No, Not the Curtains!

Welcome, dear reader,1 to post #3 on having a first child. This post makes three consecutive posts on the same topic, all posted two weeks apart, making this series the most coordinated thing I’ve ever done on this blog.2 The fact that all of this is happening when I have an almost-8-month-old makes this all the more confusing. Oh crap. Am I growing up? No! I can’t! Okay, I’m gonna be super childish riiiiiiight now:

On we must trod!3 In case you have not been following along,4 I’ve been trying to help soon-to-be-first-time-parents get a sense of what they can actually expect from having a first child. Check here for the first post and here for the second. This here is the third and final post, so…take notes or something. Whatever you adult people do when important things are being stated.

So far, we’ve discussed that a vast majority of the “advice” you’ve been getting on your upcoming bundle of screami- uh…joy – isn’t really advice at all and the lack of sleep and time you can expect from having a first child. More importantly, I’ve done my best to explain why these latter two things will happen, which is what most others don’t seem to do. Here’s some more practical advice:

So you won’t get any sleep and sleeping when the baby sleeps is nigh-impossible. We’ve covered that. Here’s the good5 part about this: you’ll be so sleep-deprived and tired that you’ll have absolutely no clue how dysfunctional you actually are! Yay!

The first six months of my daughter’s life were miserable for all of us. She hated everything when she didn’t sleep and she hated going to sleep.6 This resulted in almost-literally non-stop screaming unless she was sleeping, which, if you were paying attention in the previous sentence, was never. I knew I wasn’t getting much sleep and I knew I was exhausted; there were days at work where I literally felt like my brain was lagging several seconds behind real-time. It felt kind of like a video that was lagging a second or two behind its audio, except in real life and instead of audio/visual synchronization being off, it was audio/understanding. It was no fun and it probably made me seem like a major creeper because there were several days where I’d keep staring at people for a good few seconds after they had finished speaking as my brain caught up on what they were saying.

Even though I knew I was out of it most of the time, I had no clue how bad this was. The day that my daughter was born,7 my phone alerted me to a text and my response was to jerk and look towards it as though I’d just spotted a snake sitting beside me. During the first six months, I’d be speaking with someone and they’d tell me that we had already had that particular conversation. Several times, I went to send one of my brothers a text only to see the same exact text up above as the last text I’d sent him. Sometimes there’d even be a reply that I totally did not remember reading. I watched the first trailer that was released for Avengers: Age of Ultron at some point during those first six months. I remember standing there watching the trailer, but I can’t tell you one thing that was in it. A deep voice, maybe? I don’t remember. It gets bad. But you’ll have no idea how bad it is, at least not for a few months. So take solace from that.10

But don’t take solace from the fact that you’ll actually be sleeping, if only just for a few hours every night.11 Yup, sorry. Even when you’re sleeping, you’re not really sleeping. My daughter once randomly started coughing/choking in the middle of the night; I woke up after I had thrown the sheets off and made it halfway across the room to her crib.12 When you have a newborn,13 your brain doesn’t really fully shut down at night because it wants to make sure that your baby is, you know, not dead. Your eyes may be closed, but your ears sure as heck aren’t and your brain is keeping an…uh…eye on them to make sure Baby [insert-your-last-name-here] isn’t dying just because you need sleep. Which…I guess is a good thing.14

As you wait for your first baby to arrive, you also will have people tell you that your life will forever be changed completely when the baby arrives. This is also accurate, albeit not-entirely-descriptive and really mostly scary-sounding. Besides the more obvious changes that I discussed in the previous post, you’ll find that the baby will even change things when she’s not even present. Allow me to explain:

So there you are. Your baby just recently turned 3 months old and you and your significant other have decided that it’s high time you get some time to yourselves again. You drop the baby off at a parents’ house or you hire a babysitter and you’re off! You get to the movie theater, lean back in your chair, put your arm around the co-parent of your baby, and sigh. This. This right here is awesome.

“Finally,” you think, “Baby-free time. And I’m going to enjoy every single se-”

Sniff. Sniiiiiiff.

“Why do I smell poop?”

Yup. This is a thing that happens. Your baby is not present. In fact, your baby is nowhere near you. And you smell it. The good news: no, you don’t actually have any on you. The bad news: your nose just perpetually tells your brain that it smells poop now. Sorry. There’s not really much you can do about this other than cry, which isn’t going to fix anything, and which you’re already doing anyway.15 Welcome to parenthood!

Another way that your baby alters your entire mental state is what my wife and I like to refer to as “Phantom Baby.” Phantom Baby does not exist…at least not outside of your mind. Inside your mind, however, Phantom Baby is very, very real. Phantom Baby is an Inception-esque16 mental projection of your real baby that lives in your mind with one intention: make everything terrible.

You’ll be sleeping standing up in the shower when you suddenly wake with a start. Crying! The baby is crying! How long has she been going? How long have you been standing in the shower? Oh no, you must not have heard her because the water was running! What an awful parent you must be! So you frantically shut off the shower and get halfway dry before your incredibly-slow mind finally realizes that the baby isn’t screaming at all.

“Maybe she went back to sleep?” You think to yourself. But no. She did not go back to sleep because she was never awake to begin with. You’ve just experienced Phantom Baby. Fun, right?18

Thanks for reading, everyone. I’ll see you all again in two weeks as I return to my usual, completely off-the-wall random posts. Hooray!

1 Again with this?

2 And maybe in my life.

3 Am I doing this right?

4 In which case, shame on you! Shaaaaaaaaaame!

5 "Good."

6 What a great combination!

7 Yup, it starts that quickly! Hooray!8

8 *Glares.*

Are you ready?9

9 That was mean.

10 Or…like…something? I don’t know.

11 I’m taking everything from you, but your baby will have even less mercy.

12 And yes, this made me feel like an awesome dad.

13 …and you’re a halfway-decent parent…

14 Probably.

15 See footnote 19 here.

16 If you haven’t seen Inception, there is likely something wrong with you and you’re going to be a terrible parent.17

17 Okay. That was harsh. But you should probably watch it anyway. Just in case, you know?

18 Wrong.

What the curtains?

Hello my loving and adoring fans.1

Before I start, I’d like to call attention to the fact that, not only did I post again like I promised I would, my post is coming on time!!4 For those who don’t have children yet and don’t understand why this might be a feat, you’re about to find out. Because in today’s post, we will be starting to talk about what having a first child is actually like, thereby giving you a peek into a world you can’t even possibly begin to understand or imagine.5

So I have to apologize because we’re gonna start with the lack of sleep thing. I know I ragged on everyone else for bringing this up all of the time, but I’m going to go a step further than them so that exempts me from my prior griping.6 What every person on the planet says is true: you aren’t going to sleep. But I was very recently where you are right now and I know what’s going through your naïve and smug little brain. You’re thinking, much like I was when in your position, “Psh I went to college. I’ve pulled my fair share of all-nighters. What’s the big deal?” If I were physically present with you right now, I’d slap you.7 If I am anywhere near you as you’re reading this, come get my attention so I can slap you. If you are not near me, please receive this digital slap. See, everyone tells you that you’re not going to get any sleep and that you’ve never experienced exhaustion the likes of which you’re about to experience, but they never explain why. Lucky for you, I’m here.8

When you pulled your all-nighter in college to write that 20-page thesis you had put off for the entire semester,10 you struggled through the following day by drinking enough caffeine-laden drinks to make a coma patient antsy. And then, and here’s the important part, you crashed. You went home and forced your legs to keep moving until your knees hit your bed, at which point you didn’t even get into bed; you just let your momentum carry you forward so that you fell into it, falling asleep before your face hit the mattress, and then you stayed comatose for 35 hours. When you have a baby, there is no crash. Your baby has no concept of time or night or day and no ability to put herself back to sleep on her own just yet. So your schedule consists of putting your baby to sleep,11 waking up every 10 minutes when she starts screaming again, panicking and destroying your phone when its alarm goes off just minutes after you’ve put the baby to sleep for the 14th time that night, dragging yourself through the day, breaking down and uncontrollably sobbing, and then starting all over from square one. There’s no crash. There’s no time to catch up on sleep. There’s just lots and lots of tears, and not all of them are coming from your baby.

“Okay,” you think, “That was…uh…enlightening? I guess I’ll just sleep when the baby slee…”

I’m sorry, but you didn’t get to finish that thought because THE BABY IS SCREAMING AGAIN.

Ahem. Sorry.

I had one person recommend to “just” sleep when the baby slept. See, to someone without a baby, that sounds like an excellent idea. Babies sleep a whole bunch during the day, it’s just spread out a bit. So you wait until she falls asleep and you join her in dreamland! How is that a problem?

Excuse me while I slap you again. Same rules as above apply. This foolproof idea actually brings us to my next point:

A baby is more time-consuming than traveling from Great Britain to the New World in the 1700s.12 Going into having my first child, I knew that I was going to lose a ton of free time to taking care of this mini-human. This wasn’t even one of those things that anyone warned me about; it just made sense that having a baby meant your free time was going to dwindle. Even though I went into having my first child knowing this, I still couldn’t believe how little time I had left to do anything at all.14 Because here’s another thing you just don’t think about/no one tells you about having a baby: life does not stop just because you need it to. And that’s the problem with the whole “sleep when the baby sleeps” advice. If you do sleep when the baby sleeps, then you don’t have clean clothes to wear tomorrow. Or maybe you don’t have clean dishes to eat off of. Or clean bottles that you will NEED when Baby gets hangry.15And you can’t just do your essential house chores while the baby is awake, either, because you will either be taking care of the baby or providing backup while your spouse takes care the baby. And they will need backup because they’re just as sleep deprived as you are.18

So there you have it. Two pieces of actually-practical advice on having your first child and what to expect from it all. And there will be more to come in the next post or few. And I know how terrifying this all sounds, so allow me to end on a positive note. There’s absolutely no practical way to tell you this if you don’t have kids yet because there’s nothing you can compare having a child with, so I’m going to have to use the cliché literally everyone else is using: it really is all worth it. You’ll be half awake with tears streaming down your face,19 holding a baby that hasn’t stopped screaming for 45 minutes, praying for death to just hurry up and take you and end it all, when that little girl will stop crying, look up at you, and smile real big at her daddy. And suddenly, while you’re looking at that big, toothless, goofy grin, everything will be totally okay. You’ll be surrounded by the mess that the tornado that is your baby has left of your house, your “things to do whenever the baby finally decides she wants to freaking sleep” list will grow by 10 items within a few seconds, and the uncontrollable faucets that are your eyes will continue gushing out water,21 but that smile will push all that out of your mind and it will all be worth it.

And then she’ll start screaming again.

Until next time, folks. Oh and if you have a baby between my first ‘new parent’ post and when I finish posting my actually-useful advice, I can’t help you. I’m sorry.

1 All 7 million of you.2

2 This statistic is 100% fabricated.3

3 No, wait! It’s real! Please stay! Please!

4 Believe it or not, I actually do attempt to post at 2-week intervals when I’m not dealing with a screaming banshee. I mean…a lovely and wonderful child.

5 This…makes it sound scarier than it actually is.

6 Also, I’m me and they aren’t, so I’m clearly better and deserve to be treated as such.

7 I will not apologize. If you’ve frequented my blog for more than one post, you’d know it’d be a lie if I did, anyway.

8 Cheer for my arrival.

9 That wasn't a suggestion. Cheer.

10 What? Am I the only one that did this?

11 A challenge in and of itself in many cases.

12 I never ever want to know what life was like for someone making that trip with a baby. Even thinking about that makes me want to get on board a “travel to the New World” reenactment boat13 so that I can jump overboard.

13 I don't care if these don't exist.

14 Namely, none. No time. Time ceased to exist. There was no time; only baby.

15 And they can go from playing happily to being more pissed off than an Internet troll before you even have a chance to snap your fingers.16

16 Which is not something you ever want to do when the baby is screaming. Why are you snapping your fingers? Go get the baby some food before she screams you out of your sanity! Oh crap. You don’t have a clean bottle because you decided you were going to sleep just because she was sleeping. Nice move, newby. Now you have to frantically clean a bottle while sleep deprivation does its best to slow you down and while the screaming grates away at your soul.17

17 Nothing destroys and drains you like a baby that WON’T. STOP. SCREAMING.

18 A message to all single parents everywhere: you are the most amazing person on the planet and everyone should kneel in your presence and just throw their money at you. I will never ever understand how you do what you do. You are awesome. And also, probably some kind of superhero.

19 You won’t be crying, by the way. Not in the traditional sense. Tears relieve your body of a chemical that is produced when you’re stressed, so if you ever get to the point that you’re stressed enough, your brain decides that all this chemical-y crap needs to go and tears will just start pouring out of your face. This may or may not have happened to me several times.20

20 This absolutely happened to me several times.

21 Though at this point, with that smiling face looking up at you, it might be for a different reason.

One Day, Lad, All This Will Be Yours...

Hello, everyone. I have finally burst forth from the abyss.¹ Allow me to once again beg your forgiveness for taking so long between posts. I am truly and deeply sorry and you are totally right to be suuuuper mad about the length of time between my last post and this one...

Ha! Take a look at the post date of my last post! 7 months ago! Which, not coincidentally, is just a little longer than my daughter's age! I bet you just feel terrible about making me grovel now, don't you?! Mwahaha my evil plan worked!²

So today, dear reader,³ you and I are going to take an eye-opening foray into the crazy, intimidating, scary, and somehow still exciting transition from not-parenthood to parenthood. As I am just 7 months removed from this transition, I'm pretty much an expert on the subject,⁴ and I will now bestow my knowledge upon you like a wise sage...uh...bestows...his knowledge on people.²

When you are expecting your first child, literally every single person you encounter has advice for you.⁶ Literally everyone. Even the 17-year-old cashier at Macy's had some "wisdom" he wished to bestow on us because, you know, he clearly knew everything about raising children. The good news, or so you think as a yet-to-be parent, is that those who do have children are also giving you advice. Their advice is what you listen to. You dwell on it. You log it away in that special "nuggets of wisdom" place in your brain. Sometimes, if you feel that a piece of advice is particularly wise, you even go crazy and write it down. Then, the day arrives. Your little one joins you. And it takes about 13 seconds for you to realize that every single thing anyone told you during the pregnancy was completely useless and not even slightly practical. Yup. Sorry to burst your bubble, almost-parents, but better that it's burst now than when a tiny human is screaming in your ear and you haven't slept in 3 or 7 days (you can't remember) and you're pretty sure you don't have clothes to wear tomorrow and you're hungry even though you're 20% positive you just ate (or was that yesterday?) and you're not entirely certain where your spouse is and...wait, did you just black out? Where's the baby? Where's the baby?! Oh. You're still holding her and she's still screaming; everything's cool.

As I've thought about it, I've realized that the useless advice that you hear when you're expecting your first child really does serve a purpose, albeit an unexpected one. Instead of helping you prepare for what's to come,⁸ it instead helps⁹ you in your journey to parenthood.

First and foremost, get ready for people to tell you that you aren't going to sleep. Seriously, you need to mentally prepare yourself for this crap. Every. Single. Person. Is going to tell you this, sometimes multiple times in the same conversation. You'll start a conversation about the pregnancy, they will tell you that are you about to experience some serious sleep deprivation, you will chuckle out of politeness because that joke has already stopped being funny just 2 weeks in, the conversation will diverge to another topic. Then this will happen:

You: "Great movie, though, I totally recommend it."

Them: "Cool I'll go watch it...person who will never sleep again! Ha! You see what I did? I brought attention back to the fact that you're about to have difficulty sleeping! It's funny because you're going to have a tiny screaming human who doesn't understand sleep yet! Classic!"

So yea, that's going to be a thing. Try to have fun with it.¹⁰ Aside from this "you're never going to sleep" tidbit, some people will also give you other advice to help you in your journey to being responsible for a young life.

Some of this advice, for instance, will be encouraging. When we were expecting Audrey, my boss would tell me on a weekly basis how awesome being a daddy was and how amazing it was coming home and getting stampeded by his two girls as they screamed "Daaaaadddddyyyyy!"¹¹ Some of it is a little ambiguous and slightly frightening. Many many people told me something along the lines of "Your life will forever be changed once you have that kid; there's no going back.", which sounds like it's either some weird kind of encouragement or...a veiled threat. And then, there are the people who throw any and all caution to the wind, who skip the "slightly frightening" advice, and who jump straight into the purely terrifying.

There was one guy at work who had a ~6-month-old when Stephanie and I found out she was pregnant.¹³ This child of his was not sleeping,¹⁴ which of course meant that he was not sleeping. Our first conversation on the topic of having a first child went like this:

Him: "Hey, I heard your wife is expecting."

Me: "Yea, we're excited! I'm nervous, obviously, but I can't wait to..."

Him (donning an intensely serious and slightly horrified look): "Nothing can prepare you for how little sleep you're about to get."

Me (frightened, taken aback): "...I....uh...ha...ha...?"

At this point, he continued to stare at me as I slowly backed out of the kitchen. As I was about to leave his line of site, he called out after me with a zombie-like "Good luck." Yea, that wasn't horrifying at all. To make matters worse, from that day forward, every single time he saw me - even if we were just walking by each other - he would give me that same stare for several silent seconds before asking "You ready?" Um. No? Please kill me now? You know what, I'm just gonna go back to my desk, don't worry about it. Please...please don't actually kill me.

At this point, you're probably wondering why I'm telling you all this. Until I spoke up, you were blissfully unaware, thinking that all of the advice you've been getting is stuff that is going to help you once your child joins you. But now that you know that your comfortable world is a pile of lies built to protect you from the harsh reality that is about to knock it, and the rest of your life, to pieces, allow me to reassure you.¹⁵ I, The Great Chris Sellek,¹⁶ am about to give you the advice you've been looking for. Over the next blog post or few, I will advise you. My advice will be practical. It will tell you some of what you can expect from having a new child and it won't even have to do with sleep deprivation. And it will explain the reasoning behind some of the advice you've been getting that doesn't quite make sense to someone who has never had their life forever ruin...uh...changed¹⁷ by an infant. So join me as you prepare to welcome this little half-you/half-your-significant-other into the world and I will help you be 100% ready for anything and everything that that little baby is getting ready to throw at you.<sup>18




1</sup> I have no idea what this means.

² I...uh...I don't sleep anymore.

³ I hate this phrase. None of you are dear to me, it was a lie.

⁴ Pretty sure that's how being an expert works.

⁵ This is a disembodied footnote. Seriously, nothing leads here. Hey, have you guys ever wondered why your third gimp arm is even there? No? Oh. Uh. Yea, neither have I.

⁶ No one cares about you if you've already had another kid. Sorry.<sup>7

7</sup> I am not.

⁸ Which is what things called advice generally do...

⁹ Or hinders...

¹⁰ Or at least try not to stab anyone.

¹¹ This sounds like the best thing ever and Audrey needs to hurry up and start doing this, already.<sup>12

12</sup> She is 7 months old.

¹³ I almost typed "found out we were pregnant", since that is a phrase people use for some stupid reason. We most certainly were not pregnant, thank God. If there was even a chance that I'd have to go through pregnancy, I would have chosen to remain celibate at around Audrey's age.<sup>12

14</sup> Hilarious!

¹⁵ Is....is it working?

¹⁶ You all have to call me that now.

¹⁷ It's a joke, people.

¹⁸ Chris is not legally responsible for the things your infant can and absolutely will do that he does not prepare you for.

What's That? You Say We're on Right Now?

........I don't believe you.¹

So hey everyone. Welcome to another addition of pure awesome. Are you ready for the best 10 minutes of the next two weeks? If you're a slow reader, it'll be even longer than that! Yea! This blog is so great! Cat GIFs! The Constitution! Raptors! Inordinate amounts of cash! Whoo!²

I recently made a post on Reddit that seemed to get much attention and so I figured I'd share my thoughts here as well. Why is that, in 2014, I can't get people to just give me an address to wherever it is I'm going? Once again, it is currently the year 2014. That's two, zero, one, four. I hold, in my pocket, a computer more powerful than the one that took man to the moon.⁵ Why, then, does everyone who knows my desired location insist on giving me directions? Every single freaking time:

Them: "Hey, do you need directions to our friend's house for the axe-sharpening get-together?"

Me: "No, I'm actually really bad with directions and I have a terrible memory, just give me the address."

Them: "No, it's really easy, listen!"

No. I'm not lying to you, "Them", I'm actually very very bad with directions and I have a horrible memory. I don't care how easy you think it is, just give me the address and I'll plug it into my personal supercomputer that was made exactly for situations such as this and it'll tell me how to get there.

I always end up politely ignoring them completely when this happens while they explain their ridiculous directions using just landmarks and no street names and which invariably include stupid instructions 47 steps in such as "If you get to the stadium, you've gone too far." Hey, Them, I wouldn't even get too far to begin with if my phone was actively telling me how to get there as I traveled. Amazing thing, this technology.

And if you're ever lucky enough that they actually give you the address after you tell them that directions aren't your "thing", don't get too excited. You know why? Because they're about to tell you the directions anyway. Why are they about to give you the directions even though they just gave you the address for the sole purpose of getting you to your destination without using directions? BECAUSE REASONS OKAY.

For those reading who are the aforementioned "Them",⁷ don't try to explain yourselves. There's no good reason behind this. "Oh, but the GPS will take you this weird way. It'll make you..." I'm sorry, but I'm going to stop you because your argument already doesn't make sense. I don't use a GPS to get me from point A to point B in the most efficient way possible, I use a GPS to get me from point A to point B at all because I'm directionally challenged. If I am unsure of my destination's location and I am able to get from where I currently am to there, we can mark a tally in the win column for me because I just won the game.⁹ I'd rather it take me 10 more minutes to get to where I'm going because I'm using a GPS and it sometimes doesn't think exactly like a human than get lost and end up getting shot because I ended up in Durham when I was trying to get to the beach.¹⁰

So. If I ask you for an address to get somewhere, please...just give me the address. You'll be saving both of us a whole lot of time. Also, I won't get shot because of you. And if I did get shot because of you, I would totally haunt you, which would really suck because I'd just constantly pitch you my next "totally awesome and hilarious and ingenious and comic genius"² blog post idea. More than likely while you tried to sleep. And it wouldn't even matter if you tried sleeping during the day or something to throw me off because I'd be a ghost and I'm at least 27% certain that ghosts don't sleep.¹¹

¹ Don't understand? Your fault. I've undoubtedly told you to watch Anchorman countless times on this blog already.

² I'll stop making this joke when you prove that this doesn't actually work.³

³ Don't understand? Your fault. Should have read my last post.⁴

⁴ Yea, that was a plug. For myself. And guess what else? I HAVE NO SHAME.

⁵ This is not an exaggeration.⁶

⁶ No, seriously. I know this is my blog and the word "seriously" is carelessly tossed around and brutally abused like a pterodactyl who stopped being a cool pet forever ago, but this one is actually, seriously serious (see point 2).

⁷ I have such a massive audience, there's bound to be at least one or two of you reading.⁸

⁸ Here's looking at you, Jake.

⁹ And, unfortunately for you, you've just lost it.

¹⁰ I live in Wake Forest.

¹¹ I don't...know very much about ghosts.

The picture. Because this is probably what most of you actually come here for.

Sheep's Bladders to Prevent Earthquakes

Good evening, my minions. Thank you for joining me in another addition of my totally awesome and cool and amazing and funny and hysterical and hilarious blog.¹

So have any of you ever had something biologically weird happening to you? You're all human,⁵ so of course you have. I'm not talking about anything serious, like "Hey, I think that's my lung." or anything like that, I'm talking about something just....odd. Something like "What...is this a hair? Growing out of my...forehead??"⁶ So it's something weird, but not something that seems like it needs to be dealt with immediately. What would you do in this situation? Even if you weren't even worried, but just mildly interested as to why on earth your body decides to grow a mutant-hair about 4 times as thick as all of your other hairs every once in a while.⁶ Is your answer to look it up on WebMD? Be honest, that's what you were thinking. That's the natural inclination, after all. The Internet is a wonderful thing that helps everyone share information with the entire planet, and what is that information there for, if not to inform?

Stop. Stop right now. Seriously, I'm warning you: do NOT look up your weird ailments on WebMD. You see, according to WebMD, everything is the worst thing to ever happen to any person ever. You can't plug in a symptom without getting something absolutely horrific in the results:

"What's that? You have difficulty breathing, you wheeze, and you have a dry cough all of the time? Let's just look this up here and...heart cancer. You have heart cancer. Also, pneumonia. Of the brain. There's not even a question of whether or not you're going to die, you absolutely are, it's just a matter of when at this point. And it's not even a long when. Tonight, probably; I'm kind of surprised you're still reading, now that I mention it. Don't even bother going to a doctor, it'll just make them start uncontrollably sobbing at your meager, grim existence. That's how bad off you are, you pathetic excuse for an organism."

And that was only slightly exaggerative.⁸ Seriously, stay far, far away from the Internet when it comes to biological oddities. Even when it's not something horrific in theory, there are pictures included. And when it comes to biological oddities, pictures are only ever horrific.

Speaking of the worst things ever, have you ever been the first person to finish a test in school?⁹ Ugh. What the heck are you supposed to do in that situation? I have never second-guessed and berated myself more than I have in the time between when I finished a test first and when the second guy finished his.

"How much longer until everyone else is going to finish their tests? Did I finish like 20 minutes faster than the next-fastest person, or 5? Because if it's 5, that's reasonable. If it's 20, however, did I finish so much faster because I'm an incredibly awesome genius and beat the crap out of the test (which has never ever happened in the history of my schooling) or is it because I suck at test-taking and I bombed this test? Should I go over my answers or something?¹⁰ What time is it? Crap, I finished it in like 10 minutes, that's definitely bad."

Horrible. I'm so glad I never have to do that ever again. School sucks, I'm so glad I'm not there anymore. Whoo! Being an adult! Yea! Wait, what was this post about again?4



¹ Blogspot is limiting the number of tags I can add to a single post now, so I'm wondering if adding them in the actual post will work.^2
2 Funniest thing I've ever read. Read this now. Holy crap this blog is so funny I got abs from reading it. America is awesome. I love patriotism. America greatest country ever. Jesus. Puppies. Adorable kittens. Dinosaurs. Tyrannosaurus Rex. Tyrannosaurus Rex with missile launchers attached to it. Hot singles.^3
3 What? Oh come on, I had to try at least one 'sexy people here' tag.^4
4 Warning. Reading this blog for too long will more than likely give you ADHD.
⁵ I'm almost certain the perma-ban I've put on iguanas to this site has worked.
⁶ Psh no, that totally hasn't ever happened to me.^7
7 ...
⁸ I wrote this on the Internet, so it has to be true.
⁹ What? Is that not a natural-enough transition? I'm doing my best here, okay?
¹⁰ If, at this point, I decided that I should look at my answers again, it only ever ended with me feeling like more of a failure because it never reassured me at all; instead, all it did was make me question everything ever. "Do I think this is correct because it actually is correct or is it because I've been conditioned to think it's correct?!? What does that even mean?! What does does even mean?!?! Aaaaaahhhh!"

PICTURE:⁴

Father, Son, I'm Father

Buuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmm...

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmm....

BUH BUUUUUUUUUU....

Okay, I'm gonna stop that right there. For those who like that song,¹ I apologize for stopping. Typing it out seemed like a much better idea in my head. No it didn't. It sounded like a terrible idea in my head, but hey you know what it's been 2 years since the last blog post so maybe stop complaining.⁵

Anyway, you may be wondering why I started this blog post with that one song from 2001: A Space Odyssey.⁶ If you are, then you must be a pop culture recluse or something because that song has been used literally⁷ every time someone has wanted to convey an epic moment in every movie and TV show since 2001.⁷ And this blog post that you are currently reading is by and large the most epic moment to occur in the last two years, except maybe for that post I made recently about the Facing the Giants movies that you should totally read if you haven't yet. What if I provided you with a really easy-to-navigate-to link? DANGIT MAN, JUST READ IT.

Ahem.⁸

So, as the title hints at,¹¹ we will be talking about children in our blog today. You see, my wife¹² is pregnant¹³ and I've been thinking about and discussing the topic of children a lot recently. Here are just some of my recent thoughts:

There's a certain kind of person that I simply don't understand. You'll hear about them in the news every so often because there's apparently way more of them than there should ever be out there. This kind of person is...okay you know what, screw beating around the bush, who in their right mind shakes a baby to make it stop crying?! How is this a common problem for people? Who, when presented with a tiny human who's brain has not yet developed to point of rational thought, thinks "Man, this baby sure is annoying me with its crying. If I shake him, I will be properly communicating to him that I would like for him to stop. Man, why isn't this working?" It's not working because...well, you're dumb. That's really the only way I can convey this to you in a way that you'll be able to understand. Because I understand when I'm interacting with someone who is clearly not on the same intellectual plane as myself and I can dumb things down for them if necessary.

There's another kind of person that I simply don't understand. Except in this case, by "person" I really mean "phrase."¹⁴ I really hate it when people tell a child "You're so cute I just wanna eat you up!" Really? That baby is so cute that it gives you the desire to resort to cannibalism? Let's forget the fact that cuteness and the desire to eat human flesh are completely and utterly...you know what, no, let's not forget that fact. Level of cuteness and the desire to consume human flesh for sustenance are two things that have no relation. At all. So this phrase in no way makes sense and never will. Unless the future sucks.¹⁵

For the last topic of today's post, I would like to discuss pregnancy. Pregnancy is a magical thing. Not because of the miracle of human life or anything sappy like that, but because pregnancy has this amazing ability to completely wipe a woman's brain of anything and everything negative that occurred during the nine months of pregnancy. I say this because I have met numerous women (my wife¹² included) who say that pregnancy wasn't all that bad. First and foremost, I refuse to believe that growing a tiny human inside of you and then expelling that human out of you, all Alien-style, is in any way anything but the worst. Second, I've seen firsthand that my wife's pregnancy has absolutely not been "not all that bad." So the next woman to tell me that pregnancy "wasn't terrible" is going to get called out. It has to happen. And if anyone dares to have the audacity to say that she "actually enjoyed it" is just going to get a blank stare until the memories come flooding back and she takes back her lies. Wow. That...was angry. I'm going to go lock myself in my room for a week or two. See you guys here when I get out.

Oh and I'm gonna send you to footnote #13 again here.¹³ Because seriously, pray for that girl. The man who writes this blog is going to be her father.



¹ It was SO clear which one it was.<sup>2

2</sup> WHAT. Yea. Check out that sexy, superscript 2. I figured out how to superscript! This means that figuring out my footnotes will be easier for my readers and that will forever mean that my footnote mazes will only be crazier.<sup>3

3</sup> Starting now. I am so, so very sorry.<sup>4

4</sup> No, I'm not.

⁵ I'm sorry. Please keep reading.

⁶ You know, the ONE song from that movie that anyone knows off the top of their head.

⁷ Not accurate.

⁸ I haven't posted in over 2 years, but worry not,⁹ nothing has changed.<sup>10

9</sup> Because that's what you were doing...

¹⁰ Desperate demanding that you read my work, the movie-quote title, and footnote mazes. See? Nothing has changed. At all. WELCOME BACK MY MINIONS.

¹¹ Not true, I just picked a random Holy Grail quote that happened to coincide with the topic for today's blog post.

¹² You: "Holy crap, Chris got married?!" Me: "Proof of a merciful and graceful Higher Being."

¹³ You: "Holy crap, Chris is having a kid?!?!" Me: "Pray. Just...just pray. Mostly for my almost-born little girl."

¹⁴ Shut up.

¹⁵ Andrea, typical teen in the year 2316: "Man, that baby really is cute!" Cute baby's parents: "Well, crap. Thanks Andrea."



Mandatory blog-concluding picture:

(Insert quote from Anchorman, Monty Python and the Holy Grail or some random YouTube video here)

"All right! I'm all settled in class/work and I'm ready to start being productive!"

*Opens Facebook.*

"Oh! I have a number of notifications this morning! Today is going to be a good day!"

*Begins clicking through notifications. Stops dead in his/her tracks.*

"Oh. My. Goodness. Could it be?"

*Vision homes in on the best notification he/she has received in 7 months: "Chris Sellek has tagged you in the note 'Insert quote from Anchorman, Monty Python and the Holy Grail or some random YouTube video here'". He/she begins floating as he/she clicks on the notification and begins reading pure comedic bliss.*

"This is the best thing I've ever read in the last 7 months!"

- Excerpt from the life of every last one of you who were tagged in this note.*

So I read this article the other day** about how scientists were coming together to prove that life accidentally came from non-living matter by gathering a bunch of the world's most brilliant minds together and forcing it to happen. I think...uh....I think they missed something there. In fact, I think - and this may just be me being crazy again - that they're doing more to hurt their claim than help it:***

Incredibly brilliant scientist #1: "Aha! We have finally disproven creationsists' claims by showing once and for all that life absolutely can and did come from non-living matter, without the intervention of some intelligent being. We truly are amazing!"

Incredibly brilliant scientist #2: "Yes indeed, Reginald, I agree with your statement wholeheartedly! We, two very intelligent beings, have finally proven...that...life can be created....without....the help...of.....hm."

Reginald: "Well. I'll be the first to say that this is awkward. But just because life came about with the help of intelligent beings this time doesn't mean it didn't do so at the beginning of time, am I right my dear boy?"

Incredibly brilliant scientist #2, who will apparently be remaining nameless: "Ah!! You were aptly named up there when Chris referenced you as 'Incredibly brilliant scientist #1', Reginald! You areindeed an incredibly brilliant scientist!"

Reginald: "That I am, old chap! Come, let us drink to our success!"

Anyone in the world who thinks logically: "You guys are dumb."

Another interesting thought: have you ever wondered how difficult it must be for serial killers to find people who have similar interests? Seriously, what do they do? Do they wait until they find someone who kinda gives them the "I'm a serial killer, too" vibe and then try to drop hints or something? That could probably be awkward:

Serial killer looking to find friends: "So. What do you like to do in your spare time?"

Random, innocent civilian: "Oh you know, playing video games, reading, hanging out with my friends."

Serial killer: "Oh, that's nice. What...kind of video games do you like playing the most?"

Innocent civilian: "I like racing games and sports games, mostly. And I enjoy the occasional first-person shoo..." *Stops short because his conversational partner is now 1 inch away from his face.*

Serial killer: "I like first-person shooters, too. But I prefer the games where you can kill someone slowly with a small blade. Have you played Batman: Arkham City? I sure did like Victor Zsasz.† I thought it was so interesting how he scarred a tally into his skin every time he killed someone."

Innocent civilian: "Uh...yea, I played that." *Notices a few scars that could definitely be tallies on his quickly-losing-friendship-status friend's arm.* "I like...uh....Viva Piñata, too."††

*Innocent civilian clears throat awkwardly. Serial killer remains a mere inch from his face as he gets more and more uncomfortable.*

Serial killer: "Do you think you would like to come hang out with me at three in the morning some time? I think you and I could..."

Innocent Civilian: "I gotta go, my wife's calling me."

Ah yes, it's difficult being a serial killer. I mean...uh....it would be difficult. If....uh...I gotta go, my wife's calling me.†††

*I was gonna do an excerpt from anyone who accidentally stumbled upon the note in my timeline or on their news feed in addition to this, but I figured it would kinda be a waste of space since it'd basically be the same thing with one or two minor changes.

**"The other day" being October, when I still had a very blog-posting mindset and was still writing down blog post ideas as they came to mind.

***Please read the following two scientists' voices in British accents. If you do it out loud, it makes the whole experience even more fun.

†For those who don't know, Zsasz is a twisted serial killer in the Batman universe who scars a tally into his skin whenever he kills someone.

††Children's game that involves breaking Piñatas or something incredibly innocent and non-serial-killer-esque like that.

†††Obviously not true because Chris isn't married.