Happy New Year from McBone!

With 2011 come and gone, another mayonnaise-free year is in the books.  Cleveland still didn't win a championship, but we have other milestones of significance to look back upon.  In the year's waning moments, please enjoy this photo of Stabbone and McGraw sipping on nature's most perfect drink: a dry martini on the rocks with a twist of lemon and three olives.

Happy New Year, McBoners one and all.

nwb and jab

Happy Holidays from McBone!

No trip to Akron would be complete without a trip to Swensons, the official hamburger of McBone.  Here is a picture of me devouring a cheeseburger with everything (pickle, mustard, onion).  Also please notice my Teamsters local 348 hoodie, indicating McBone's support of organized labor.  This sweatshirt flies right in the face of governor Kasich and everything he and gang of anti-labor thugs stand for.

Not pictured: fries, onion rings, sometimes-popular wife

Let me take this opportunity to say happy holidays to everyone.  Everyone except for you, John Kasich.  To you I can offer only my sincerest 'bah, humbug!' this holiday season.

nwb

McBone Presents the 2010-2011 Aunt and Uncle Standings

Another year shot to hell, another chance to evaluate aunts and uncles.  Before putting the family under the microscope, I would like to send them a general note of thanks for the many kindnesses bestowed this year upon me, my sometimes-popular wife, and of course the McBonerito.  Though we are blessed and the generosity was overwhelming, it did not preclude some seriously awful aunting and uncling.

Let us then visit the rogues gallery.

Aunts

1. Denise - The first-time winner waltzed to victory after acing the Q and A portion of of competition.

2. Susan G - The self-described "Santorum Republican" got hooked on medical pot (glaucoma), shed her former identity, embraced socialism, hit the Occupy movement and spun this hempen sweater for the McBonerito:  

¡Viva la McBonolución!

3. Gail - The 'Madonna of Aunts' could not reinvent her way to victory.

4. Susan J - Good year of aunting undone by communicating pinkeye to entire family.


5. Fay - Snorted away last year's championship purse.


6. Ann - Sucked this year in a general sense.

Uncles

1. Ed - The first-time winner waltzed to victory after acing the Q and A portion of the competition.

2. Pete - Controversial runner up accused by rivals of using Putin-like thuggery and Rasputin-like charm.

3. Al - Slowed by ringworm.

4. Jeff - Knocked down several spots after Tweeting a picture of his wiener.

5. Don S (no longer in family) - Our own Kris Humphries was last seen working the drive-through at Hamburger Station.  Neglected to ask if I wanted fries with that.

6. Glen - His insistence that Art Modell and LeBron James are 'misunderstood' does not hold with McBone family values.

7. Don H - Was poised to end his drought until overheard commenting that Michele Bachmann is a 'hottie' who has 'some good ideas.'

Past Results

2010-2011
2009-2010
2008-2009
2007-2008

nwb

First Thoughts on Fatherhood

We're a little over a month in to this thing, so I thought I'd slap a few observations about fatherhood and the kid on this ol' non-baby blog.

The kid seems happy in a general sense.  Things do piss him off from time to time (Christmas music. Mitch McConnell), but overall his disposition is sunny.

He is like a woodpecker, the way he constantly pecks at my flat, barren chest.

My green fleece has become the uniform of fatherhood.  I wear it every day.  Every manner of baby-related crud is embedded in its fibers.

Humming phrases of Beethoven soothes the little beast in his most dyspeptic moods.  The morbid fellow favors the funeral marches of symphonies #3 and 7.

Cloth diapers ain't what they used to be.  The particularly high tech model we use, an amalgam of elastic, snaps and cotton inserts, is probably the MacBook of baby waste absorption systems.  Nothing gets through these suckers.  Except piss and shit.

The kid is an artist with his fecal matter.  He has decorated walls with a Pollockian mastery.  Must invest in canvas, take aim and get rich.

Breast-fed baby shit is tolerably innocuous.  Compared to its immediate antecedent, meconium, it is lovely, mustardy, wonderful stuff.  Meconium is surely what I will be scraping off the surfaces of hell when I am condemned.

The tit is his lodestar.  All else is intrigue.

The crying does not bother me, luckily.  Luckily, the kid doesn't cry much.  I'm not sure why I feel so calm about things.  Perhaps being a 36-year-old first-time father has me better prepared than the 26-year-old or 16-year-old McGraw would have been.  

The crusty, dried-out, raisin-like umbilical stump fell off early.  Not sorry to see the thing go.  Any parent feeling an urge to keep it for posterity needs to maybe dial down the sentimentalism, in my opinion.  My sometimes-popular wife sacrificed it to the fire gods, which seemed a noble and proper end for the defunct feeding tube.

His limbs flail in disharmony.  Each is governed by its own impulse.  None works with the other.  The orb mounted upon his neck flops and bobs in an particular display of gracelessness.  At times it crashes down with a force that seems bent on shattering my jaw.

Cars, once a mere nuisance on my way to and from work, have become baby-seeking missiles intent on one thing only: find and destroy William.

Breast milk tastes good.  Yes, I went there.  No, you cannot have some.*

His slate-colored eyes stare into vast distances.  At what he gazes, I know not.  Sometimes he simply appears to be marveling at the ceiling.  Like,  How the hell does that thing stay up?

Sleep has become the most precious resource, better than food, water and air combined.  The first time getting a solid 5-hour block was like being dipped into the purifying, crystalline waters of some sacred, mystic pool of the high Himalayas.

Fatigue has made me loopy.  Things I am not fully aware of at any given time:

The time of day
The day of week
Where I work
My full name
The login credentials for this blog.  Yes, this explains my long absence.

The kid likes being held.  I like holding him.  One adapts quickly.  I have become very adept at making martinis with one hand.

Nothing elicits more contrary opinions than child rearing.  My one bit of advice to new parents: keep your worries and concerns away from the internet.

Go ahead, read every book in the universe.  Nothing can prepare you.

What a clever trick, that such an amorphous, squishy, screaming, shitting, parasitic little thing can make us love it so much.  He has urinated on me enough that I have begun to suspect it is intentional, and yet **sappiness alert** I do love him, with an almost crippling desperation.  Going to work has become a daily torment.  Coming home redeems me five times weekly.

nwb

*Until FDA approved.

Moustachioed Stabbone

Gentle McBoners,

I know there hasn't been much activity here in the McBoniverse lately.  Sorry about that.  As a sleep-deprived parent, I think I am well within my rights in blaming the kid, so let's go ahead and do that.  When you've got a scapegoat that hasn't learned to talk yet, you gotta take advantage.

I promise an abundance of words in the coming days, so you can give the refresh button a rest for the time being.  To tide you over, here's a picture of my idiot brother Stabbone's 2nd place moustache, which came by to visit him this lonely November.

nwb