animal or something.

Remember how I said that his mommy saw him  in the NICU, and it made her cry? Well, when I put him in this Halloween costume and came out of the bedroom, she cried again - only from cuteness! 

We got an extra day to stay after the usual time allowed for new mothers because of Mrs. Noisewater's illness - they had to keep giving her antibiotics through an IV. Then that day ran out and they still didn't want to release Erik. So they found a little room on another wing that only had a single bed, but at least we could be in the same room with Erik and all the machines he was hooked up to. For that last night, Mrs. Noisewater stayed in the room with him in the single bed, and because there was no room for me, I drove home, slept for 4 hours, and came right back. It was unusual to have a baby of Erik's size in there because all of his neighbors in the NICU were very undersized. Any time I was getting too down about the situation, I would look around to some of the babies around him who couldn't have weighed more than 3 pounds, and their visitors could only stick their hands into the sides of the incubators when they would visit (they couldn't even hold their baby).

Erik's grandma was too scared to pick him up with all the tubes hooked up, but look how thrilled she was to hold him for the first time. This is one of the best pictures I've ever taken.

I'm not a real doctor, you may know by now, but I had to play the part of Dr. Hardass to get my boy sprung from the joint. The doctors only make the rounds once a day, and I essentially had to say, "Listen, can you get the doctor over here? Because our boy's levels are all good, right? He's just not breast feeding quite enough, but we are fine supplementing with formula. If the doctor isn't going to be coming by, we'll just be unhooking him and walking out of this joint." That worked. The doctor came by to clear him, and off we went.

My heart goes out to anyone who has complications with their babies. I vowed to become a better friend to anyone who is in that situation. I'll be johnny-on-the-spot with anything I can do for those families because it really is a stressful situation where you feel totally powerless and helpless when all you want to do is protect your new little person.

The night we got home, 9/11/2016, Kyle Hendricks of the Chicago Cubs had a perfect game going until the 9th inning. I was bummed he didn't finish that one out for Erik's first night, but then the Cubs won their first world series in over 100 years a couple months later in his first year of life, so that's still pretty damn awesome.

Go Cubs Go! This was his good luck onesie.

People ask me all the time what it's like to be a father, and what I tell them now is that I've never been so tired, but I've never been so happy. And it's hard to explain, but everything I do now is for a purpose. I had all this freedom before, but all that freedom afforded me time to sit around get worried about dumb shit. Now I'm just on the go and getting things done for my beautiful wife and cute little man, and I'm good at it. I don't always feel like I'm good at much, but it turns out I'm a good dad. So far. And I enjoy it. Being a dad is way more fun than I thought it would be. I absolutely love it.

By the looks of it, Erik seems to think I'm doing an okay job. Look at us in our matching sweatshirts! Thanks for reading, friends.

Okay, boys and girls.  I got a few topics in the memo thingy on my phone to talk to you all about.  Should be funny.  Here goes.

1. I used to get my haircuts at a place in Roscoe Village in Chicago that had a punk rock vibe, and I think you had to have at least a half dozen tattoos to work there.  When the gal working on me asked what I was doing I told her that I was helping a friend with dry wall in his condo.  She got excited about this and asked if I could help her out at her place.  Evidently her baby-daddy got pissed at her and punched a hole in the wall.  She seemed a little crazy, and by the sound of it, baby daddy was equally crazy and twice as violent.  Going over to her place sounded like sure fire way for Doctor Ken to a hole punched in his head, so I made an excuse to decline the offer.  I actually damn near leapt out of the chair with my hair half cut.

Dry Wall Punch: Makes You Feel Better.

2. I met up with my buddy's uncle last night.  I call him my uncle too.  He was nine or ten Schlitz deep as he was telling me that his work is trying to eliminate his position and trying to find a way to let him go.  Which might not be hard because apparently he called his boss an idiot.  Actually, it was his boss's boss, which sounds worse to me.  They sent him to the human resources guy who had his hair parted and draping high off of his head, spritzed down with aqua net, and when he talked his hair bounced around merily.  The HR guy said that it seemed as if Not-Uncle had a hard time looking him in the eye, and he inquired if maybe he had a hard time looking other coworkers in the eye, and he had to fight telling him that it was due to Not-Uncle being unable to take his eye off of HR guy's horrible parted hair bouncing around.  Had he knocked back one or two of those Schlitz at work, I'm quite sure he would have told him as much.  Not-Uncle is one of the funniest humans on planet earth.

Spray that part down and just watch it bounce!

3. I was at the doctor today because work has been stressful and making me break out with cole sores lately.  I guess it's herpes but not dick-herpes, thankfully.  But I don't want to give Mrs. Noisewater the gift that keeps on giving down in her nether regions the next time I decide to pay a visit to her . . .  Anyway, figured it's a good idea to get some good medication.  So the doctor is describing how people get it, and she says "You know, you might get it as a kid when an uncle kisses you and . . ."  I laughed my ass off and said, "What in the hell?!"  What crazy disease infested uncle is kissing his nephews on the lips?  I think she might want to rethink the vignettes she uses to illustrate these types of ailments.

"Come here and give your Uncle Rico a kiss."

4. Then when I'm walking home from the doctor, still mulling over the doctor's pervert uncle stories, I see a guy fighting with his girlfriend with his hands on his head and looking like he would rather be anywhere but on that corner right then.  More like she was fighting and he was just staring helplessly off in space.  A block later I saw another couple in the same scenario.  So I started singing "Run To the Hills" by Iron Maiden, as if to say run for the hills, young man!  I think this is a good idea to help out my fellow man.  Try this out some time, readers.

Enjoy your day and thanks for reading.