Fug Mug

Definition:
Self-deprecation is a form of humor in which people or comedians make jokes about themselves, their shortcomings, or their culture, usually without being guided by any underlying self-esteem issues.

Can you guess which fugly am I?

Maybe it's not so wise to procreate after all...

The black humerus

Spectacular news!

A study has shown a direct relationship between mangled reproductive organs and the presence of a bone known as the black humerus.

The study being me deciding it is fact, and the black humerus being a very twisted funny bone.

Infertility ain't so funny, and TTC ain't very LOL, then why in the name of all that is sacred are so many infertiles and TTCers insanely hilarious?

I've always been one to laugh at the inappropriate, or crack a joke at my own expense, but over the past year and more of trawling the internet for voices on trying to conceive and infertility, I've found myself greatly surprised at the sense of humour that comes through so much of the bad experiences.

There doesn't tend to me be too much 'ha ha my testes are malfunctioning' or 'nah nah nah nah nah your uterus is buckled' but there's a dark, sinister, black humour that seems to go hand in hand in coping with the ridiculousness that is ttc & infertility.

You don't believe me?

Well, what about the example of someone who's been trying to conceive for years, and has menstrual cycles somewhere in the region of 800 days or something similarly batty, yet chooses to call her blog Womb For Improvement !
Somewhere in there she wrote about preparing for an intrusive examination:

8.15am: Have shower wash bits with care, don't want health care professionals thinking I am a mink.
8.16am: Can I be bothered to shave my legs?
8.17am: Yes, don't want the doctor thinking 'No wonder she can't get pregnant who would want to have sex with someone with stubbly legs'.
9.01am: Have to take antibiotics 2 hours before appointment on an empty stomach. Hungry now.
9.30am: Double check instructions for the painkillers. "gently insert one suppository into the rectum two hours before the procedure". Gently!
9.31am: Climb down from the step ladder and put broom handle away.
9.32am: Bit of a rush now have to put two up that orifice and swallow the other.
9.35am: All done and think I got the right slots for everything.

You might say, okay that is nervousness, manifesting as humour, but what about another woman who has faced 3 miscarriages and has siblings dropping sprogs on a weekly basis, and yet picks herself up, and self deprecates all over herself when discussing how she still buys nappies at her company's employee shop:

In my more optimistic days, I even bought some for my own unborn babies (note to oneself, check if they have an expiry date, they're not going to be adorning any little baby's arse in this house soon). These days I'm stocking up for one of my in-laws who is expecting this Autumn. But the looks you get in the shop if you are seen carrying a bale of nappies up to the counter. "Have you news?" Nudge nudge, wink wink. No I haven't, but I'm having fertility treatment and I'll keep you updated when I'm next due to pee on a stick. Now fuck off and leave me alone!!!!

Maybe that's just an Irish thing?

So what about being mocked by your mother about your weight, and the effect it may have on your conception attempts, and yet managing to concoct hilarity from the scraps left of your self esteem:

"Well you see your honor, as I was wiping the KY jelly off of my freshly violated crotch, Dr.Z said to me 'by the way fatty....you cant get pregnant because you're a heffer. Your mother was right!' I don't remember what exactly happened after that, but when I came to I had a clump of hair in my fist and a piece of her shirt stuck between my teeth"

I could, and should, go on and on, but I've got twin frogs to feed and a two week wait to finish.

These are the people that keep me sane, make me realise I'm not as mad as a bag of cats when I talk to my man milk or christen ET's eggs.

It's self preservation.

Having a place where you can turn your misery into a chuckle and get some support and encouragement back in return is a real lifesaver.

I can't speak for everyone else that's on the journey, but it certainly is for me.

Arrival

If anything is enough to make me have a 'zaadlozing' right here and now, it's just got to be this.


Now go over there and tell them how spot on they were, while I write up something about seeing the reflection of my wife's uterus opening in a doctor's office cabinet window, and then come back here and tell me how bang on they were.

I need a tissue.

Fool's day

Yes it's Fool's Day and not Fools Day. Denoting ownership, my ownership, not pluralisation.

It's Fool's Day because it's MY day.

My day because it's day number 300 that I haven't managed to get anyone knocked up. (how can that figure be correct? thats 10 months, but we're currently in cycle 12, hmmmm)

My day because it's seven years exactly since I moved to this godforsaken country.

My day because it's seven years exactly since I started my first job in this godforsaken country.

My day because it's two years exactly since I started my third job in this godforsaken country.

My day because it would have been the day I started my fourth job in this godforsaken country, had I accepted it.

My day because I drink beer from glasses bigger than my own head.

My day because I clean the steamed up bathroom mirror with my discarded underwear.

My day because it's one year since I had ET distraught at the news that Colin Firth had gone to meet his maker following a car accident.

My day because in two days I get to knock one out into a plastic pot again.

My day because you can find the first 'Rash review interview with Grandmother & Granddaughter supreme, Kim over on the Frog Pond that Rocks. That's HERE for the simpletons among you. It might not make your life any better but you'll get to hear her say stuff like:
"I was raided by the drug squad...Luckily I had just smoked all the dope..." and "It was a beautiful right hook.... The skanky ho deserved it"....
If you stay awake long enough you'll also get to hear her answer to the age old question "Do you think it's an insult to your cooking if your son has taken to eating birth control?"

My day because I've given up on trying to conceive and decided to buy a couple of cuties instead. Not being one to do things by halves, I've gone for a double whammy, details to be found here.
I'm very grateful for the weak US dollar and my rogue-ish Irish charm.

Stick around, the day ain't over yet...

Plant in a moist, shady spot

No sperm jokes, no humping references, no pornographic vitamins, and no psychotic ranting about sub-fertility.
(quit the booing down the back you bollocks)

The inappropriate amount of paracetamol & codeine I've been popping all day thanks to the brace of teenage Christmases past has taken hold and I've begun hallucinating.

So for now, I'll just give you a glimpse of what I have to put up with EVERY feckin day. Welcome to my Holland....


Taken a few months back outside our home. The Dutch are f*&^%ing bonkers.

Brace Yourself

Let's put aside the minor matter of me being incapable of getting an Irish Catholic woman pregnant, which, frankly, in itself has GOT to be some kind of 'first' in medical science.

Let's put aside the fact that 1 week from now I have to repeat the entire self abuse and humiliation adventure all over again.

Let's put aside that my very manhood is brought into question by my previous experience.

Let's focus on another aspect of my ever deteriorating existence that will serve to chip away at the remaining fragments of respect, self or otherwise, that I possess.

I am already at somewhat of a physical disadvantage in life, I'm 'horizontally challenged'.
At 5 feet 6inches, I am a short arse. By Irish standards I am freakishly small, by Dutch standards I could be bloody Frodo.

As with most of life challenges, I get on with it, "what doesn't kill you..." and all that shite, but, as I wait for that growth spurt that I should have received as a teenager, I've been granted the joy of another teenage rite of passage. BRACES.

Twenty four hours from now, I, at 30 years, 5 months and 27 days of age, will have a feckin brace fitted to my upper rack.

Aside from pain, which I had made an agreement with Satan about many moons ago (he was gonna get to keep my first born child or something, I forget the details), I am going to look to look like a prize donkey. A gimp of the highest order.

How can I hand over the next 'shameful sample' while all red faced and shiny braced?

How can I get Spencer to take my instruction seriously when there's spittle flying everywhere as I bellow "I believe I can fly" in his general direction ?

How can I control unwanted saliva from dripping onto ET's sudoku puzzles when we are in our upcoming throws of passion on our quest to infinity and beyond ?

How can I eat a Cadbury's creme egg?

I need a lie down....

It gets better

"Emerald Isle Wife Swaps" has been added to the list of searches ending up here...

'Fess Up

Which of you was it?

Which of you stumbled across this blog after Googling:

"Allergic reaction to oxygen"
or
"Padding kids on the bum for pain"
or
"Klompen Carrots and Hay"
or my personal favourite....
"What do you do when you see a spaceman"

and I thought I had problems....

Morning Glory

Yes, yes my mind is still in the gutter this morning, but so are yours, admit it, you thought the same thing.

Anyway, this is just a super quickie to proclaim to the world that I am a winner!

Ole! Ole! I hear the peasants cry.

Now if you could see me sitting here in my tattered underwear, unkempt hair (doing a remarkably good impression of Amy Winehouse), morning breath, and with a little man hammering at my brain with a mini pick-ax thanks to the obscenely cheap bucket of wine I drank last night, you may find MANY words to describe me.

I'm in no doubt that 'Nice' would not be one of them.

Veronica, on the other hand, who is obviously feeling the side effect of questionable judgement from too many sleepless nights, has decided to bestow the following on me.


While I wonder if she's confused this award with the 'Occasionally not a total prick' award, I gratefully accept this and will have it tattooed on my left buttock.

If you take a trip over to her new shiny re-hosted blog at sleepless nights you'll see from her entries and comments that she is infinitely more deserving of such an award than this semi dressed, semi hungover dirty old man.

Now I hear music and a pair of 7 foot blondes in ball gowns are dragging me from the stage so I bid you all adieu....


P.S. maybe 'Nice' on the left and 'Matters' on the right buttock?

May I see your PHD?

Just a quickie (Ooooh matron!)

but I found this just too funny, it seems you need some serious education to 'get me'....

Apparently knobs, cervices, knee tremblers and aching gonads are what post graduate education is all about these days.

Goodnight, Xbox4NappyRash PHD.

EDIT....

Sorry I just couldn't NOT update this.... moving up in the world eh?

Pinky: Gee, Brain, what are we going to do tonight?

Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky - try to take over the world!

Careful Where You Sit

I'm going to take a leaf out of CraigD's book and tell a tale relating to a job interview.

I live in a part of the Netherlands referred to as the randstad, a heavily populated, heavily industrialised region encompassing Amsterdam, Den Haag (the Hague), Rotterdam, Leiden, and Utrecht.
Public transport between these cities is excellent by any standards, and so it is very common to live in one city and work in another.

In February 2006, I accepted an invitation to speak with my current employer on the outskirts of Utrecht.

So I hopped on my bike and off I went, to the central train station in my city and caught the half hour train ride to Utrecht, where I then caught a bus from the train station to the office.
All went reasonably well, and soon enough the time came for me to make the return journey home.

By now it was late in the afternoon, and the bus stop for the trip back to Utrecht station was crowded with students from the local school and workers from the dozens of businesses in the surrounding area.

I climbed aboard, and made my way to the one remaining free seat almost at the back of the bus.
Weary from an intensive interview in a foreign language, I flopped into the seat with the full force of all my weight.

I had not paid attention to the (airplane like, retractable) arm rests in the seat....

...RIIIIIIIIIIIP...

With a sinking heart I instantly realised, but yet could not believe, what I had just done.
I had caught the armrest of the seat in the pocket of my trousers as I dropped into the seat, tearing my trousers clean open along the seam of my right leg, from my waist right down to my knee.
It instantly occured to me how mocking laughter and sniggering knows no language boundaries....

I then had to endure the following: a 25 minute bus ride, 30 minute train ride (in first class with the hugo boss brigade, no less), followed by a 15 minute cycle home, with my underwear and (rapidly beginning to bruise) right leg on full display hanging out of my tattered pants.

To this day can not visualise what I must have looked like to the other commuters and passers by, a chubby little Irishman, up on a bike, fully suited and booted in his interview finery, except for the right trouser leg which was flapping in the breeze as he peddaled furiously home with a face blood red from a cocktail of anger and embarrassment.

ET's (my wife) face when I walked through the door, vomiting expletives in every direction, was a sight to behold.

So, careful where you sit, eh?

P.S. Writing this has just flooded my memory with more (,literally dozens of) incidents where I've made a total pillock of myself in front of others. I may just scribble more down sometime.

Continental Colonic Irrigation

I'm past it.
Sad, but true, and frankly, I couldn't give a fiddlers fart.

I've just endured a weekend in the company of 8 other guys all of whom are older than me.

As I stood in the 4km long check in line I scanned my range of companions for the weekend...
The crew included a semi-crippled groom to be, 2 new dads who both saw the weekend as a chance to catch up on some sleep, a guy on the verge of marital breakdown, an 8 foot tall Dutchman, and 1/3 of the microbiology section of a very very very well known alcoholic beverage brewing company.
....I prayed for an easy way out, I considered lunging for the nearest security guard's semi-automatic, but instead I decided suffering in silence was the way to go, the fallout of an Irish Christian brother's education I expect.

In truth, the 48 hours that follwed were neither as dull and tedious as I expected, nor as wet and wild as others did. I did manage to consume 17 pints of (admittedly shockingly bad) beer on Saturday and live to tell the tale. A somewhat prostrate sleeping position and a sense of bewilderment for 2 days did follow though.
What came closer to being my downfall was the eyeball chewing boredom that was a 0-0 draw at the game which I paid £22 (Eur 33, $45) to watch.

On the upside I did get to see England lose the rugby world cup final and have the chance to be irritatingly smug about it.

In need of somewhere warm to sit and have some hot chocolate on Sunday we ventured into 'Hooters', which believe me is a poor relation to it's American cousin establishment. The outfits look like hand-me-downs, and don't do the saggy bottoms or weightliftern thighs on the staff any favours. On the plus side of 'Hooters' there was a wee kid sound asleep on a bench in there as his folks drank him into an early orphanage, cute all the same. Reminded me of BusyDad here, minus the intelligent girls and responsible parenting.

But the definite highlight of the entire weekend was Sunday morning at our hotel, where at reception stood a make-up worn woman wearing nothing but a man's shirt and stilettos.
She had little or no recollection of how she'd gotten there or why (er..take a guess sweetheart, the clue is in the outfit), and was pleading with recption to get her home, to whereever that may have been.

At least she must have had a good night.

I still maintain, much to the disgust of my English friends and colleagues, that in summation, if Europe were to get colonic irrigation, England is where they would shove the hose.

So all in all, I survived, I drank and swore far too much, but I was marvelously behaved right up until I landed in the arms of my loving, albeit somewhat suspicious, wife.

She was a bit miffed though, apparantly I'm missing a shirt......

The Ghost Of Billy Crystal

Have you ever woken up with your tongue welded to the roof of your mouth, your guts rumbling like you've had someone attempt to extract information you don't posess by pumping concentrated grapefruit juice into you, and your head rattling constantly like when you can't get the last tic tac out of the box?

No? - Well you've never been on a weekend long stag party in England then. But more on that later.

I awoke (or regained consciousness, same difference I expect) this morning (and I use the term 'morning' somewhat liberally) to find that dorky dad has awarded me, with something.

I don't understand what it is, I don't understand what I should do, but I do know that I've been so overcome by emotion at this selfless act of generosity that I sobbed myself back to sleep.

So I would like to thank my over-sexed and under-educated-in-family -planning parents for being drunk enough, often enough to have me and bring me to this moment. But mostly I must thank Dorky Dad, who is witty, funny, handsome, and has the balls to let his wife contribute to his blog. Go read, now. Well, not now exactly, but when I'm finished.

I promise to figure out what it all means just as soon as I have enough functioning brain cells to spare, they are currently all being utilised to keep my feeble carcas functioning. I do know that it means I made him smile, and I hope not in a 'I really need to get to a bathroom soon' or 'if you don't shut up quite soon I'm going to bite one of your fat little fingers' kind of way.

Have a look, ain't it Purdy ?

If I haven't slept-driven myself into a canal on the way home I may just share the gory details of the weekend that's passed...

NOW, you can go read Dorky Dad.

Parties and Powerhoses

As the non-colourblind and those with above comatose level observation skills among us will have noticed, I've had a play around with the blog, added a banner and powerhosed the rest.

I'm feeling a great sense achievement that I've done it, but of course like any good mentally unstable blogger should, I feel empty and desperate for feeling that sense of achivement.

Well smack my ass and call me Nancy, I just don't care.

Anyway, what's new... well a couple of things are....

One, I've been tapped up! 'what are you on about now you genetic freak of an Irishman? ' I hear you ask... well, thanks to some serious efforts on a project between July '06 and '07, I've been courted by another consultancy for some time now. After 4 informal approaches I've decided to speak to them and we are trying to fix a date even as my fat little fingers type this.

Well smack your asses and call you all Nancy, I know you don't care. Good, I'd seriously begin to worry if you actually did, but anyway, I diverse... Long story short, for the first time in my 10 year career I may get the oppertunity to take a job having not been made redundant, forcibly relocated, worked to the bone, or felt up by the boss in my previous position.

Two, as we approach the end of this week of fake grunting noises, too many showers and underwear changes, I'm getting a break! I'm departing this flattest of flat lands to visit the home of chavs, weak beer, asbos, and bad dental work (England, btw) for a 'bachelor party' with hordes of like-minded man-men.

So from Friday evening onwards, I get to sink many cold (luke warm at best) ones, watch top (league one, the old 3rd division) class football (saaaaawker), and sink some more 'cold' ones for two nights.

Sunday I shall return to provide my wife with the wonderous gift of usless alcohol damaged sperm.

Aruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugah!.... or chug!, chug!, chug! as my American party fiend buddies say.

Fancy A Laugh?

It's done the rounds before but it's too funny not have here.



I dare you morbid feckers not to get a belly wobble at the very least from this...