Tagged with new dad …

Jan 25 2012
2 Comments
Booze Jokes, Funny, Inspiration

Boozeless Balancing Act at Newborn Circus

Image may have been digitally altered.

Yesterday was Day 75 of my Year Of Living Sober. It was a Tuesday.

As with yesterday’s post I’m starting (as opposed to finishing) today’s with a joke.

Here it is…

Little Booze Joke 75

A man carrying a cock walks into a bar and, pointing to his feathered companion’s tail says, “Give me one of them.”

Ba ha ha.

Ha!

Geez I love a good laugh. And, whether or not you find that joke funny, I imagine you do too. Who doesn’t? Life can get serious, what with all the responsibilities of having to dress yourself, feed yourself and then have the self-control to make sure you don’t poop your pants on public transport. I mean surely I’m not the first to wonder, ”How come there isn’t a toilet on the bus?”

Or maybe I am the first to wonder that?

Whatever.

I guess what I’m trying to say is sometimes, when confronted with all the demands life can place on us, it’s important to be silly; you have to be able to laugh at yourself and your situation.

So that’s what I’m trying to do at the moment. As I try and balance my need to be a productive writer and provide for my family with the domestic responsibilities of adjusting to life with a newborn addition to our family of four (now) I’m doing my best to remember to see the lighter side of it all.

Without getting into the viscosity-, texture- and stink-difference between a five-day-old’s and a seventeen-month-old’s poo, and without disclosing the emotional rollercoaster my wife has been on since the drugs started wearing off (and the hormones started kicking in), suffice to say daddy is being pulled in multiple directions for feeding, cleaning and putting to bed duties; while daddy is himself five days overdue on beddy time.

I’m a zombie man; but still I gotsta write.

And despite what you might think, all this craziness hasn’t driven me back to drink. I may be juggling babies in a circus of my own making but I’m not sure boozing it up right now would help very much. Anyway, even if it would, I can’t imagine where I’d find a quiet enough corner in this mad house to down a bottle of wine.

Though I can imagine that given enough time—like say five minutes—I’d give it a good crack.

But that’s not going to happen. Not for another 290 days.

My name is Ben and I’m a social experiment.

Oh yeah…today is Day 76 of my Year Of Living Sober.

It is a Wednesday.

☆
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Jan 24 2012
10 Comments
Booze Jokes, Funny, Inspiration

Time for Drinking ‘Cherry’ Wine

Hello.

Thanks for dropping by Year Of Living Sober.

Before I get into today’s post proper I’ve decided to break with my custom of finishing off with a booze related joke by kicking off with FOUR. If you haven’t read any of my other HILARIOUS posts may I advise you to prepare yourself for WETTING YOUR PANTS time.

If you HAVE read any of my other posts you’ll know I’m already pulling your leg.

:)

Anywho, here goes…

Little Booze Joke 71

A nurse walks into a bar and the barman says, “Why the long needle?”

:)

But wait, there’s more…

Little Booze Joke 72

A woman walks into a bar, stands on her head and lets her dress fall down around her ears. The barman says, “Sorry, lady, we don’t serve Brazilians.”

Little Booze Joke 73

An anesthesiologist walks into a bar and feels nothing.

Little Booze Joke 74

A baby crawls into a bar and the barman says, “Fancy a little nip?” and the baby says, “Mate, I’m so hungry I could have the whole nipple.”

Now you’re laughing off your chair we can get to the ‘serious’ stuff. It’s…

TIME FOR DRINKING ‘CHERRY’ WINE

 

Good wine waiting to be enjoyed

Regular readers of this blog (it sure is nice knowing you’re out there; I appreciate every comment) may have been asking some questions over the past few days:

“What happened?”

“Has he given up?”

“Has he fallen off the YOLS wagon?”

Because up until last Friday I hadn’t missed a day of blogging about my year of living sober. And although when I started on this exercise in self-discipline/self-torture/self-bladder-rejuvination I never actually made a commitment to posting every day it did turn out that way. I had posted every day since beginning this adventure on 11/11/2011 (at eleven minutes passed eleven).

Until Cherry.

With the arrival  (and process of arrival—i.e. ‘birth’) of my second daughter my pattern of, and new addiction to, blogging (see previous post) broke like the membranes holding back the waters in my wife’s womb. Something had to give. I could not be in two places (bedside, computer) at once and chose to be in the place where life was really happening: the place where life in this world was just beginning.

You see as much as I love writing I also follow that old (?) adage of ‘life first, writing second’. Or something like that.

But slowly, life is getting back to normal.

Yesterday, after checking my emails, I took our eldest daughter (there is seventeen months difference between Honey and Cherry, the same as between my wife and her sister—which is nice) up to the local post office where I sent off a bulk order of ten copies of my novel (The Last Great Day) to a book club in Perth.

This morning I took Honey for a walk along the river while my mother-in-law (how lucky are we to have her and my father-in-law’s support!) baby-sat our newborn while my wife, Pauli, caught up on some sleep.

We are also easing into taking visitors. A couple of days ago (I think?—it’s all still a little blurry: Pauli’s not the only one who needs to catch up on snooze time) we introduced Cherry to a couple of her second-cousins and one of our closest ‘family’ (as they say) friends, Reva. As it turns out Reva is not yet one of my regular blog readers.

As she coo’d and oo’d over our latest edition addition, Reva was surprised to learn about my year of sobriety. However, and knowing me as an ‘enthusiastic’ boozer pre-YOLS, it didn’t stop Reva from handing me the gift of a bottle of wine she and her hubby (thanks Jeremy) had thoughtfully included with gifts for Cherry, Pauli and Honey.

And I was only too happy to accept it.

Because even though I will wait until the end of my year off booze before popping the cork (actually, I think it’s a screw top) on that bottle of Wolf Blass Cabernet Sauvignon (2008), I will enjoy knowing who gave that particular bottle of wine to me, why they gave it to me, and when.

It was from cherished friends, thoughtful, generous and like-minded enough to know that some times are perfect for drinking wine.

And sometimes it’s good to wait.

My name is Ben and I’m a social experiment.

☆

How about you? Ever been given something you couldn’t immediately enjoy?

Please leave a comment.

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Jan 20 2012
7 Comments
Booze Jokes, Effects of Abstinence, Funny, Inspiration

New Daddy Cuts the Cord on Alcohol ‘Addiction’

Dr Mitchell (I presume?) cutting the cord

Yesterday was Day 70 of my Year Of Living Sober. It was a Thursday.

Instead of performing my usual blog-trick of writing and uploading a new post every day—an exercise in self-discipline almost equal to that of my decision not to drink for a year—I did something else.

I held my wife’s hand.

Because, as each contraction came, as the intensity of pain Mrs YOLS (Pauli) experienced grew with each passing hour (over 24 before we headed into hospital) I decided it was more important to stay with my wife during the final stages of pregnancy than to excuse myself and ‘do some work’.

“Derr.” I hear you say. “Who’d miss being there for the birth of their child just to write just another of the seventeen-trillion and counting blog posts Google shits sifts through every hour?

Not me, is the answer.

Yes, some readers may be understandably horrified I could even be thinking of anything else other than comforting and supporting my wife as she and our family (we already have one gorgeous seventeen-month old baby girl) prepared for a truly life changing event; surely the birth of a human being is a miracle worth—at the very least—turning off Twitter for?

It is. But rest assured I was never in two minds, only in one. Of course the rest of the world could wait, for as long as it took. Unfortunately though my ‘one’ mind is also an often busy one: my creativity expresses itself continually, whether or not my mouth, pen or hands transcribe the cascade of sometimes crazy, sometimes inspired, ideas into form. And, as a blog like this is nothing without complete honesty, I must come forth:

A couple of times early during my wife’s labour I felt bad about missing my first day so far of YOLS blog posting.

But I got over it.

Maybe it helped that our new gorgeous girl, a big gorgeous girl weighing in at 4.11 kgs (or 9.1 lbs for my USA friends), entrance into the world this morning brought forth in me such joy as neither a blog or even a whole bottle of Moet & Chandon ever could: I am sparkling on the inside; I am happy to write gushing prose I may live to regret. I am a New Daddy.

Again.

Cool. Unlike my passing moments of ego-centred concern about having this hiccup in my, until now, 69 days straight of writing about temporary teetotallism, my overwhelming thought is of how cool and untouchable this feeling is.

Cooler and more untouchable than a six-pack of Budweisers in Walt Disney’s cryogenic freezer.

And as far as being tempted to indulge in a celebratory glass of sparkling alcoholic grapes, of using this great milestone of my second daughter’s birth as an excuse to take a break from my YOLS, it didn’t cross my mind once.

Why would it? I’m drunk on baby love.

And I’m sure I’ve never before felt so intoxicated.

My name is Ben and I’m a social experiment.

☆

Little Booze Joke 70:

An expectant father walks into a bar and the barman points to a wide selection of imported beers on tap, foreign wines on shelves, and expensive spirits hanging over head. “What’ll it be?” says the barman. The expectant father looks around, scratches his head then pours a glass of complimentary water from a jug sitting on the bar. “I don’t know?” he says sitting down, “but I’m pretty sure a boy or a girl.”

P. S. Even though I missed writing about Day 69 of my Year Of Living Sober (it was a Wednesday and my wife was in labour all day and night) here is a joke for that day.

Little Booze Joke 69

A blood sample walk into a bar and the barman says, “Sorry, we don’t serve your type.”

☆

How about you? Ever prioritized a family commitment over a personal or work one? Everyday, you say?

Please leave a comment.

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