Daddy Problems

Remember what life was like before kids?  I do.  I remember clearly.  I remember being able to do stuff (if I had the money, that is) whenever I/we wanted.  I enjoy going to Triple A baseball games.  I would love to be able to just go with my wife, buy a few beers, get in late, sleep in and not take care of kids.  Please please don't take this the wrong way.  I love my kids.  There are people who would love to be in the position I'm in, with a family and the family life.  I don't want to bitch about having a pretty amazing life right now.  It's just that sometimes, I miss the freedom of not having kids.  Is that so bad?

I was thinking this as I cooked breakfast this morning, what it would be like if I didn't have kids?  Why didn't I take advantage of the time before I had these little kids.  How many times did I choose to not do stuff when I could have, and now I would love to but can't?  Then I looked into the living room and saw Miles sitting in his bouncy seat snoozing and Evie sitting on her knees watching Curious George on the TV and realized that even if I can't go out and do stuff like other adults I know, I have these amazing kids that are truely a blessing.  I'll take the trade off.  Even now, as I'm writing this post, I had to put Evie down for her nap, as she carried her stuffed Mickey Mouse that's almost the same size as she is, we laid her down and covered her up.  Such a cutie and a sweetie. How could I wish for a life without her?  And Miles is right now laying on the floor by himself, eating the back of his hand, bending back and almost rolling over...at eight weeks old.  So proud of this little guy.  He's getting so big.  He's so good, he only cries when he's supposed to cry, like when hes' hungry or wet or uncomfortably positioned...How could I wish for a life with out him?

So maybe I can't go the the baseball game tonight?  Is that the end of the world?  No, it's not.  Life without my kids?  That would be the end of my world.

With that being said, anyone wanna babysit?  There's this baseball game I want to take my wife to...

Skinny Vanilla Latte

I feel weird ordering something that has the descriptor of "skinny" for myself.  I feel like things that are marked "skinny" are marketed to skinny people who want to maintain their skinniness.  Sure, I'd like to be skinny, but ordering a skinny vanilla latte isn't going to help...well, it's not going to hurt either.  I won't get fatter by not drinking whole milk and 80 grams of sugar.  I will get fatter if I do.  See what I mean?  But it's the marketing of it all, it bothers me.

I know it works, I know people want to be skinny, so attaching the term to a drink that is usually fattening is a good idea.  I just feel less manly ordering a skinny vanilla latte.  I'd rather order a non-fat, sugar-free vanilla latte, which I could totally do, I suppose.  I don't know, it's not like I'm concerned with being manly.  I'm no tough guy, I'm no bad ass   I guess I don't really have a problem with it.  I just felt like I had to order it like it wasn't for me.    

I got a bunch of Starbucks gift cards from my Mother-in-law for Easter/my birthday, and I've been using it a lot this week.  Starbucks has half priced Frappuccino from 3-5 everyday, so I've gone over and gotten a cup of sugar and fat both Monday and Tuesday this week.  I might just go ahead and do that again today.  Who knows?  It might get crazy up in here. I didn't even know Frappuccinos were so delicious.

What inspired me to go get a skinny vanilla latte this morning was the fact that my birthday free drink coupon was set to expire today.  So last night I got in my mind that first thing in the morning I would head to Starbucks and get an expensive latte.  When I woke up this morning, I checked the Starbucks app on my phone to see that my free drink coupon had expired as of today, not after today.  So no free drink for me, but my heart was still set on that stupid latte.  So I went and got one anyway.  I hate spending more than $4 on a drink. I did it, but remember, I had credit on my card, so not really out of pocket expense.  Thanks, Kris Ball!  I'm happier for drinking that latte this morning.  I'm glad I did it.  And now I'm skinnier for ordering it skinny.  I mean look at me.

(this is a picture of me as of finishing this post.)

Sriracha Sauce on Everything

Remember back in the day when I used to post blogs on weekdays?  Wow that seems like forever ago.  Well I never wanted to be a weekend blogger, but that's sort of what it became.  Not today, junior.  I'm here to talk about food some more.

Sriracha sauce.  I know that many, many people are well aware of this sauce.  I know that a lot of people love it.  I know that a lot of people used to love it and are sick of it now.  I know that I'm late to the party, probably.  Heck, they flavored Lay's potato chips with it by popular vote.  But yesterday I bought my own bottle of it for the house.  I had it once before, a few months ago at Lipscomb's Bison Cafe while eating some kid of stir-fried noodles.  It was awesome, but very spicy.  Yesterday while shopping, I thought it would be a good idea to buy a bottle to keep here.

So last night we made Pigs in a Blanket (mine with veggie dogs, of course).  I usually use ketchup to dip it in, and I did that.  But I wanted to try out Sriracha sauce on there.  It was pretty great.  Not like, life changing, but pretty damn tasty.  And hot.  But then I put some sauce on some Cool Ranch Doritos and oh man that was real good.  Something about the flavors mixing together was just too good.  Then I realized that the delicious Sriracha sauce had caused me to eat far too much food and I was in pain.  Too much of a good thing,

So there you go, I'm one of those people that puts Sriracha sauce on everything.  Makes food taste good!  I can't wait to find out how it tastes on more foods.  Follow along on Twitter while I try out different foods with Sriracha sauce on it.

@bradperala

Two Things

Happy Cinco de Mayo!!!

Okay this post can go one of two ways.  I can talk about things that happened to me this week, or I can talk about things I thought about this week.  So, since I can't decide, and I know you'll probably read it anyway, I'll just do both.  I said this could go one of two ways, and then told you it's going to go both ways.  I'm a good writer.

As far as things that happened to me this week, I traded in my first new car for my second new car.  The Focus, the wonderfully dependent and reliable Ford Focus, it had to go.  The family had finally outgrown it.  When we bought the thing in 2010, we were 13 months away (unknowingly) from adding another member to our family.  When we bought it, it made perfect sense.  Good, compact car with good gas millage.  Sporty design, nice features.  A perfect car for a married couple in their 20's and no kids.  Well, now we have two kids and they didn't fit.  Well, they fit, but not like, super comfortably.  So I went and got an oil change on Monday morning, and while I was there, I got to talking to a salesman, Alfredo.  I told him the wife and I were considering upgrading to a larger vehichle, like perhaps the Ford Escape.  He showed me one on the lot, and I noticed it was even larger than I had imagined.  Okay, thanks Alfredo, but not today.

He calls me on Tuesday saying they have a great one-day deal on a Escape, and it's the last day of the month so we should go there and see if we can get a deal done.  Long story short, we got the deal done.  We got the bigger vehicle that we can fit comfortably inside.   Our payments didn't  go up much.  Overall it was a win-win situation.  I'll miss the Focus.  I was a good car.  But this Escape is really, really nice.  Serious upgrade.

Okay, so that's what happened to me.  So what did I think about this week?  Cottage Cheese.  Man, Cottage Cheese is weird, eh?  Usually when you see curdled dairy, the first instinct isn't "EAT THAT!"  Yet, when it comes to cottage cheese, that's exactly what I do.  I eat that.  Even as a kid, I've always loved cottage cheese.  Kids usually don't eat weird-lookin' food, but I guess I did.  Love cottage cheese, but it just seems counter to what you should actually eat.  Like, the idea of cottage cheese is gross to me, yet it's one of my favorite foods.  Weird.

Anyway, that's all.  Hope you have a fantastically wonderful day.  If you read this, that means you woke up and are alive, therefore the only thing stopping you from having the best day ever is your attitude.  You can make today great.  Try doing something new today.  Make a damn memory today.  

Road Trip in the USA

Road Trip, Y'all

This past week, the wife, kids and I took a road trip up to my moms' house in Big Rapids, Michigan.  It was a very nice trip full of relaxation, day beers and food, sleeping and showering and lazing around.  So it was a lot like home, just a few hundred miles north of normal.  The drive up there and back is a decent one, better than going to Wisconsin, that's for sure.  I've decided that Indiana isn't the worst state to drive through anymore.  Illinois is much worse, having now driven through each a few times.  Illinois is very flat and boring. Indiana has a few hills, a few more towns, but is still pretty boring.  The ride home was a bit more shitty because my data from AT&T got throttled sometime this week so I couldn't stream music from my phone.  Not the biggest deal in the world, but not making things easier.

The best thing I found on our drives was our stops.  On the way up, we stopped at a McDonald's in the South Bend area and on the way home we stopped at a Hardee's in the (Oh I don't know) middle of Indiana area.  At both places I saw an interesting phenomena.  Breakfast Clubs.  Does every fast food restaurant in America have these people?  These folks that turn up at the crack of dawn every day to shoot the shit about the boringness of their lives and their towns?  It happens everywhere!  All these old-timers get together and eat fatty food and drink mediocre coffee.  I suppose it's an easy and cheap way to stay social, so I guess I can't knock them for having friends.  Meeting at a fast food place seems convenient, I suppose.  I don't know, it just seems like they all got a memo or something.

In particular, I want to talk about our amazing stop at the Hardee's in god-knows-where Indiana Friday morning.  My phone wouldn't connect to any network for no goddamn good reason, so I wasn't able to actually look at a map so see where we were, but it really didn't matter.  This could have been anywhere in the USA.  It was so perfect.

We sat at an empty table near the front of the restaurant.  I went up and ordered, and I was tempted to ask the local next to me where exactly we were.  I assumed he was local by the work clothes and beard.  After careful consideration, I decided I didn't want to have a conversation with this man, and like I said, it didn't matter where we were, it all looked familiar anyway.  I got food for me and the daughter and sat down and started to eat.  That's when one old man, two old man, three old man four old man start to sit in the tables near us, progressively filling in the area closer and closer to where we sit.  Next around the corner comes fifth old man, and he realizes he doesn't have a place to sit in what I can assume is their regular spot because there's me and my family.  None of the old men seemed to bothered by our presence, but you could also feel that we were in their spot.  No harm done there, but I just found it fun that these old men had routine and we were messing with it.

There were two other patrons in this Hardee's that caught my attention.  A younger looking man and woman, perhaps in their thirties.  They looked like every man and woman who is either a regular or an employee of every dive bar in every small town in America.  The dude had on a leather coat, had big gold hoops in his ears, military buzzcut hair-do, jeans.  He looked like he was in shape at one point in his life, and still was not bad, physique-wise.  He probably plays guitar in an "alt-metal" cover band.  The girl he was with had on the tight, low-waisted jeans with the jewels on her ass pockets, tight white tank top that showed the cleavage.  Short girl, a-line bob haircut that was dyed an unnaturally consistent dark color that I'm 99% sure was done in her bathroom sink.  Beer gut.  Not unattractive, yet certainly no model.  I felt sort of at home around these two, even though I was no where near them and even though none of my friends or even acquaintances looked particularly like them.  They looked like they belonged at Rookies in Negaunee.  I feel like I've seen them before.  I sort of found it odd that these bar patrons were out getting breakfast at 6:30 am on a Friday, but hey, maybe it was a long night of But Light drinkin'?

The whole thing, the breakfast club old guys and the party time thirtysomethings, it all reminded me that no matter where you are, no matter what time of day it is, people are the same everywhere you go.  I find something comforting in that fact.

Other random observations from the road, we noticed that there are a lot of towns in Indiana named after places you'd rather be other than in Indiana.  Places like Nashville, Kokomo, Plymoth, Warsaw, Peru, Austin, Underwood, Columbus.  Anywhere but Indiana.

I also saw an amazing mullet in Kentucky.  Shocker, I know.

But overall, the drives were okay.  They sucked, but they were okay.  The kids handled it like champs.  The wife, who couldn't sleep because of the position of her seat because of car seats, handled it like a champ.  It was a wonderful trip, and I can't wait to do it again.  And you better believe I'll be stopping for breakfast.

Executive Cut (feat. Conor Adams) by Enemies

Well I haven't posted a song in a while, have I?  Let's change that in a real hurry.  About 30 seconds into the song I've posted today, I was doing the "oh shit yeah" face. I knew instantly I had to come here share it.  As I was copying the link to embed the song here, the song got even better!  Oh man, there is no better feeling than hearing a new song for the first time and absolutely falling in love.  I'd never heard of this bad before, but my newest favorite record label, Top Shelf Records posted on their site that they had signed this band.  They're called Enemies and they're from Ireland.  Perhaps it's the drummer in me that caused me to love this so instantly, but whatever the case may be, this is a fantastic song, and it's available as a free download on their bandcamp page.

Or you can download it right here on Bloggerated.com, yo.

Please enjoy this song. I wish I could be so lucky as to be in this band, or perhaps a band that sounded like it.

Twitter Book Club

For the most part, you could say that after the first 30 years of my life, you wouldn't really categorize this blogger as much of a "reader."  I read approximately one quarter of the assigned books throughout K-12.  That's a rough estimate, the real number may be closer to 15%.  Anyway, you get the picture.  I did go through, what I assume all kids went through in 1994, a Goosebumps phase, where I read about 30 of those books.  But after about 8 of them, you sort of caught on to R.L. Stein's patterns of characters and plots.  Pretty much the same book over and over, just with a different monster or thing.  Not the point here, though people.  I'm not here to talk about how awesome Goosebumps books were, no, I'm here to talk about how good I am at reading books.

I'm like a 3rd grader finishing his first Judy Bloom (or Goosebumps) book when I finish one.  I feel so accomplished.  Afterwards, I go to the internet and read what other people thought of the book and I'm extra proud that a lot of the time, people had the same formulations about the book as I did.  Sometimes, I wonder if I really know what makes a good book or not.  After all, I'm not much of a reader, and I'm not really all that smart.  I've been reading books here and there from our Library for the past year and half.  Some I loved, some I've completely hated and returned (Yiddish Policemen's Union, Telegraph Avenue, Life of Pi).  Some I liked enough to finish, but not enough to recommend.  Some I can't stop thinking about. 

When my good friend Tagan decided to start a Twitter Book Club a few weeks ago, I said I would participate under one condition; No Shitty Books.  So, she let me pick the first book for everyone to read.  Uh oh, what have I done?  I need to look smart and sophisticated  so I better recommend one of the higher-brow books I've read recently.  No, no, all those books were mediocre (Night Train to Lisbon, A Sense of an Ending.)  Okay well what about one of the shorter books I've read that will be over quickly (We the Animals, Sunset Park)  No, No those books were three stars at best.  What about a book that takes place during World War II, where two boys go on an adventure seeking a dozen eggs?  Bingo.  

In reality, it was a rather easy call what to pick.  City of Thieves by David Benioff is one of the best books (if not the best) I've ever read.  But just because I loved it, will others like it? " What a dummy!"  they'll exclaim.    Perhaps they'll like it, too.  And that's my goal.  To show others stuff that I've enjoyed.  

So I went to the library to check out City of Thieves again for the Twitter Book Club and couldn't find it, so I grabbed another book of short stories by the same author.  Close enough, right?  

So if you want to join our Twitter Book Club, hit me or @TaganElizabeth up on Twitter.  There's a Facebook group as well, but I don't understand how that would work if you were a stranger.  At the very least, go to the library and see if they have a copy of City of Thieves by David Benioff.  If's a real good story you won't be able to put down.  

P.S. Cool invention idea.  Make a book jacket made out of super glue or some other super sticky substance so when you pick up the book, you litterally can't put it down.  Okay, that's all.  

Happy reading.