Well, it looks like Stunning will be heading back to work soon.  If everything goes according to plan, she’ll start her permanent position on June 1.  She’ll work on a contract/temporary position at the company for the month of May.  Of course, this means we have to find someone to take care of Junior and we have to find them quick.  Really quick.  Like, she’ll probably be working full time at the office next week quick.

For the month of May, we think we found someone:

That is Junior’s Aunt Burb.  She’s going bike riding across the United States in June, but she’ll be at home, bored, and poor in May.  The poor part is the most important part, because we’re going to pay her.  Clearly, she wants to be part of Junior’s life… since you know… she’s loving the pacifier with him.

After May though, things become pretty much crazier.  How do you find a place/person that you trust with your child when your child can be a bit much to handle with the non-stop painful crying?  It’s tough.. we eventually decided that we’d like to find a nanny instead of a daycare.  I think this has a lot to do with the fact that Stunning was a nanny, so she’s big into the nanny thing. 

We signed up for two services: www.sitters.com and www.sittercity.com and we’ll hopefully find someone through there.  A little more about them tomorrow!

Time for a respite from the depressing posts.  I hope you are excited to learn a bit about man babies.  To learn the most,  you need to visit the site: http://manbabies.com/ 

Now, I was hoping my submission would appear there before I posted this, but alas it has not..  The point of man babies is to switch the heads or faces of a man and his baby.  I have created two man babies.

The first man baby is of my good friend Rob and his son.  I created this man baby a couple years ago:

Needless to say, I was pretty excited to make a man baby of my own.

It’s not my best work.  However, you can rest assured I will make more man babies in the future and will share them with you.

Of course, Burb, my sister-in-law was quite jealous of my man-baby and requested I make one for her.  I guess this would be a woman-baby….

My wife was not very happy.

To those that know me, I’m not a big fan of spending money.  It downright makes me sick sometimes.  While there are gadgets and things that I want, it usually takes me a long time to actually convince myself to buy anything.  When I do buy something, it makes me sick to my stomach.

I own an iPhone and feel guilty about it constantly.  That $30 a month data fee gives me heartburn.  What else gives me heartburn?  Paying for haircuts.  My hair is fairly simple… so it pains me to plop down $15 to $20 for something I think I might be able to do myself. 

Now this wasn’t the case when I lived in Omaha.  When I lived in Omaha, my barber was also the mayor of the suburb I lived in, which is pretty awesome anyway you cut it.  (cut it… get it??)  When I moved to San Antonio, I tried Sports Clips and another wait in line, no reservation hair place.  I felt they were all too expensive and most of the women had man hands… of which I’m not a fan.

Stunning told me I couldn’t cut my own hair.  She said she wouldn’t do it either.  Therefore, I enlisted my sister-in-law.  As I sat on a chair, she went crazy.

A few things…

1. Yes… I am wearing sleepwear that says “Local Celebrity”.  Since I’m wearing them, you could say they’re vintage.
2. Yes… I am eating a Snickers while my hair is getting cut.  It’s another advantage to not going somewhere.
3. No… I had absolutely no idea what was going on behind my head.  I really thought she was just cutting my hair during these pictures.  If I had seen this pictures, I might have asked her to stop cutting my hair.
4. No hair fell onto my Snickers… that I knew about anyway.
5. The haircut turned out very nice.

  Burb is my sister-in-law.  She loves Harry Potter.  She hates Twilight, the books about vampires who really aren’t like vampires.  Twilight vampires don’t die in sunlight… they sparkle.  They can also drink animal blood instead of human blood.  They also don’t turn into bats, but instead can have special powers like mind reading.  They also sleep in normal beds and not coffins.  Twilight Vampires aren’t real vampires and it really makes Burb mad.

What makes her even more mad?  The fact that Edward, the main character in the Twilight novels, is a pedophile and the two are in an abusive relationship.  Edward is actually 100-something years old and Bella is in high school.  He also gives his girlfriend bruises and hurts her, which she brushes off by saying, “He didn’t mean to…” and “He loves me.”  Wow.

Anyway, Burb went to Nordstrom and saw the Twilight paraphernalia all over the place.  She was so angry, she wrote a letter:

   I just wanted to say that I was extremely disappointed last time I went into the "juniors" section at Nordstrom. Everywhere I looked there was something that had to do with twilight; Twilight video playing on the screen, cardboard cutouts of Edward, and pictures of the characters as well as quotations on the mirrors from the books. It was disgusting. You were selling sparkling body lotion so that consumers can "sparkle" just like those faux vampires in the books/movies.

  I realize that it is the juniors section and therefore you are catering to the 13 year old girls who are obsessed with twilight, along with the 30 year old women who act like they are 13. I realize the twilight books are not written for my age group but that doesn't mean I can't tell how bad the Twilight books are. There is no depth to the characters. If anything, Bella needs to get a restraining order against Edward because he is a f***ing stalker. Yet, for some reason, girls think he is the "perfect" man and constantly wish that they could have and Edward of their own. Books like Twilight make women have unrealistic expectations about men and romance, and therefore cause the divorce rates to grow. Yes, I DID just blame sh*t like Twilight for the increasing number of divorces.

  Bella and Edward have an extremely unhealthy relationship; Edward spies on Bella while she sleeps, eavesdrops on her conversations, forges her signature, tries to dictate her choice of friends, encourages her to deceive her father, disables her truck, has his family hold her at his house against her will, and enters her house when no one's there -- all because, as he says, he wants her to be safe. Edward, so "strong" and "perfect" gives Bella a multitude of bruises. But it's okay, because Bella says "it's really nothing." Yes, let us teach girls that it is okay if men spy on us, hurt us physically, tell us who we can and cannot be friends with, and basically dictate every aspect of our lives. Bella gives up her identity and throws away everything that matters in her life for a psychotic boy. Is that what we want to teach girls today?

  I have always valued Nordstrom due to their remarkable customer service and quality of products. So, when I walked into the store last week and saw Twilight shit all over the place, of course I was disgusted. Twilight is everything that is wrong with society and Nordstrom is now just another one of its pawns.

Nordstrom is known for their customer service, so it’s no surprise she got a real response from the company within days of her complaint… from a real person… that actually showed action on her complaint.

Dear Burb,

I wanted to respond personally to your email.  First I want to apologize that you were not happy with the Twilight advertising and products that we are showing in our stores, and particularly here in San Antonio.  I am thankful that you spent the time to write your feedback so that we can better learn from our customers how to better service our customers.  Rest assured I have already shared your letter with our marketing teams as well as with our BP regional manager.

I hope to someday earn your business back and appreciate your feedback.

Sincerely,

Lisa Frandsen

Store Manager

Nordstrom La Cantera

How is that for customer service?  And by the way, if you want a real vampire… Watch Nosferatu…

Recently I got a voicemail from my sister-in-law, Burb. This was the message:

“John, so I’m just driving home and I was driving under a bridge and there’s this guy walking over the bridge and he’s just holding his side and I’m like ‘oh, he’s probably been shot or something’ and then I’m like ‘no he hasn’t. that’s just weird.’ and then I looked and he hadn’t been shot but isn’t that weird that like nothing really big going on right now? there’s no alien invasions that are saying they are coming in peace but actually have sinister motives and there’s not like…been a blackout where everyone thought that for the past two minutes—like there’s no like, anything like that that’s happened. Isn’t that so weird? That everything’s so normal? There’s nothing—there’s nothing really big that’s happened. Like in those shows. Just wait. Something’s gonna happen. I can feel it…Or maybe I just want something to happen. Like not anything scary, like aliens trying to kill us because that’s scary. Even though I’d totally be part of the resistance because I’m not okay with aliens trying to kill me and my family. Um….but…umm…you’re calling me right now but I need to finish this message…Um, I’d be part of the resistance but at the same time, I’d be really scared to be part of the resistance because I’d probably totally get killed. But then I’m like well maybe I’d have my concealed carry by then…except I don’t know where to kill them to make them die…like that one guy, he got stabbed where the heart would be and they were like, ‘oh good thing you weren’t human or you’d be dead.’ Like how do you kill them then? You know? If he didn’t die then how do you kill them?

Or there could be a flash forward. But that caused all sorts of drama because there were those people like killing themselves because they knew they were going to die anyway…so that’s kind of dangerous. I hope that if I did have a flash forward it’d be happy flash forward and it wouldn’t be like me cheating on my husband but then again I’m not married so that wouldn’t happen…and I hope it wouldn’t be something like someone’s drowning me in a pool of water…I hope it’d be something happy like…maybe I’m eating a lollipop? Like one of those really big ones that they sell at disneyworld that are like really huge and they have like swirls, you know? and they have mickey mouse’s face on them and it takes you a really long—(GASP)—or you know those big jawbreakers!?!? like giant jawbreakers that’s like the size of your hand? I used to buy those all the time. I hope that in my flash forward, I’d be eating one of those giant jawbreakers or a really large um…sucker…like one of those mickey mouse—Stunning once bought me one of those mickey mouse lollipops for my birthday once because I went through a phase where I bought those all the time…so I hope I’d be doing something like that. And I really hope that you wouldn’t be like…cheating—or I really hope that you wouldn’t be, um, drinking, um…and about to get shot up by people wearing masks with star tattoos. (GASP) I could be shooting you!!! I HAVE A STAR TATTOO!!! I hope my flash forward isn’t me killing you and your flash forward isn’t me killing you.  (GASP) You dying. (GASP) Oh, I hope that’s not it! Oooooooooooooooo.”

WOW.