Ahhh the Eve before a new decade! What a better way to end a decade than with a blog. Just so you all know, ten years ago I decided to start a blog about the craziness of a blended family and raising 5 kids of all different ages. Here we are 10 years later still blogging and definitely still a lot of craziness! I never expected the following we have on the blog and on our social media pages, so thank you to all of you who have been with us since the beginning and welcome to the new ones... buckle in, it's always a bumpy ride... kinda like this:

So we managed to make it through another Christmas with the bunch, which from previous blogs you all know is no easy task! I'll take you back to the end of November. For all that read the last blog, yes I ended up putting the Christmas decorations up right after Thanksgiving, as my wife had insisted. I don't know why I bother fighting her on this, she always wins and then she looks at me like:

To make my losing my point on waiting even worse, she picked out new outside decorations to add to our collection. Not just any decorations, oh no! She picked out Minnie and Mickey because what's Christmas, or any day for that matter, without Disney. So there I was in the dark, rainy, cold weather with my cell phone flashlight putting up a Minnie, Mickey, three Disney strobe lights, along with the other outside decorations the weekend after Thanksgiving. Decorating outside is not for the weary... especially when you have absolutely no outside outlets. Let's just say there are about 7 extension cords all over the yard, so if you had to walk on our lawn, I suggest walking like this:

Minnie Mouse just doesn't want to stay standing up. I love how Disney will charge you $89.95 for a 2 foot decoration and give you two stakes to use to keep the bitch in the ground. Come on Disney... two stakes? Every morning I'd wake up and see Minnie face down that I finally went out and bought a pack of 20 stakes. I think at this point I have 15 stakes in her. I see you Disney... you can do better! So when we were shopping for outside decorations, my wife saw a new pre-lit Christmas tree she wanted, since our pre-lit became unlit because of the asshole cats. This tree was seven and a half feet tall and covered in that fake white snow shit. She fell in love with the tree. I was looking at the tree thinking "well shit, this tree is certainly going to mess with my OCD!" Then I started thinking, "well if the cats go in the tree, I'll be able to find the culprit because they will be covered in fake white snow!" SOLD.. I couldn't wait to put that bad boy up! 

When we came home with it, I showed it to all the cats and spoke to each one of them and said, "go ahead fuckers.... try me this year, I'll know it's you... you'll be forever marked with fake snow to show your sneaky selves! My wife looked at me like this:

I mean that's usually her normal reaction to me whenever I do or say something, so no shocker there! So I decided to put the tree up while her and the girls went out to pick up some things. I opened the box and the first thing I said was, "where the fuck is all the snow like it shows on the picture?" Instead of fake snow, it had glitter on it. Yes I know every gay person's dream, but not mine! Half the glitter ended up in a dust pan than on the actual tree! When the cats saw the tree up minus the white snow, they all sat around looking at me like this:

I know they were totally judging me... assholes! So the first night the tree is up and we're in bed and I hear cats being cats and I get up and go check the tree and low and behold three of them were in the tree! So from that point on we douse the tree in straight lemon juice and banned one of the cats from staying downstairs at night! This tree just might make it another year! 

Remember how I said that Tammy takes Christmas lists very seriously? Yea well that shit went out the window this year! She resorted to the good old fashion hand written lists this year. Which I suppose is fine if you don't have 7 children to shop for, so that didn't last very long either! At one point I think she did this:

We attempted to shop in malls I think twice and at the end of those two trips, we both looked like this when we got home:

Strangely, the malls and stores weren't crowded like we've been use to so we got hip and started online shopping. I'm not sure what's worse... I haven't decided yet. See when you go out to the stores, you just have a bunch of bags every where, but when you online shot, now you have a bunch of boxes every where. The UPS guy would come every day, we were all on first name basis, the kids now call him Uncle. I remember one day he came and said, "well I have 17 packages for you today!" This was the norm all the way up to Christmas Eve! Some days were 10, some were 11, some were 17, some were 2. Eventually every room looked like this:

It felt like we were constantly doing this:

Naturally the cats were all like:

I actually feel bad for our recycling guy. Like I want to hug him when I see him and apologize. 

So naturally with all the boxes coming we had to go through all of them, check off what came, see what still hadn't arrived and flagging and unflagging emails. Tammy did have a brilliant idea of wrapping every night after a delivery so that we (and by we I mean her) weren't wrapping last minute like every year. After wrapping we'd bring them downstairs and put them in piles for each kid and then count and make sure all the kids were even with the amount of gifts.  It was a vicious, vicious cycle. I don't think I have ever counted so much and so many times in my entire life than I did the last couple of weeks before Christmas.

I had actually finished shopping for Tammy the first time we went to the mall! I had my A Game on. I was super excited that I finished shopping for her all by myself without any help from our daughters. Then as we were opening packages, I would look at something and be like "who's this for baby?" That's when Tammy would say, "oh that's for me from you and I ordered 4 more things!"  I'd just stare at her and be like:

I'm totally joking about the reaction...! Basically she had more presents for me, so I said make it even and she shopped for herself because lets face it, I was playing Xbox and was over shopping. 

Christmas Eve and morning was amazing and the kids were happy with all their presents. Now, it wouldn't be a true Gaydy Christmas if some unexpected shit happened, right? Well here it comes... Christmas night everyone started feeling like shit and long story short, the whole house gothic with the flu! It started with Bianca, then Michael, then Tammy and I, then our oldest son and daughter-in-law and wrapping it up was Carlton! The day after Christmas Tammy and I were knocked out with fevers basically like this:

At one point, our daughter Bianca had come in our room to check on us because it was 5pm and we were still sleeping. We woke up to, "meow hey, are you guys dead!" Nope, not yet, but it certainly felt like we were. You'll all be happy to know that we all survived, not only Christmas but the flu! On that note, The Gaydy Bunch wishes everyone a happy, healthy and blessed 2020!  

Happy Thursday everyone! Yes I'm still here... I know from the outpouring of comments from my last blog that you all were so concerned with my health.

Just kidding... ya'll didn't care one bit...NOT ONE BIT.... selfishness! Well then, let's jump right into things shall we? Lots have been going on, as usual. It wouldn't be the norm around here if every day wasn't filled with endless amounts of chaos. So since the last blog, school has started. Alessandra is now a Junior and starting to show interest in colleges. Anthony is now in middle school... Lord help us! It's really bad when both come home and we ask Alessandra what she has for homework and she tells us and we're like "okay kiddo"; then we ask Anthony and he tells us and we look at him like:

That's when I pull up the email from his teachers and open his Google classroom and point out all the assignments he failed to mention to us! Then we get the blank stare like we're the ones that have three heads and speaking in tongues like:

See now, this boy isn't use to me being home so when he gets home from school he walks in and give my wife a hug and looks at me and gives me this:

I don't know what happened to this child over the summer. Last year he got up on his own in the morning, made his bed, got dressed, made breakfast and was ready to go to school before my alarm even went off. Now I gotta tell him a thousand times to get ready. At one point I straight up asked if he was smoking weed. Boy walking around looking like he high as fuck! He looked at me and said, "what's that?" Meanwhile, my wife is standing next to me giving me this look:

What?! It's a legitimate question! In a matter of three months all the damn brain cells our boy had, some how just escaped his damn head. 

I went up to his parent teacher conferences and met with his case manager and she's all like "Well we let our 6th grades settle in up until November!" November??? What in the hell? Hell no, he needed to be settled in now. This boy has been walking around winning votes for Prom King in a school where they don't even have Prom! Talking about how he has a bet with his friend how many scrunchies he can get from girls? Oh so you a pimp now? You ain't gonna get no scrunchies if you keep going to school smelling the way you smell. Get the hell out of here Pimp Master No Flex. 

What is it with middle school boys now-a-days anyway? All of them have the same damn haircut, where the same damn style of clothes and none of them seem to want to get wet. We aren't even gonna talk about the toothbrush that's hard as hell with an almost full tube of toothpaste going on 3 months now and they try and tell you, "yea I brushed my teeth!" With what? You're damn finger and some water? Ya'll nasty, just nasty! This boy tryin' to see what he can get away with. I tell him to get his ass in the shower and he turns the water on and sits on the floor watching videos. You wanna know how I know? I know because I roll up to the bathroom door like this:

There he is fully clothed, wasting my damn water while he sitting on the floor on his phone! Nope, I ain't playing! Better get yo dirty ass in the shower and I better hear the water bouncing off of you and hitting the damn shower floor like it's suppose to sound and when you done I better hear you gagging from brushing your teeth and tongue with a toothbrush! 

Lord have mercy this child is pushing the Christian right on out of me too. One night he was all mad because he tried to tell me he didn't now how to do the last two problems on his math homework. IT WAS ADDITION! Boy don't you try to think we're stupid. Then he starts with the "I don't want to talk about it anymore"

Oh excuse me.... last time I checked, you ain't have no job, no money, living here for free, eating all my food and you gonna tell me you don't want to talk about it anymore?? We're gonna talk about it all night if I want to. Then he has the nerve to come out of his room with a list a mile long for Christmas. See now that's when I tell him well guess what Santa ain't real no more, you're ass is grown. You keep acting like this and we ain't buying you shit, take your list with you!

Speaking of Christmas, in the beginning of November, my wife started pointing out how houses were starting to decorate. We haven't even come close to Thanksgiving and she's collecting lists from the kids and talking about let's decorate for Christmas. If I learned one thing from my near death experience, it is never argue with my wife and do exactly as she says. I did however work out a compromise with her. I agreed to help put up the inside decorations and the boys can do the outside decorations after Thanksgiving. The other night my wife looked at me and said, "I don't think you're excited about Christmas?" I just looked at her like:

How the hell am I suppose to be excited for Christmas when Thanksgiving isn't even here yet?? Then she proceeded to tell me there are 30 plus days left until Christmas. Okay again, how am I suppose already. be excited about something that is a little more than a month away? See there's no right answer to this people! I got one kid playing Christmas music already, I got another kid just knocking out his shopping, while all the other kids are just sending their lists through text and I'm sitting here like can we give some Thanks first, like as in Thanksgiving! 

Then people wanna sit there and be like, "oooh how time flies!" No, no, no, time does not fly it's rushed by all you people skipping from Labor Day straight to Christmas! 

My wife takes Christmas shopping extremely serious! She creates a Pinterest board and invites all the kids to just pin whatever they want, then she transfers the pins to a handwritten list on paper and then transfers the handwritten list to an app on her phone broken down by kid. I just got tired typing all that out! When she starts the Pinterest board, you see all the kids like this:

I'm done talking about Christmas until after Thanksgiving! So Bianca decided that since the winter was coming that she was going to make homemade cat shelters for the cats that were homeless. That's nice right? What's not nice is the fact that the shelters are in our backyard. As if we don't have enough damn animals inside the house we now have an array of animals in our backyard. I'm about to claim house as an animal sanctuary and start charging admission to the petting zoo we now have in our backyard! The other morning I got up to have coffee and one of Santa's damn reindeer was in the back yard eating the cat food she had put next to the shelters. Our back yard looks like the waiting grounds for Noah's Ark! Here I am all zen pouring coffee when I see this big ass Buck standing in the window looking at me like I interrupted his morning! I did what any normal person would do in this situation, yelled.....

Speaking of backyards... Friday nights our oldest son and daughter-in-law come over and the all the kids hang out. On on particular Friday night the boys decided to make a fire in the fire pit. Anthony went out with them too. This boy comes walking in and says, "Mom I'm just gonna grab a wine cooler!" I'm sorry did you loose your damn mind on our way back to the house from the fire pit? I'll give you a wine cooler to put on you're eye when I bust you in it! Get the hell out of here!

In any event, I was watching the boys carry Mike's wood slats from his bed out to the fire pit. Whatever happened to looking for tree branches?? We went from girls burning bras to boys burning beds! That damn fire looked like St. Elmo's!

The older boys decided to stay by the fire and have a few beers. Tam and I were heading to bed and we said make sure you don't burn the house down and clean up after yourselves. The next morning we wake up, sit down and have some coffee when a blinding light came from the fire pit and hit me right in the eye. I'm sitting at the table like:

After my sight recovered we noticed that the sun was hitting beer cans and bottles that the boys had thrown into the fire pit. Now.... you all know what's coming out of my mouth! How you gonna try and burn cans and bottles? That is not cleaning up after yourselves, that's thinking that we ain't gonna notice the blinding light coming from the fire pit! I love how these kids think they can get over on us, like we haven't done all this shit before... hell we invented this shit they try to get away with! 

We decided to greet our son with a recycling can. He was like "what did you walk out there to check?" Hell no we ain't walking all the way out by the fire pit, the Sun was kind enough to show us your foolishness! 

​Moms 1- Kids 0

So I just revamped some stuff on our website and then after went to take a look at the last blog. I also happened to notice that the last time I blogged was June 30th and how I said I was going to be better at blogging more. I believe I even stated that the next blog would be two weeks from the last blog. Clearly that didn't work out as I had planned, just like most of my life, but I have a really, really, really good excuse. I'm serious, once I tell you all why I haven't blogged, you're faces are going to be like:

Get comfy, get some coffee or tea and some popcorn and get ready for story time.

I'm going to be very date specific with you all that way you can't say that my excuse isn't good enough! So two weeks after my last blog, July 8, 2019, I started having a dry cough and was running a fever. I'm not a fan of doctors so I figured that a few days of rest would do the trick. On Friday, July 12, 2019 my fever was gone and I went to work. By lunch time I just didn't feel good. I had a pain in my right side every time I breathed in and the cough had come back. At first I thought it was the Keto Flu, because YES, Mama Tammy and Mamma Kris had become Keto Kris and Keto Tammy along with Keto Beto (our daughter Bianca). 

I called my wife and told her that I thought I should go to the medi-merge. It's never just THAT simple. Everyone that has a wife knows, that you can't just call and say, "Hi hunny, listen I think I should go to the medi-merge" after being sick for a whole week. It just doesn't work that way. I had to hear a 10 minute lecture on why I should have went on July 8th. So I get home and she takes me to the medi-merge. At this point the pain has doubled and my breathing was a little more labored that they took me in the back for an x-ray. The woman that was doing my x-ray kept cutting off the top of my lungs so I had to keep holding my breath even though I was in pain. So every time she said "ohhhhh shoot, sorry hunny, we're going to have to do it again" I looked like this:

At one point I think I even asked how long she had been doing this job. Every time she said, "deep breath in and hold sweetie" I wanted to throw punches. This is why I'm not a fan of doctors, you tell them something and they cling to it. So they asked if I ever had asthma. I tell the doctor that I had sports induced asthma when I was 16-17 years old. What happened after I told them that? They brought in a nebulizer treatment and said that I could be having an asthma attack.

I'm sorry what? No I don't have asthma, never had asthma, had SPORT-INDUCED as in induced by a sporting activity, which I can wholeheartedly swear did not take place prior to my arriving here! This is why I don't go to doctors! In any event, there I am sitting with a mask on breathing in asthma medication. The doctor finally comes in and tells me that my x-ray came back showing I had pneumonia. Who the hell gets pneumonia in July?? Me, apparently I do. I mean is pneumonia even around in the summer? So 7 days of antibiotics. This is where it starts getting good.

So the rest of weekend I spent in quarantine away from the family, in bed. The doctor told my wife I was contagious and we were leaving for vacation in two weeks so she didn't want anyone else to get sick before we left! Now during these two days I noticed that the kids were hanging out in the living room a lot more than normal with Tammy and laughing and talking. This made me think back to all the times I wasn't quarantined and how the kids would all leave and go to their rooms after dinner. I mean all the kids were still chewing when they got up to leave.

Could it be? Could it be that my family enjoyed me not being present? I sat there and thought, is this really happening? 

So I texted my wife from the bedroom and said, "why are the kids hanging out with you? They never hang out this long when I'm out there." My wife texts back with some bullshit like, "of course they do babe, don't be silly!" No, no they don't. I'm on antibiotics not pain killers! Whatever I stayed in bed and binged watched all the Fast and Furious movies. Three days on the antibiotics and I started to feel much better. Went to work the following week, was in good spirits, feeling good, moving and motivating. I had every intention of blogging the night of July 20th.

Which brings me to my really, really, really good excuse. So the morning of Saturday, July 20th, I wake up and told my wife I would make the coffee, I mean I make it every day anyways. I got up went to the kitchen and it happened. So let me paint a picture for you all. Our house is big enough for our family but not that big. From our bedroom to the kitchen is like maybe 7 steps, 10 at the most. By the time I got to the kitchen, I was gasping for air, the room went grey and I felt like I was going to pass out. I grabbed hold of the counter, it reminded me of this:

My wife comes out, half awake and goes "what the hell is the matter with you? Why are you breathing like that?" Now in her defense, she didn't know that I almost passed out, so the look accompanying the above comment was something like this:

I told her that I got up, by the time I got to the kitchen, I felt like I was going to pass out and I couldn't catch my breathe. The above look then turned into this look:

I then realized that the "Are you kidding" look was because I told her that I made the coffee and she thought that I didn't. I'm kidding! She was actually really upset that I didn't wake her up or call for her. I mean with in all honesty, if I was going to pass out, I'd rather pass out while she was in the room, because with her neck and back injuries how the hell was she going to break my fall? For real if I called her into the kitchen while I was feeling lightheaded all she could physically do is watch as I did this:

While we're having coffee, I start coughing and am still having trouble catching my breathe. At this point, Tammy is trying to convince me to go back to the medi-merge and I'm debating my point as to why I shouldn't. First point, I had a basketball game to coach that afternoon and second point, no. So we get ready to go the gym and I'll admit now that from the time I got ready to the time we actually left, I felt like I was going to pass out at least 15 times. During this time, I was still trying to catch my breathe. At this point I had told Tammy that I thought the pneumonia had come back. So any normal person in this scenario would tend to their health, I however only cared about coaching my team. That's dedication, that's commitment to the sport, the youth, the future of female athletes. You hear that Division I schools?? Ya know just in case a Division 1 coach is reading this and needs an assistant! 

At this point we're in the car heading to the gym and my wife keeps telling me to call my assistant and have him coach the game. I gave her the same speech I just gave you all and the Division 1 coaches reading. Her response was, "well you're an idiot!" It takes us a good twenty minutes to get from the car to the team bench with all my stopping, catching my breath and holding on to things. Normally it would be a 5 minute walk. Do you all appreciate the vivid picture I'm painting of my very very very very good excuse? My wife is sitting beside me telling me I'm getting to serious and to get to the point already. So lets skip ahead to after the game and we're back home and Tammy finally convinces me that she's taking me to the hospital after I denied her requests because I didn't want to ruin her Saturday. After I said that, she responded:

Followed by:

Then finally:

Off to the ER we go! 

We get to the ER and I walk in and threw myself over the front desk and mumbled out the words "I can't breathe!" The lovely, over zealous security guard was like "are you visiting someone today or are you a patient?" Way to do your job buddy but do we all not notice that I'm slumped over your desk gasping for air? At this point, Tammy tells him that I can't breathe, have pain in my chest and feel like I'm going to pass out. There's a guy off to the side in a cubicle that gets on the phone and calls Tammy over to him. Meanwhile I'm like, I'll just be over here while you all figure out what to do with me:

Next thing I know we get rushed to the back and I have a slew of nurses sticking me with needles, hooking me up to machines, and taking vitals. Doctors are coming in and out asking questions. Then they start giving me breathing treatments. Can I ask what the hell is up with the medical professionals automatically resorting to breathing treatments? Let's think about this for a second... If I come in and am gasping for air, what the hell makes you so sure I'm actually going to be able to breathe in humidified air at a fast speed? In any event, while all this is going on, I'm laying in the bed like:

Like can someone PLEASE get a sister some AIR??!! Finally a really nice male nurse comes over and says, "I'm going to help you out", and puts the O2 mask on me. Help me out? You just saved my life... someone give that man a damn raise! So after a few hours the ER doctor comes in the room sits down and says, "Ok, so we're going to admit you. Your blood work came back and it indicates that you had a heart attack and are in the early stages of congestive heart failure". At this I look at Tammy and she starts crying, I immediately start laughing. I have no idea why I thought that news was funny, but I couldn't stop laughing. At one point I looked over at Tammy and was like, "ain't this some shit? I stopped smoking, I stopped drinking, I starting eating clean, and NOW I have a heart attack? Am I missing something?" Then I sat in the bed like:

I then decide that after 5 years of not speaking to my father now would be the perfect time to text him. So I sent him a text saying, "Yea so I'm in the hospital, no don't come, but I had a heart attack, so thanks for your shitty ass genes John! You couldn't pass this on to your other kids?" What? It was warranted. So we get moved up to a room and Tammy is calling everyone and filling them in. Every nurse that came in I automatically called them Nurse Boo. If there were student nurses, they were automatically called Baby Nurse Boo. So the first Boo of the night came in and started taking vitals and telling me all the tests I'd be going for and what was ordered for me and all that happy whoha stuff. 

So I'm going to skip ahead a little, so the following day I had gone for 4 tests, 3 of the tests came back negative, so while I was on my way down for the 4th test, I said to Nurse Boo, "Hey you wanna bet on this test?" She looked at me like:

"Come on Nurse Boo, I'm 0-3 right now, take the bet!"I was convinced that this test was going to come back positive because I knew something was wrong. Nurse Boo didn't want to take the bet. So once I got back into the room my lovely meal was waiting for me. Roasted chicken breast, broccoli and green beans. Please keep in mind that I was informed that I was on a cardiac menu so instead of salt I was given Mrs. Dash. Why is this still a thing? It's horrible! You sprinkle it on the vegetables and at first glance it looks like wood chips and it doesn't season the vegetables at all. It falls off them as soon as you pick them up to eat it. So, someone please, explain what's the point of Mrs. Dash when it just ends up in a pile on your plate. So you look like this when eating Mrs. Dash

When I'm in the hospital, whether it's a patient or being a supportive wife, I tend to do shit myself. So I had to go to the bathroom, so I decided that all the Nurse Boos were busy dealing with other patients that I would unhook myself from all the machines and go. I took off my oxygen, stood up, took two steps and ended up like this:

So remember the 4th test? Yea, well I won! Test came back positive. Here's the funny part of the whole thing, they didn't tell me right away. Nurse Boo came in and said "we're moving you up to ICU so they can monitor you more closely." Naturally it didn't register. So when we got up to the room, I looked at Tammy and said, "wow this is a really nice room, at least its private and enclosed and spacious". She looked at me and said, "you do realize that it's ICU as in intensive care unit, right?" So the second Nurse Boo came in for the night, hooked me up to some more advanced machines, drew some more blood and stuck me in the stomach with a needle. ​

The next morning, Dr. ICU comes in to tell us the news. You all ready for this? Apparently I threw a pulmonary embolism to both my lungs. For those that don't know medical terminology, basically a pulmonary embolism is a blood clot. At this point for some reason I still find this all amusing. Dr. ICU tells us that medically speaking I shouldn't be alive and that the radiologist called himself to first find out if I was "circling the drain" or if I was alert and to say to Dr. ICU how impressed he was with the size of my clot. Well Dr. Radiology, I'm not circling the drain and I guess, thank you! Come on up to ICU and i'll autograph my CT image of your choice.

So once we got the news, Dr. ICU said he be back in with my "team" of doctors. So I had Dr. Blood, Dr. Lung, Dr. Heart and Dr. Internal on my team. When rounds came around and my team came in, Drake's song popped into my head and I was like, "My teams' good we don't really need a mascot!" Apparently I was a hit with my team because no one could figure out how or why this happened. It was serious like an episode of House. At one point I told the Nurse to call Dr. House especially when two of the doctors on my "team" looked like this:

Moving on! Once they stabilized me back down to a different floor with a whole bunch of new boos. At this point I was so over being in the hospital that when the 5th Nurse Boo came in and said, "so what happen sweetie?" My response was, "well God got jokes!" Its true the G-O-D is the Prank War Champion! I'm not sure if it was the lack of oxygen, respiratory failure or the food but I started hallucinating and saw God up in Heaven like:

Every time a doctor came in, they were like, "well you're lucky to be alive!" Yes I know, got it, can we start with something a little more less doom and gloom, like "Hi, how ya feeling?" After a very long 6 days in the hospital, 6 days 2 times a day of roasted chick, broccoli and green beans, I was discharged. My wife was a champ, she stayed the whole time with me, even sleeping in a broken recliner. Thankfully my wife doesn't put up with my shit and ignores me, if she didn't I wouldn't be here today.

So there ya go! I told you I had a very very very very good excuse as to why I didn't stick to my promise!

In all seriousness, pulmonary embolisms is an extremely serious condition and there is not a lot of education on the symptoms of a PE. Often times patients are misdiagnosed and end up dying. Ten to thirty percent of people affected by a PE or DVT will die within one month of the diagnosis. For more information, check out the following website:

www.stoptheclot.org

Well hello out there!! Yes it's your favorite sarcastic blogger, here to rant about the bunch and get you all caught up! I know it's been a while since the last blog AND YES I KNOW I SAID THAT IN THE LAST BLOG...

Get use to that line, because Mama Kris is busssssyyyyy!

A lot has happened since Easter so grab some tea because I'm about to spill ours! First and foremost Bianca is an official licensed driver! Can we please get a round of applause on this? The reason being for the applause, is that all the way to the road test Bianca kept saying "oh my God, I'm going to fail!!" Now, being the amazing, supportive parents that Tammy and I are, we just kept encouraging her that she was going to do fine and pass. In the back of my mind I was thinking of the time I took my road test and how the instructors were just straight up assholes and were determined to fuck with you and crush your soul. Who remembers back in the day when the instructors use to get in the car and refuse to put on their seat belt just to mess with you? They all looked the same too! Every single soul crusher looked like this:

I have to say Bianca had a pretty cool looking instructor. They really modernized the DMV since I took my test! Dude had a long as beard and was covered in tattoos with gauges. So Bianca gets in the car, the instructor gets in and we watch her drive off around the building. I'm not even lying when I say that she drove around the building, did a parallel park and came back. Tammy and I both looked at each like:

At first we thought she failed, but she rolled down the window and gave us the thumb's up and I literally said, "damn that was the quickest road test in history!" I now know why the road test was quick, because getting her actual license looked just like this:

Yep, a 2.5 second road test and a two hour wait to get the license, so please everyone reading give not only Bianca a round of an applause, but me for not losing my shit during the wait. I'm sure you're all wondering what I've been up to and if you haven't I'm going to tell you anyway, because that's the point of a blog! Up until last weekend, I was still coaching basketball. My 8th grade team had it's last official tournament of the season down in Hershey for Nationals. It was a nice little three day get-away full of basketball. Now the season has come to an end I have weekends free for the most part. So you'll be happy to know that  regular bi-weekly blogs will be coming your way. I know you're all sitting behind your computer or phone reading this acting like:

Don't act like your not....!

So let's rant about the children shall we? I mean what be a true Kris blog if I wasn't ranting about children and what they do? So as you all know by now, we have like a million kids. I exaggerate but in all honesty it truly feels like that sometimes. It's like I'll be talking to one kid and then two more will walk in and then after they leave, three more DIFFERENT kids walk in and in my head I'm thinking "didn't I just talk to you?" It's like a revolving door of kids in here. At times I swear it looks like this when I get home from work:

Half the time, I'm calling the kids the animal names and the animals the kids names. Anyone out there with more children than the state requirement, which I am now declaring as two, can truly appreciate what I am about to say. Picture this, you have 5 kids living in your house, accept the fact that you are outnumbered at this point. It becomes a real life episode of The Survivor. You buy groceries and within a matter of minutes it looks like the apocalypse has just hit. Your refrigerator now looks like this:

What to do in this situation you ask? Well, lucky for you I have tips to survive raising kids. First step, buy food and hide in your bedroom! That is the number rule of surviving a household of children that you would think have a tapeworm. My wife and I have all kinds of snack hidden in all areas of our bedroom. You have have to multiple hiding spots. Here's why; one kid happens to go into your room because you order them to get you your phone charger. You can't just have all the good stuff out in the open. Put the shit in a hamper. They'll never look there! Multiple hiding spots people, take it from us, they still haven't found the bag of chips!  Moving on to step two of Kris' Survival Guide to Outsmarting the Kids, hide everything. We have toilet paper, paper towels and pod tides (not for you think) hidden in spots all over our room.

You might be asking, "why hide toilet paper?" Well if your kids are anything like ours, they like to take all the toilet paper to their respective bathrooms and then mistakenly "forget" to tell you there's no more toilet paper left. This especially happens, when you're on the toilet. Ah kids, gotta hate em, I mean love them. Now, you're probably asking why hide paper towels. Kids think paper towels are napkins and they use them to blow their noses, to dry their hands, clean their mouths, all things not intended for paper towels. It says during the commercials that paper towels clean up spills! Not to mention that instead of the kids going the extra mile and actually throwing the paper towels away in the garbage can, they leave them waded up in a disgusting ball of filth on the counter next to the kitchen sink. I'm trying to contemplate why they do this. I mean it's not like we can re-use your waded filthy paper towel and rehang in on a cardboard roll.

Again, you might be wondering why are we hiding tide-pods in our bedroom. Well for the simple fact that everyone does laundry excessively in this house, we need to hide them. Stay with here, if there are no tide pods they don't do laundry. Just the other day, I was getting ready to do laundry and the last time I checked there were 4 tide pods left. I go down to find one left. Now keep in mind I asked if anyone had laundry in the washer and dryer because EVERYONE in this house knows I do laundry on Sundays. Everyone answers no. I go down and there is a hoodie in the washer. ONE hoodie, not a load of clothes, not more than one hoodie a single fucking hoodie. I come to find out that Mike decided that washing one hoodie with one tide pod was acceptable. I'm sorry you didn't think that maybe holding off and washing multiple hoodies or clothes with a tide pod was better than wasting a tide pod on ONE hoodie??

Then we have our teenage daughter who lets clothes pile up for a month and decides, only after having absolutely nothing left to wear that NOW would be a good time to do laundry. So she uses 3, because there's a month worth of clothes to wash. I swear I'm about to break out the old fashion way of washing clothes. Hey kids, go out on hike, find a river, a nice big rock, wet your clothes and beat them over the rock, take a bar of soap with ya! Kids nowadays have it made! To recap, I have given you all two very important survival skills to outsmart your kids. I can't give them all away to you right now, because then you won't read my book when it comes out, so start with those two and let me know how it goes. Remember parents:

I made a career change recently, which has been amazing to say the least. When my company was on-boarding me, I had to go for my first ever drug test. At first I was like this is fun! Not because I was afraid of the results but because I've never had to take a drug test. What can I say, new things interest me. So I show up at the lab and they call me in immediately. By the way, when you go for a drug test, its a priority so you don't have wait, skip right to the head of the line. I was greeted by the tech, "Kristen insert last name here" (i'm not telling you all my last name, we aren't tight like that yet), so I smiled and said "good morning!" She looked down at the script and then looked at me and her whole demeanor changed. She looked at me like I was a criminal, even worse like a drug addict. She rudely said "follow me down to room 15". Easy there tonto, it's like I can take a detour of the lab, there's only one friggen hallway. After she did what she had to do with the script she says, "lets go to the bathroom now". I'm sorry, excuse me? "Lets go", I'm not peeing in a cup with you watching. She walks into the bathroom, lifts up the lid, throws some tablet into the water, that turned it blue, grabbed the hand soap and removed the garbage can. At this point, I'm standing in the bathroom like:

I was so confused as to why she removed the garbage can and took the hand soap. Anyway, she hands me the cup, she tells me, "pee in the cup, the remainder can go in the toilet, after you wipe don't throw the toilet paper in the toilet and don't wash your hands until I come back in. When you're done knock on the door!" I'm sorry but what the fuck is going on here. First, where else would I put the "remainder" of my urine go...on the floor?! Secondly, you expect me to hold used toilet paper?? 

Like I'm sorry, I wasn't raised in a barn. Any who, I peed in a cup, which for females, its a struggle. I knocked on the door, while holding used toilet paper waiting for Officer Lab Tech to give me the go ahead to throw it out. She examines the toilet water, then examines my urine and goes, "hmmm"? Hmmmm what bitch, it's yellow like urine is suppose to be! Then she hands me the soap and says "wash your hands." As if I wasn't going to do that, but thanks for looking out! As if things couldn't get any creepier, she stood there glaring at me as I washed me hands. Like was I not washing my hands for the appropriate amount of time? After I washed my hands back to room 15 we went where I had to sign off on my pee. Just so you all know the drug test came back negative. In case you all were concerned based on past blogs.

Summer is here....yay for everyone that doesn't have to work. Our youngest child, Anthony had his "Moving Up Ceremony" last week. Moving up ceremonies are so much fun, not for parents but for the kids. Ya know the kids really feel like they accomplished something. They put in five long, hard years of elementary school. My lord all the coloring, arts and crafts, songs they had sing and fun the had in class, must have been really tough on them. I'm joking, not really, but in all seriousness, we were proud of Anthony. Anthony has an IEP and has had one since 3rd grade so for him to stand on the stage and receive his "Moving Up" Certificate at grade level, really made us proud. Until, as I was recording him walking out of his ceremony, he yells "Mom, do you believe this, 180 days and all i get is a handshake and a piece of paper!!" Me:

I mean what do you say to that? Kid kinda had a valid point! Let's do better elementary schools, give them a friggen tassle and hat to at least throw up in the air, not cupcakes and cookies so they come home fucking crazy and sugared up. What happened to healthy snack options? That just went right out the window now that you all are done with them huh? I see how it is!

Well there you have it, you're all officially caught up now!!

OOOOOH, good news, the Gady Moms are back on the mic, so don't forget to go check out the Gaydy Moms latest podcast here

​Until next time.. which will be in two weeks in case you all were wondering!

It has been an insanely busy month. I have been coaching two girls' AAU basketball teams, so my week nights are filled with practices, reviewing game films and going over strategies, while the weekends are consumed by tournaments. Most of the weekends, we're driving from one end of the state to the other. Basically our weekends look a lot like this:

Speaking about driving all over the place, Bianca started her diving lessons this month and will be taking her road test in the next week or so. I get the job of teaching our girls how to drive, since my wife still suffers from some post-traumatic stress from her accident. Lucky me! I practiced a few times with Bianca before she started lessons and I personally thought she did a great job. However, Bianca has this thing where the entire time she's driving she constantly repeats "I'm going to die, I'm going to die!" I have to reassure her that she's not going to die. The first few times we went out it resembled a lot like this:

The "I'm going to die" comment carried over to her lessons with the driving school. Fortunately she had a very patient instructor that reassured her that dying wasn't an option. Apparently the instructor wasn't happy with the way I taught her how to take right hand turns. She had come home from lesson and told us that he was like "Bianca you need slow down when taking those right hand turns". According to Bianca her right hand turns are kind of like this:

Look I don't see anything wrong taking a turn like that. What does he expect her to do? Stop and then make the turn?? Come on Dave.. get with the program. Needless to say her right hand turns got better, she completed her lessons and is now ready for her test! 

Mother nature is finally getting her shit together and realizing that we are in April and we need warmer weather. That being said, my wife had the brilliant idea of taking our two doggos to the dog park. The dog park is always fun with our two dogs. Now in fun, I mean if you want to slowly stab yourself repeatedly with a sharp object while you sit and watch two boujee ass dogs do absolutely nothing! This dog park is like Great Adventure for dogs without the lines. I mean this place has dog tunnels, hoops, toys and buckets of water. What do our two dogs do? One is sitting on my wife's lap and the other pissing on everything he sees even though he's got nothing left. Like why you lifting up your leg to pee on something bruh when you know your tank is empty? Like what's the point?

I put teddy in the tunnel and he was confused as hell. Here I am on the other side talking to him like a child, saying "come on buddy walk through it". Meanwhile he's in the middle of the tunnel like:

It took him about a good 5 minutes to realize he wasn't trapped. Then I decided to play fetch with him. So here I am throwing a ball and yelling "Teddy get the ball", while Teddy is like:

Clearly he wasn't feeling the "I throw the ball, you run and bring it back game". I looked at my wife and said "what the hell is wrong with our dogs? Dogs are supposed to love the dog park. Not these two! When we got home, they both ran to their water bowls and drank like they ran a damn 5K and then curled up on the couch and took a nap. What the hell were they tired from. One sat on the bench, while other thought he was trapped inside a tunnel. I looked at my wife and said, "well that was 30 minutes of my life I'll never get back".  

Moving on.. so by now you all know that we have a shit ton of kids. So a few weekends ago it was tournament weekend, my wife and I were up at 6am and on the road by 8am for our 9:30 game. I had a total of 5 games between my two teams. After the tournament, Tammy and I stopped to grab something to eat and when we got home the house was dark. At first I was like "YES, they're out doing sibling shit and its quiet relaxation time for us"! We get out of the car and all of a sudden we hear this insanely loud obnoxious music playing and strobe lights coming from our living room. I turned to my wife and said "what the fuck is happening right now?" As soon as we walk in this happened:

I'm getting jumped into, spun around, pushed, shaken and blinded by some makeshift fucking strobelights made out of our sauce pots and cell phones! I look down and I see Bianca doing her Sweat workout on a yoga mat. No lie, while all this is happening, there's Bianca like:

We literally thought we were on Prank Wars and the Twilight Zone combined. Complete and total mind fuck! Not to mention I had left overs from our dinner in a bag that I put in the kitchen, after I eventually escaped the insanity of what we call our children; I walk into the kitchen and Mike is getting ready to throw my left overs in the garbage. H-O-L-D T-H-E F-U-C-K!! Listen off springs.. it's one thing to play games with me, but when you fuck with my leftovers we throwing down. This house party went on for hours and then they all went their separate ways leaving the pots. No really don't worry, we'll put them away! 

While we're on the topic of kids, can we discuss how kids will wash their dishes but keep piling them in the drainboard. Last time I checked, the drainboard didn't put the shit away itself. Our drainboard looks like this:

It's like Jenga with plates, cups, coffee mugs, pots, pans and silverware. I purposely wait to see how high the tower of clean dishes gets before I or my wife have to put them away. Same goes for the dish soap, if you're pumping it onto the sponge and foam is coming out, it should be a clear indication to fill the fucking thing up! Nope, moms do that too. Paper towels.. forget it. It's taboo to change the empty paper towel roll. Is there something in a kids' head that thinks the brown empty cardboard roll looks fucking appealing?! Oh I'm not done.. what about toilet paper. All these kids have a bathroom but they all gotta use ours, use our toilet paper and then when I go in I HAVE TO CHANGE THE BROWN EMPTY ROLL! What sick twisted satisfaction do kids get by doing this? Pure evil. That's it I'm on strike. I don't care how high the pile gets in the drainboard, I'll leave the brown paper towel cardboard roll up, I'll hide my toilet paper and leave the empty roll on the holder. It's on now! 

Because we are stellar moms we went out early Easter morning and got the kids some things. All great moms do shit last minute! Every Easter we BBQ because we do. Mainly because we have a million kids and going out to dinner is like a mortgage payment so we keep it simple. So I of course stay outside and get smoke in my eyes, burns on my arms from the heat of the grill and cook the food and then come in smelling like Fire Marshall Bill, while everyone inside is laughing and enjoying each other. I come in with the food like:

So after dinner, we were all hanging out and Carlton and Alessandra starting having this conversation about Jesus. Alessandra, who by the way attended CCD, made her communion and confirmation, says, "so what happens after today? Does Jesus go back to his tomb?" Carlton jumps in and goes, "Or does he just roam around?" At this point all I could do is give them both this look:

Yep, Jesus is just roaming around until next Easter! What the hell is the matter with ya'll??

On that note, another tournament weekend is upon me! Stay tuned for our next podcast coming next week. 

Ok so not too bad this time...only a month or so has past since our last blog! Nevermind, it's bad! Anyway, can we just take a minute and acknowledge how fucking long the month of January was? What the hell was that all about? I mean usually once New Year’s Day hits months just fly by, but not January 2019. Oh no, that bitch was like:

Am I right? 

If you recall in last month's blog, I was gearing up for knee surgery on my good knee that became my bad knee. Surgery went well, and all is fixed. Apparently at some point during my good ol' basketball days I had a tear in my ACL and didn't know it. So now I have ACL arthritis. Good times. Apparently I'm a hoot on anesthesia. According to my wife I turned into Pauly D after I woke up and was ready to go home, sitting in the wheel chair yelling:

Oh and according to my wife I wore my surgical paper hat out of the facility! Question? What is about the apple juice and snacks that they give you right after you wake up that literally tastes like a piece of heaven. It's like you wake up from the anesthesia and they give you the juice and snack and you're sitting in the bed half stoned like:

While we're on the topic of my knee surgery, can someone out there please explain to me what they hell they put in that prep solution that takes weeks to come off. I looked like I had a horrible spray tan on one leg for weeks. No lie my left leg looked like it belonged on Trump's body. I resorted to using one of those pumice stones and figured I could scrub the skin off. No such luck. Finally after a few weeks it wore off, but damn, can we use a more washable solution next time?! 

So if you don't know, now you know, I coached our son's 3rd through 5th grade rec basketball team. It was quite the challenge for me because I'm used to dealing with just the short attention span of our son, this time I had 11 of them. Here I am trying to teach them fundamental basketball and they're all doing this:

Then this:

Annnnnnnnnnnd of course this:

Meanwhile I'm trying to remember that I'm coaching 3rd through 5th graders and not high school kids but there were certainly times were I ended up like this:

Now dammit stop Fortnite dancing and pay attention! You all want to be Fortnite dancing while I'm teaching basketball. Last time I checked your mommas' didn't pay for you to dance! Needless to say we didn't win a game all season long and there were times were I looked like this at our games:

While our son, the oldest on the team was pulling Bobby Knight shit like:

I have to say, while it was a very long season, but I love those little guys and they really did improve throughout the season, so overall it was a winning season. 

There has been a lot going on since the last blog. I'm venturing into a new career, something that I have wanted to do for a very long time so I'm super excited about getting started. However, with a lot going on it only makes sense that our entire house would get his with the stomach flu! 

Now it started with our youngest son on Sunday morning when he starting throwing up all day. Which prompted my wife to run around all day Sunday doing this:

I looked at her and said, "what the hell are you doing? Why are you in the hallway ass naked at 4am in the closet!" She starts that 15 year old whine (you all know what that sounds like if you have a teenage girl) and replies "Mommmmmmmmy, I just threw up all over my bed and I can't find a towel". Meanwhile, my wife is yelling from the bedroom, "Kris hurry up, I feel like I'm going to throw up!" So at this point I tell her to go put on a robe, I'll get the towel, which was downstairs in the dryer. I opened the door to go downstairs to grab the towel and the bag and the friggen cat ran down. So here I am at 4am, feeling like complete shit, holding a bag and a towel trying to catch a fucking cat! I kind of looked like this:

Meanwhile the cat is all like:

I throw the towel to Alessandra whose now in a robe (thank the lord), drop the cat on the couch, bring the bag into the room for my wife and she goes, "I need a bucket". Of course, how could I forget the bucket. I run into Anthony's room forgetting that the poor kid was even in there, turn on the light and grab the bucket (which was clean by the way), bring it back to Tammy. I put the bag in the bucket handed it off and said, toss away. Meanwhile after all of this, I am now laying in bed like:

Thankfully we are all back to normal....well, I wouldn't say normal!

Did you all miss me? Happy New Year to everyone, hope everyone's holiday and New Year was nice. Ours was expensive. I know it's been a while since I last blogged and I always apologize but I generally don't mean the apology so I'm not going to do that this time. 

So, I think we left off with Thanksgiving and the start of our Christmas shopping. You'll all be happy to know that we managed to finish our Christmas shopping the night before Christmas Eve. This was a huge victory for us. Usually we're shopping all of Christmas Eve day and then wrapping until 4am. Listen, Christmas shopping for the amount of kids we have is no easy task. At one point I wanted to call in the SWAT team for assistance. My wife has to get an app on her phone just to keep track of how many damn kids we have to shop for and who got what. Thank God for that App because half the time on Christmas Day, I'm like "when the hell did we get that?" 

It's seems like every year we add one more kid to the list and to be honest, I'm trying to figure out where all these damn kids are coming from. This year we had the newest addition to our family, Mike's girlfriend who he gave a promise ring to. When I found out he got her a promise ring my initial reaction was:

Then I was like:

In all seriousness, she's very sweet, definitely the girl for him and we love her! However I did warn her that she would make an appearance and most likely would get roasted because that's just what I do. Welcome to the Family! Ooh, I do want to point out that I did in fact take part in the wrapping of the presents this year. Usually after I shop with my wife then I'm like, "MY JOBS DONE!" This year I really stepped it up and wrapped like 8 presents. 

In case you're all wondering how the outside holiday decorations turned out, I'm happy to announce that the stars aligned in my favor and our porch light blew out right after Thanksgiving. Now this would have been an amazing turn of events for me if my wife didn't come up with the idea of running an extension cord from the inside of our garage to the lights outside, which of course prompted this reaction from me:

I'm still trying to figure out who tipped her off that we had an outlet in the garage? No way she knew that shit on her own! In any event she recruited Mike to get Theodore our giant teddy bear from the shed and all the decorations. Unfortunately, Theodore didn't make it to his second year of the Gaydy Light Show. Something got into our shed and ate his ear off and broke his arm. As soon as we told my wife that Theodore would not make an appearance, her response was less than pleasant

As if telling her about Theodore wasn't bad enough, I had to tell her that I couldn't find our Christmas projectors from last year. Man, that was brutal! Shit escalated quickly after that. It went from above to this in 2.5 seconds:

You all know what this meant right? I had to go out and buy NEW decorations to replace the missing decorations that I will probably find in the summer! Happy wife, happy life. Needless to say the decorations were up a few days after Thanksgiving like the wife had wanted.

Back to Christmas morning. So Christmas morning is always a shit show in our house. Tammy and I will get up organize the presents in piles by kids, then the kids wake up and come down and start putting their gifts out, which just defeats the nice OCD pile of gifts I have created. Then Anthony comes out and begs to open a present, the cats are trying to climb the tree, the dogs are confused and I generally just stand in the living room like this:

We're all about tradition here in the Gaydy house so Christmas morning starts out with a big Christmas breakfast that Tammy cooks. While breakfast is being prepared the kids open their stockings, we eat and then I hand out presents and collect garbage. One kid opens one present at a time, and so on until all the presents are done. As you can tell this process takes quite some time because we have 903840923 children. Once the last present is open, I'm usually like this:

All the kids were happy and surprised, so once again a successful Christmas that I still don't know how we pulled off! 

The older kids really put some thought into the gifts for Tam and I too, which was nice. Mike bought me some really cool sneakers because I'm a sneaker head so that made me happy. Tammy got clothes which is what she really wanted, which blows my mind because you can't fit any clothes in her drawers to begin with but somehow she always needs clothes. Bianca and Carlton had gotten me a Google Home which I really wanted. I actually tried to buy it myself on several occasions while shopping for the kids. Lex, Mike's girlfriend got us Alexa, which is awesome because now we have one in the bedroom and one in the living room. All in all it was a good holiday. I ended up getting sick the Friday before New Year's Eve with the throat infection thing that my whole family had. I thought I was out of the woods because they all had it about a two weeks before Christmas.. but NOPE! So New Year's Eve was a quiet night home with the little ones. However, me being sick didn't stop Tammy from partying it up. She had herself two glasses of wine and turned into this:

Meanwhile I'm on the coach like:

Then you got Google Home who wants to be all kinds of helpful. You can tell Google is a bit of an overachiever. It's like chill back Google, I see you, but I didn't ask you what the weather was, I just asked you to make sure my ass gets up in the morning. Then your like Google play soothing sounds and then all of a sudden some creepy possessed thing comes on yellin Shhhhhhhhh Shhhhhhhh SHhhhhhhhh Shhhhhhhhhhhh Shhhhhhhhhhh! First time I heard that shit, no lie I was like:

Hey Google, thank you for creepin me the fuck out, let's stick with the sound of rain.

So as you know Tammy and I have been in physical therapy together. Originally I was rehabbing my right knee and then I ended up tearing the meniscus in my left during a basketball game, which turned into both knees requiring rehab. Long story short my left knee isn't responding to therapy so I'm having surgery tomorrow on my left knee. However, the four weeks I was in therapy, I received a treatment called Russian Stimulation. Now we all know that anything with the word Russian in the beginning of it is going to be hardcore! Forreal this was the worst pain I have ever felt in my entire life, worse than labor. I legit felt like I was going to pop a child out of my quad every time this stim went off. Imagine a leg cramp or a foot cramp in your sleep and multiply that by like 10,000 and that's what Russian Stim feels like! It's meant to cause your quad to spasm and then during the spams you have to tighten your quad. This procedure goes for a minute, off for thirty seconds then back on for a minute and the whole thing lasts 10 minutes. At the end of the stim, I'm hunched over the table like:

On top of that they decided that "foam" rolling the spasms in my quad and I.T. band was another brilliant choice. Anyone that is in physical therapy knows that the "foam" roll is NOT FUCKING FOAM! It's like a tree truck wrapped in foam. There is nothing comfortable about this! My wife of course was riding the bike video taping me rolling and laughing so hard she wasn't making a sound! My physical therapist is like "come on 14 more", 14 more? I'm lucky if I can get 2 more done without popping a vein in my forehead! This is what foam rolling is suppose to look like:

This is what it looks like when I do it:

With that, I'm going to shove as much food into my mouth before midnight! Stay tuned for our Podcast this Friday! 

Yea, yea yea... I know I suck at life.. blah blah blah. I know I kept promising a blog and then not doing one and now here we are.. you all got your blog! 

I just realized that the last blog I did was in September... hashtag Sorry Not Sorry! So a lot of things have happened over the last two months so anticipate this one to be a long drawn out blog of me ranting! I mean not that, that is different from any of the other blogs I've done. 

I suppose we'll start with Halloween because I honestly can't remember what happened at the end of September. I'm pretty sure I've discussed my dislike of Halloween in past blogs. Definitely not a Halloween person, I don't think it should fall under the "holiday" category AT ALL! However, my wife loves Halloween so therefore I have absolutely no choice in what I plan on doing for Halloween, because she has it all planned out for me.

We'll back up a little to maybe about a  week or so before Halloween where we had to "decorate" the house for this "holiday". This entailed buying decorative pumpkins for inside the house because ya know all the trick-or-treaters' are going to see the Halloween decorations inside our house! At one point during my work week I got a text message from Tammy asking me where our "Welcome to our Patch" yard sign was. She then went on to inform me that she had the girls hang the black cat, the pumpkin sign and the "Halloween/Fall" wreath, and that all the outside decorations were up! Speaking of.. why does every single friggen holiday have to involve a wreath? 

My wife then proceeds to tell me that we need more outside decorations for Halloween, like the blow up ones they have for Christmas. See now I don't understand why this necessary. Why would spend an entire weekend wiring up our house for one day.. not even ONE day! More like a few hours! I don't mind doing the decorations for Christmas because at least you get a whole month of "look what I did hunny, doesn't it look great?!" I wasn't being completely difficult. I did however agree that she could get some more decorations, but she kept picking things that required my participation. Meaning.... ME having to install said decorations or wire said decoration.  

Once we got the decoration situation under control, she was looking for the right kind of candy blend. I pickup a giant bag and said, "here ya go". She was all concerned with what kids could or couldn't have chocolate. I mean how is that OUR responsibility?! I mean isn't the parents responsibility to go through their child's bag or basket and take out what they can or can't have? Listen, I'm spending my hard earned money to feed the neighborhood kids candy, my job is done! You bring your kid out trick-or-treating you can't be pulling all that, "my kid can't have peanuts" or "I don't give my kid chocolate" shit!

The morning of Halloween, while I'm at work, my wife sends me a text asking me what I'm being for Halloween. I simply send her a selfie while I'm in an elevator with a reply that says "this". What do you mean what am I being for Halloween? NOTHING!!! I had grand plans of coming home and doing nothing. However, I had to sit out in the cold, on the porch and hand out candy! Why you ask? Because my wife said that was what I was doing, so that's what I did. Usually I'm the one on Halloween like:

However I have to admit, being sarcastic with little kids is so much fun because they never get it and you can go on and on with sarcastic banter. I have to admit I did have a good time messing with the kids the older kids who just strolled on up in regular clothes. One kid told me he left his mask at home. Ummmmmmm, how you doing to leave your mask at home and then try to get some candy! I kept asking the kids if it was a trick or a treat and all of them kept looking at me with this dumbfounded look on their face. I don't see the difficulty in answering the question? Do you?

Now that Halloween is over, I tried to put the decorative pumpkins away and I was stopped in my tracks like I had robbed a bank. My wife was all like:

She then informed me that the pumpkins will stay up through Thanksgiving. Once again....why are we decorating for Thanksgiving? It's literally ONE day. We have pumpkins in the living room, in the kitchen, fall scented hand soap, fall scented candles. Why...just why? This is how I feel... if we don't have music to associate with the holiday there shouldn't be decorating involved. 

With Thanksgiving quickly approaching my wife is already one step ahead and prepping for Christmas. She's already informed me that she has created a Pinterest board and invited all the kids to the board so that they can start adding things that they want! For the love of my sanity, can we please just get through one holiday at a time! I'm still recovering from October and the fact that four of 5 kids had birthdays that month! You know what that means? It means this:

Before we get into Christmas mode, lets take a breather and recognized that my birthday is in November. How about we make a board for Mama Kris and invite the kids to that board, I'll pin things I want and then we can let them do this:

What? I think moms deserve presents on their birthdays. Of course there's no board on Pinterest, except for the one I made called "wish list", but no one joined. Apparently everyone is on the Christmas train already. On top of the kids' Pinterest wish list, Tammy has decided that she would like to get a jump on the Christmas decorating. I'm sorry.. by you, you mean me. "Just a little here and there" she says to me! Nope, not doing it! I always decorate on the Saturday after Thanksgiving and I'm standing my ground on that one. That then led my wife to informing me that we needed to decide what new decoration we were going to add to our outside holiday display. This of course prompted this reaction from me:

I'm sorry you want to add another what? Last year I had to buy 3 of those outlet things that stick into the ground that you plug into an extension cord that had three outlets in each, not to mention 4 more extension cords just to wire them all into the porch light. Sure thing hunny lets just add one more thing and really see if we can blow the door right off the fuse box in the basement! I suggested maybe a battery operated something, or something that didn't light up or require electricity, which of course prompted this response from my wife:

Which basically means that I'm going to end up going out and buying something with a wire and praying that I don't blow up the house when I flip the switch to the porch light.

​Here's so interesting news... I've torn my meniscus for the fourth time, which means I am not in physical therapy with Tammy 3 days a week. We like to call it our date nights. We get a table for two.. well, not really but our tables are next to each other. She gets heat and I get electrical stim with compression ice. Listen when you have as many kids as we do and no time for each other, you do what you gotta do, even it means being tortured at physical therapy while giving each other loving, pain ridden faces at each other. It's kind of like this:

In case you all don't know by now, Tammy and I have been working on a Podcast. We are very excited this and have launched it probably about 4 weeks ago. A link to our podcast is on our website up at the top labeled "The Gaydy Moms' Podcast", if you click that it will bring you to our previous episodes. We are also on Anchor, Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Breaker, Castbox, Pocketcasts, RadioPublic and Stitcher! New episodes come out every Friday. Definitely subscribe and favorite our podcast on whatever platform you choose. We are looking forward to interacting with our readers and followers so please feel free to send us some questions or topics you would like us to talk about

If memory serves me correctly, we were waiting for the clearance from Tammy's neurosurgeon to begin driving in the last blog, The time has finally come and Tammy was cleared to drive which meant one thing.... my "mommy-do-all" role is done and I get to go back to work! Errr, I mean, Tammy is progressing very well. As a matter of fact, I was able to go back to the office a week early than I had planned. Don't you all bet your sweet cheeks that I walked into the office on my first day all like: 

I'm not going to lie, I seriously thought about doing this when I got inside my office:

I know, I thought that was a little overkill for the first day back too, so I passed on that idea!  I love my wife and I love my kids and I will do anything I have to for them. However, that being said, I prefer my role being the one that goes to work and providing for them. I was so not prepared for the whole stay-at-home, working mom that cooks dinner every night. It got to a point where the kids new what was dinner just by what day it was, because I like routine and stuck with what I knew how to make. That is Chili, Rice and Beans (sometimes with chicken), Chicken and vegetable stir-fry or pasta. Listen, with Mama Kris in charge it was a fixed menu! If you didn't want to eat one of those options for 7 months take ya asses out and get your own food:

Tammy is doing pretty well. She still has some surgical pain and some weakness in her legs but she's back to driving and cooking dinner, which of course had all the kids like:

I offer to cook when I get home from work so that she can rest from all the running around she's back to doing and she replies with, "No it's okay, I like to make different things!" Wow!!! Okay, I see how it is now. You got yourself a new back and you think you're Mrs. Gordon Ramsey now! Fine by me, I shall pick up where I left off 7 months and put my ass right on the couch! No really, I still help out because she's not quite there with the bending and lifting. I'm just banned from cooking now. 

So somewhere in the last two weeks while I was at work every one in the house became health nuts and counting calories and all that shit. Now we know from previous blogs, that when things like this are decided, I have no choice but to take part. So Tammy and I had our first official date night a week and a half ago since January. We were just out driving around and listening to music and talking. Tammy wanted to stop and get something to eat, so I suggested a few places, which of course she said no to because they weren't healthy enough. Which then prompted Tammy to question why fast food places don't give you the option of getting a whole wheat bun instead of white bread buns. Which got me like:

Yea... needless to say we spent a half hour running down a list of fast food places that did not offer wheat buns but offered salads. So anyone reading this that owns a fast food joint please do me a favor and get some fucking wheat buns! 

I knew the surgery was successful when her sass kicked back into full gear. Now I don't know where any of you who read this live, but where we are, there was a solid two week period where the weather was hot, like really hot. It was like one morning we woke up and were in the pits of hell hot. Keep in mind, I am someone that will wear shorts and a t-shirt and slides in winter with the heat on 67. My wife on the other hand is always cold. You see the struggle I'm about to address? So during those two weeks of hell weather, I kept the AC on 62. I see nothing wrong with this considering it was still SUMMER out and that's what people do in the SUMMER is run AC. Every night, I had to hear, "baby I'm colds", from my wife! Cute and adorable I know! However, this "Baby I'm colds" cuteness resulted in me sweating my ass off half the night because I had to raise the AC. So here's a visual of my wife after I raised the AC:

Now here's a visual of me after I raised the AC:

So I would wait until she fell asleep and then get up and lower the AC and stand in front of it like:

Of course she has AC radar and wakes up and starts lecturing me on how this is the reason that couples end up sleeping in separate bedrooms. I'm sorry...?!? So couples end up sleeping in separate rooms because its 1,000 degrees outside and the air conditioner is on?

Naturally this debate ended with me taking Tammy to Brookstone to buy a Nap Blanket, which is some sort of fleece, which she throws on top of the sheets and comforter before bed. 

Well, in two months I will turn 40 years old. The big 4-0! I've been interested in the Apple Watch for a while and I figured what a great 40th birthday present it would be. It took a little convincing with my wife because she couldn't understand why I would want an Apple Watch when my phone never leaves my hands. When I showed her that it was geared to "making a healthier you" she was all for it. Last weekend we picked up my Apple Watch because I'm a giant baby and can't wait. 

I set it all up and got some apps, when Tammy sees an app called "medicine reminder", which she insisted I immediately install and actually watched me install it. Now here's a little background, I have ADHD and have had it ever since I was in 2nd grade. Back then I was just looked at as a hyper wild child. I was clinically diagnosed when I was 32 years old and put on medication to "slow my mind down". When I don't take my medication my mind goes into overdrive and I have a thousand things running through it and I just go on and on and on about all kinds of random things, kind of like this:

When people ask me how I like my Apple Watch, I basically describe it like having your wife wrapped around your wrist. You're all probably wondering why I describe my Apple Watch like this, so I shall explain. The first day I had my watch, the following things occurred:
1. My watched binged at me and told me I was sitting too long and to stand up;
2. My watched binged at me and told me it was time to drink water, this occurred every hour;
3. My watched binged at me and said "Did you take your 9:00 a.m. pill?;
4. My watched binged at me and said "Did you take your 3:00 p.m. pill?;
5. My watched binged at me and said "It's time to breath, focus on your breathing"; and
6. My watched binged at me and told me that I only had 3 minutes out of 30 minutes of exercise in for the day;

WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!????? After the first three hours I called my wife and told her that my watch was very demanding and telling me to do things and I asked her if she programmed that shit while I was sleeping! What happened to being able to look at my Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat?! I mean it's fantastic that I can have an EKG within 30 seconds because this thing binging at me bossing me around is going to give me chest pains!

Have no fear ladies, gents and gays... I filled up my apple watch with apps like ESPN, Score, Twitter, RuPaul, Ellen and Jonathan Van Ness Podcasts, SmartNews like Buzzfeed and Entertainment Weekly. Oooh and I have a walkie-talkie on it so I feel like David Hasselhoff in Knight Rider! How you like me know Apple?

As you all know Tammy had her back surgery a few weeks ago and I officially wanted to announce that I did not die the morning of Tammy's surgery when I had to wipe her down with the sterile wipes. I know you were all concerned about this, given the diagram I posted in the last blog. For all that were scared for my life:

I will say that I did get the nastiest look all the way to the hospital while I drank my coffee. I mean, I wasn't the one having surgery why should I suffer? Yes I am aware that I took vows, however there was nothing in our vows that said I couldn't have coffee if she couldn't and vice versa. That's just mean. Anyway, we get to the hospital and check in and within about 10 minutes, they brought Tam back for prepping. 

At this point, I should probably mention that up until the night before her surgery Tam and I were binge watching Grey's Anatomy. I realize now how horrible of an idea that was for various reasons. I thought about this as I was sitting in the waiting room waiting for the nurse to bring me back to sit with her before the surgery. 

I finally get back to the holding area and I see Tam in his bubble thing. I kinda looked like this:

 Who actually thinks about this before a major surgery? My wife does.  The nurse comes in and says "It's time" and they took her to the operating room and I went back out into the waiting room and started to work. The objective of me working was to keep my mind off the surgery and the time but thanks to my wife, all I could think about was that this was actually happening:

After about 4 hours the doctor came out and said the surgery had gone really well and they ended up fusing an extra level which they didn't anticipate doing until they got in and saw how bad the discs were. The surgeon said that they were closing and getting her ready for the recovery room. I think the hardest part about the surgery for me was pretending to be strong and not worried when inside I was a nervous wreck. 

This surgery was a little different than the surgery on her neck. This one was more dangerous and more serious due to the amount of levels that were damaged and the incisions. The surgeons had to make a vertical incision in her abdomen first to remove the damaged discs, replace them and decompress her spinal cord. Then once that part was over, they made two incisions in her back, one on each side of her spine which is where they placed two rods and six screws. 

Since it took some time to control her pain and they had a scheduled CT scan, I couldn't get in to see her in recovery so they sent me up to her room to wait for her, which gave me some time to get coffee, have a vape and get situated. So I'm chillin' in the recliner watching Shark Week when I hear what sounds like my wife, screaming at the nurse to have medication for the pain. I got out in the hallway and my wife is on the stretcher and I walk up to her and I tell her everything is okay and that she's okay and all of sudden she turns to me and yells:

Followed by, "You don't know anything!" With that I turned around looked at the nurses and said:

I turned around and walked back into the room and sat back down. I know enough to not mess with a woman who is still under anesthesia and in pain. ​Finally the nurses got the approval to give her meds and she fell asleep. A few hours later all the kids came up to see her. I tried to wake her and she opened one eye, gritted her teeth and said, "DO NOT WAKE ME UP EVER AGAIN, UNDERSTAND ME?!" When she said that the fear of her wrath struck me to the bone, that I looked at the kids like:

With that I said to the kids, "yea I think we should just let her sleep!"

At one point during our hospital stay one of the nurses said that to me, "have you ever considered being a critical care nurse? You certainly know what you're doing and you definitely have what it takes to be a good one." At first I was like "aww how sweet", which quickly turned to "hellurrrr what the hell you think I've been for the past three years? I've been a critical care nurse without ya'll's salary. Don't butter me up so you don't have to come in here when you hear her IV shit is beeping because you know that I know how to make it stop! Git to work!

On a sidenote, thanks to the 24 espresso shots I also made friends with the midnight shift security guards!

Discharge day finally came and I was so excited to get home and shower, cuddle up next to my wife and sleep. However, that didn't go as well as I had planned it in my head. Once we got home, I had to run and drop off Tammy's prescriptions, pick up a shower chair, make sure her walker was at the right height, put together her bedside commode and shower chair. So let me fast forward to the present day. 

Tammy is doing pretty well for being one month post-op. She still has some surgical and incision pain. She also has an inflamed sciatic nerve from her spinal cord being compressed for so long, which is slowly getting better as each day passes. She is no longer using a cane or a walker to walk. She has this awesome back brace she has to wear when she's walking. I tell her it's her superhero armor, that's when she gives me this look:

Followed by:

We've been taking it one day at a time since we got home from the hospital. If all goes well she'll cleared to drive and start physical therapy on September 7th. It's been a long 8 month and an even longer 3 three years since the accident, but I think our rodeo days just might be done. 

Thank you for all the well wishes and the patience on waiting for our next blog, things have been a little hectic since the surgery. 

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