Happy trails, Chase the Face

I told myself to not write anything before the fact, because that would be time spent on myself and not hanging out with the Face.  I still have no idea how people do this, where they schedule the euthanization of their pets, and then literally manage to operate their lives knowing there is a very real clock ticking down the remainder of their life.

Needless to say, the time between making the call to the vet and to the eventual saying of goodbye to my dog, has been real hazy, but fortunately for me, I’m the type of person who can throw themselves into work, just so that I don’t have to think about the anxieties of something like having to put my dog down.

Here’s a fun fact about me, Chase is actually the first dog that I’ve ever own, myself.  Every pet I’ve had in the past was either inherited, temporary or technically belonged to someone else, but not actually mine.  Chase was the first dog that I’ve ever adopted, paid for, and been solely responsible for in my entire life.

I adopted him on May 16, 2012, from the Atlanta Humane Society.  My home had always had dogs in it, and when it stopped having dogs in it, it felt like there was something missing.  I was single with no prospects at this time, so having a dog seemed like a no-brainer as far as unconditional companionship was concerned, and I wanted to adopt a rescue because I just felt that it was a more responsible thing to do, seeing as how the pet population is pretty out of control in general.

I had visited a couple of shelters leading up to eventually going to the Humane Society, and when I met Wind Chaser, I kind of felt pretty quickly that this was the dog that I wanted to adopt.  Say what you will about my general preference in dogs, maybe it’s an Asian thing or maybe it’s just me, but this maltese/shih tsu mix just kind of spoke to me.  So I paid the adoption fee in an Amazon donation, and shortened to Chase, was now my dog.

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Finally, let’s talk about the World Series Champion Atlanta Braves

Firstly, baby luck is real, boys.  If you want to see your team win a championship, go have a kid.  I’ve seen it work for the Cubs.  I’ve seen it work with the Nationals.  Both those teams were laughing stocks not very long ago, and good friends of mine with their then-new children, got to witness the pinnacle of baseball fandom. 

Despite the fact that the Braves lost megastar Ronald Acuña, Jr. to a blown ACL, Mike Soroka blowing out his arm, and Marcell Ozuna getting suspended indefinitely for a domestic abuse incident and were sitting as low as fourth place in the division at one point, #2 was born, the Braves stopped sucking just enough to win a horrid division, and then got hot at the very right moment, and rode the momentum all the way to the top.

And now baby luck has worked for me, finally getting to witness a reality where the Atlanta Braves are World Series champions.  How can anyone not love baseball when an 88-win team that had no business making the playoffs ends up winning the whole thing?

Honestly, I never thought I’d see this in my life.  Between the Braves, Virginia Tech football, Korean national teams in, anything other than video games, I don’t have a lot of world championship potential, so y’all will have to excuse me if I’m still in a little bit of disbelief at the fact that the Braves are actually champions.

I wasn’t a Braves fan in 1995, when they won the World Series previously.  Growing up where I did, the team to root for was Cal Ripken, Jr. and the Baltimore Orioles, and the O’s got bounced by the same Cleveland Indians who went on to lose to the Braves in that World Series, but I make no claim to that championship.  So 2021’s World Series, really is for me, as it is for all Braves fans who have waited over 20 years for another championship.

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Honestly, I never thought I’d see this in my life

So many thoughts and emotions going through my head right now.  Will try to sort them out and compose more coherent thoughts later, when I’m not so tired and on the verge of ugly-crying happy.

But how can you not love baseball, where a team that had no business being in the playoffs ends up winning the whole goddamn thing?

Doesn’t matter.  Can’t believe I’m actually typing up this as fact:

World Series Champions, Atlanta Braves.

🥲

2 Under 2: the endgame for the girls’ blets (#069)

Not that I would’ve had any objection to have had a son, I low-key was hoping for a second daughter, for the explicit purpose that I could purchase a set of women’s tag team championship blets for my two daughters to become the lifelong tag team partners they were meant to be.

Anyone who’s seen the modest gender reveal video my wife and I did with a balloon filled with blue or pink confetti, when we popped the balloon and pink confetti rained over my kitchen, you better believe that within at least 3-4 minutes, my mind was already thinking about the tag team blets that I would have to inevitably get for my girls.

It took a few months, but I just so happened to be vigilantly on watch when the day came where the WWEshop dropped these specific blets to the price threshold I was awaiting them to hit before pulling the trigger.  I couldn’t have been more excited when they arrived, and not just because they made mythical wife’s eyes roll like Marble Madness.

Y’see, there actually was an endgame in mind for these blets, and I’m going to share it here, because it’s really going to be a toss-up if my brog lasts long enough for my kids to eventually read this, and that’s even if they’re even remotely curious to want read about dad’s online dear diary for the better part of what will probably be like 35-40 years old by the time they might be curious.

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The day(s) that everything changed forever, part 2

Started on July 14, 2021

I figured I should start this post on the day before, because mythical wife’s hospital check-in time is at like 7:15 am, and even if we have to wait three hours again like we did last time, it stands to believe that the day that everything changed forever, part 2, will have culminated before lunchtime, and I won’t really have that much to have glossed over for an emotional post.

So unlike the first time, we are not going to be taken by surprise by a premature birth, quite the opposite, we’ve been ticking down the days with bated breath to a predetermined birthday that we’ve been watching coming for several weeks now.  Despite all the preparation and bracing, it’s still mind-blowing to wrap my brain around the thought that in less than twelve hours, mythical wife and I will be welcoming a new human being into the world.

I guess it doesn’t matter if you’re given a few hours to prepare for it, or 38 entire weeks, after experiencing both ends of the spectrum, I’m led to believe that it doesn’t matter at all, the feeling of overwhelming there is at the thought of bringing a new person into existence.

As detailed in my prior post, most of the day was spent mentally waxing poetic about how every single thing I did with my first daughter throughout the day was the last time I’d be doing it as a father of one, and the varying feelings of guilt at the thought that my attention will have to be divided between two instead of just her.  The other part of the day was spent preparing myself to be taking two weeks off of work, so that I can transition my new child into the world, and for mythical wife and I to try and figure out how to adapt to a life of two children and probably go through a wide gamut of emotions in the process.

I’m quite paranoid that the send later function in Outlook is going to bone me, and I’m going to look like an asshole caught red-handed sending scheduled emails for my spontaneous trip to the hospital, so that I can chalk it up as personal/sick days instead of burning up days out of my more-finite vacation bucket.  But they’ve already been queued and I have to have faith that they’ll send on time and nobody will be the wiser.

As it is a Wednesday, it means that mythical wife and I pick up Chick Fil-A and watch Handmaid’s Tale, but since the season is over, we’ve been watching Loki, and we both feel very fortunate that tonight was the season finale, since the reality is that who knows when we’ll actually get to watch television on a schedule anymore in the future now that we’re soon to have two children.

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What if… Tim Tebow, the professional wrestler?

The other day, my bros and I were bullshitting about professional wrestling as is often times the norm, and the thought crossed my mind that AEW is low-key owned by the Jacksonville Jaguars, since owner Tony Khan is the son of the Shahid Khan that owns the Jags. 

Recently, I saw some blurb about how despite having signed with the Jaguars, the attempting-to-return-to-football Tim Tebow is no guarantee to make the team, even though he’s still built like a tank and trying to come back as a tight end and not a quarterback, and then the wheels got turning in my brain to do so fantasy booking in the event that Tebow flames out of football again, but instead of trying to pursue professional baseball, chooses professional wrestling instead.  Especially since there’s already a convenient transition from the Jags to AEW, being under the same family umbrella and all.

After about five minutes of bullshit, I realized that this hypothetical bullshit would be better served as brog material and not a passing conversation in private company, because some of these ideas would be fucking gold in an ironic sense if they were to come to fruition, even though there can hardly be fewer things in the world nerdier than fantasy booking professional wrestling.

Anyway, Tim Tebow is cut from the Jags, not for anything performance-related so much as is it that the Jags are an NFL team and NFL teams are more afraid than Gabriel is in The Walking Dead of anything and don’t want Tebow’s faith to ever be mentioned in the same breath as them.  He’s in the locker room, silently crying, cleaning out his personal effects, and our character arc begins with Tim saving a cross that he hung, for last, staring at it wistfully, thinking to himself why the good lord has failed to give him the strength he needed to make it back to the NFL.

Tony Khan enters the locker room, and gives Tebow some fluff about how he performed great, and how his failure to make the team had nothing to do with his talent.  But seeing as how he wasn’t going to make the team, and to not let such physical gifts go to waste, he offers Tebow an opportunity to join All Elite Wrestling, so he could still potentially have a platform to spread the word.

“Professional wrestling?” thinks Tebow.  The fake sport with fake storylines, so much of which is debaucherous, scandalous, and frequently sacrilegious?  Khan assures Tebow that AEW is different than those whom might have put out such unsavory product, and points no further than AEW’s own TNT Champion, Miro, God’s Favorite Wrestler, as proof of AEW’s respect and commitment to Christianity.  Tebow is intrigued, and agrees to a developmental tier-1 deal.

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Life get back to normalcy? LOL

Seeing as how my wife shared the news on social media, I figure now is as good as time as any to finally break my own silence on this monumental news.

Originally written on December 1, 2020

We were watching 90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way when mythical wife dropped the suspecting revelation on me.  The queasiness she was feeling over the day might not necessarily been from the ramen the night before.  The last time she felt this kind of nausea… and then there was the admission that a particular monthly event had not happened in a minute.

The next thing I know, I’m driving to Walgreens at 11pm on a Monday night, because we both felt the need to know what we already suspected was going to be the case with the circumstances that were already in play.  The last time we had this conversation like this, it was already a foregone conclusion and the test was merely a formality for visual confirmation of the obvious.

A second child was always something that my wife and I were open to.  She being an only child, knew the general loneliness that comes with growing up with no live-in sibling, and me, I grew up with a big sister, and there’s a pattern within my generation of cousins is that everyone has two kids, so it seemed like something that was bound to happen.  Fortunately, becoming a father and parent has been something I’ve taken to pretty well if I say so myself, and the idea of a second child never really seemed intimidating beyond the notion that my time will be stretched even thinner in the coming years and to have to go through teething with another baby gives me anxiety, but the idea itself was never off the table.

One thing I’ve learned about myself throughout the year is that I have a tremendous amount of love to give, and I have no doubt in my mind that I won’t have any shortage for another kid.

We just didn’t expect it to happen so quickly and so soon, as we’re just days away from our first child’s ninth month since birth.

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