Walrus July 28th

How to assemble IKEA Furniture in 27 simple steps:

Step 1: Travel to Tukwila, and look for the huge blue building.

Step 2: Park

Step 3: Abandon all hope as you enter the retail labyrinth of doom!

Step 4: Find the food court and eat some swedish meatballs. Yum.

Step 5: Take a nap in the bedding section.

Step 6: Ask someone who might or might not be an IKEA employee where the actual furniture is.

Step 7: Realize you didn't read the store instructions when you entered, and that you need to document ever item you desire to purchase on a slip of paper with a golf pencil.

Step 8: Cry.

Step 9: Have a sales associate help you, and lead you (by the hand) to the warehouse where the boxes of not-assembled furniture is located.

Step 10: Use you debit card to buy not-assembled furniture. Enter your pin number: ####

Step 11: Find your car and drive home.

Step 12: Arrive home and try to decipher the instructions.

Step 13: Cry again.

Step 14: Look online for help to assemble your furniture.

Step 15: Find the word "Lutefisk" whilst researching Scandinavian furniture and culture.

Step 16: Look up Lutefisk on Wikipedia.

Step 17: Drink a beer.

Step 18: Try again to assemble your IKEA furniture.

Step 19: Somehow accidentally poke your eye with the hex tool.

Step 20: Curse loudly.

Step 21: Call your dad to come over and assemble your furniture.

Step 22: Watch the Office on Hulu.

Step 23: Laugh at Michael Scott's stupidity while your dad accidentally pokes his eye with the hex tool.

Step 24: Feel bad for dad.

Step 25: Help your dad.

Step 26: Finish, and then drink a beer.

Step 27: Ask your wife to cook Lutefisk.

Wanchancy July 28th

Wanchancy July 28th, 2009

Lauren's rocker glider has arrived. A dear family member has purchased this wonderful...nay, glorious piece of furniture. And like much of the furniture that you can purchase currently, it required self-assembly. Recently Lauren and I purchased Elsie's crib from IKEA, where it also required my skills of reading scandinavian hieroglyphics and manipulation of the "hex" tool. I have about 2,347 of these tools from various self-assembly projects. However I can never really bring myself to throw them away. Because after all, they are tools that might be useful in some fashion sometime in the future. Maybe if in the state of a national emergency, where the television starts making annoying sounds, and the President moves to the basement apartment of Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado, I might be able to use this hex tool as a can opener.

None the less, I have quite a few of these little devils. They are quite handy you know, if you own one yourself. Remember during any self-assembly project that you can use it "long-ways" to get into deep, hard to reach holes. And you can use it "Short-ways" to torque down that flimsily tightening job you tried to perform with your flabby finger muscles.

There is something very satisfying about putting things together for your wife and your child. I'm not talking about the time where you cursed at your sore thumbs because of your pitiful hammering skills. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about when you are complete, and the project is finished. There is not really a context in today's society where in the middle of Ballard, I can go hunting and kill dinner for my family. Or defend my family from a band of roving pirates with sword and pistol. Well...on second thought it is Ballard. So the next best thing I guess is to lead your family through the labyrinth of that big blue warehouse called IKEA located in some black hole near Tukwila. And once through that retail puzzle that makes you wonder where the cheese is at the end of the experience, you travel home to assemble what you've purchased by yourself. I holler at the top of my lungs and beat my chest, while listening to Bohemian Rhapsody on my vinyl record player. After the experience I then travel to my tool box and deposit hex tool number 2,348. With the help of Designers from Holland and Denmark, wielding the formidable pieces of brittle composite wood, I built something. It was a good day.

On a side note. My fillings melted today. Which is weird because their not metal or gold. They tasted like coffee.

Walrus July 26th

Three questions:

Should I?

Could I?

Would I?

Take a prenatal vitamin?

These particular supplements don't seem to contain any ingredients that would compromise my testosterone levels. They contain very healthy and common vitamins such as Calcium, Iron, Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Beta-Carotene, and don't forget Niacin (almost 104% of the daily value suggested for pregnant or lactating women). However I am not a pregnant or lactating woman. I am a very manly man with lots of man characteristics, man habits, and man...things. So why should I be affraid? But one begs to ask the question: "Why weirdo, why?"

I thought to educate myself by calling the 1800 number on the back of my wife's generic brand prenatal vitamins (which don't contain omega 3s, those I enjoy with my wife in the form of a chewable.)

But alas it is Sunday and all associates are Sabbathing apparently. I like to challenge myself in strange ways that cause society to raise eyebrows. For example: Why not face everyone on the elevator instead of facing the door? Why not quote 1st Timothy 6:10 to your corporate district manager saying: "I know my stores sales are down Mike, but don't you remember the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil?" Why not discuss Ina May Gaskin's Sphincter law with a southern baptist? Why not dance to the Jackson Five in your grandma's guest room? And why not be so thoroughly and exhaustively excited about your unborn daughter coming into the world that you know words like: Placenta, and episiotomy? Why not know the correct pronunciation of midwifery? Why not make up superhero nicknames for your wife like: "The amazing Oxytona?" Why not?

Of course I'm not advocating foolishness for foolishness sake. But I might throw up if I had to go play golf instead of going to birthing class with my wife. So am I a weirdo?

Yep!

Also I apologize for my grammar. If you've ever seen the movie Finding Forester you know that according to Sean Connery's character you have to write from your heart first and then go back and correct. Well I'm too lazy to edit, good luck.

Wanchancy July 26th

Today is a good day. It's so hot in Seattle that Lauren and I went to Fred Meyer to buy a kiddie pool so that she could lay in our back yard and read John Grisham. It's a pool that I particularly like a lot. For one it's not just a pool, but a slide shaped like a cartoon whale. For myself I have digressed to wearing a wife beater and drinking a hydrating beer while I try my hand at blogging for the first time. We are preparing for our baby shower which is this weekend, and getting very excited. I think we are about just as exited that there will be no "baby shower games," or the like. Only the best grilled meats and cold tasty beers at our baby shower.

Lauren is doing very well. She is continuing to work through the end of her pregnancy and has recently been showered with praise by her supervisors for her excellent work as an information specialist. Working for the National Cancer Institute has been challenging for her, but she has excelled, and I am very proud of her.

For fear that my employers might find my blog and follow up on me, let's say my current job is...uncompromising. I have switched from one of the lowest volume Parker Paint stores in the north region, to one of the highest. I am tired, and hope that one day in the future I will again have the ability to eat lunch.

That is all for now, I must defend my beautiful damsel from a bee who has mistaken her poka dot bathing suit for a flower. Her John Grisham book will not avail her as she strikes at the bee with it from her spot in the kiddie pool. The battle never ends.

Wanchancy Walrus

What is a wanchancy walrus you say? Well according to the one web sight that was visited, wanchancy means uncanny. My wife Lauren picked this word, and I picked the word walrus. We have a pleasant agreement between us that if I am to start expressing the twisted thoughts of my brain on the internet, that there also must be a practical outlet. A context for updating and informing family, friends, acquaintances, and strangers of our personal affairs. I thought that this was fair. She is by the way very beautiful and very intelligent, both lethal aggressors to my trivial attempts to be selfish.

So "Our" blog will contain two threads. One of which will contain pictures, updates, and information on our lives, and more importantly the progression of our little baby Elsie Prudence into this world. Lauren is now 31 weeks into our pregnancy, and doing wonderfully. They will be posted under: "Wanchancy."

The other will be informational, helpful, and entertaining to no one, and will contain a minutia of trivial writing and self expression by myself. They will be posted under: "Walrus."

So concerning my original question: "What is a wanchancy walrus?" There are many answers. But I warn you the answers will only produce more questions.