What the WHAT!?!?

I’m a DAD!

Her name is Kathryn Olivia Hansen, born 5/2/09 in San Francisco at a healthy almost-a-bowling-ball weight of 7lbs 15oz and a roomy 20″.  She’s got a full head of brown hair & eyes that are a deep blue (at least so far).  And yes, she’s my new favorite person. :)

No, you can't get this on Etsy.

No, you can't get this on Etsy.

Here’s what I wrote about this whole experience last Sunday, May 2nd, right after Renee was officially admitted into the hospital & we made ourselves at home in the big sterile hotel room.  Unfortunately I didn’t have time (surprise!) to cover the whole experience in this entry, and while I’m tempted to try now, a week later, to re-capture all the feelings & events that transpired afterwards, I can’t possibly do them justice.  So the labor experience, the cutting of the cord, the smell of my daughter’s head right before they put her in the Cap of Androgeny (the little cotton hat that’s equal parts pink & blue that all hospitals use so they can prevent the correct gender identification of all babies)… none of that is written in the below, and my only salvo to replace it is to tell you that, if possible, you should experience it for yourself, like most things that are amazing.

While this blog will still mainly be for my forays into acting & comedy & for memorializing oblique pop culture references, there’s really nothing more amazing than becoming a parent, and it will undoubtedly affect every single fiber of who I am for the next 80 years (yes, I’ll live until I’m 109), so this is a fitting place for something a little different.

What we have below is a piece I will refer to as:

I Need To Sit Down, or The Day When Literally Everything Changed Forever

We are officially in the hospital, about to become parents to what
will surely be one of those girls who is cute until 7, looks way
awkward between 7 & 13, and (hopefully) grows into the nose she got
from her Dad and long limbs she got from her Mom.

I am… I don’t know what I am. If a word exists to express it, it’s
something like
HOLYSHITHAPPYSCAREDWHATTHEHELLJUSTHAPPENEDWHOAREYOUSAVETHEPRINCESS1UPGAMEOVERCONTINUE?
DAMMITIDONTKNOWWHATIAMDOINGSTOPTHESCREAMINGTOOMUCHPOOP.

Ahem.

Now with composure…

I have a feeling today is going to be the next Best Day of My Life.
And I imagine none will be its equal until she grows up and maybe
chooses to take a similar path and makes me a Grandpa.

I can honestly say I have never had so many conflicting emotions
running through me at once. Remember the show Herman’s Head? It’s
like THAT, but louder and the fat guy in charge of the “fun stuff”
has way more gas, and all the opinions are bouncing around like
Drop Dead Fred. (Daniel Tosh isn’t the only one who can adroitly
reference that movie!)

Maybe that explains why, when I fast-forward to the part in this movie
where I meet this liitle treasure for the first time, I smile like a
loon and get a little weepy. (Weepy in a manly sense.) I also can get
VERY upset when I think about anyone ever hurting her. VERY UPSET.
Like turn-green-and-rip-my-jean-shorts upset. And then I get laughy.
Because I know R and I are about to embark on our very own comedy of
errors, complete with spit-takes, prat falls and fart sounds, and I
believe I’m about to truly learn what comedy is.

So you see, children, today is a Big Day. If ever I was going to
question my own masculinity, that question has been answered, as I’ve done the most masculine thing a guy can ever do… enter the realm of fatherhood. This stuff takes BALLS.

Too Late To Apologize

Where the hell have I been for two weeks? And two weeks, eff that, it’s been more like a month since I posted anything more than links and funny photos… my loyal readers must be so upset with me. Duly so, I’m afraid. My energy lately has been split three ways: work has lately been consuming about 80% of my waking hours; marathon training is another 10%; which only leaves 10% for the rest of my life: the Marriage, Quality Time, making new friends, maintaining long-distance relationships with old friends, attempting to define the rest of my life professionally… ON TOP of the standard chores of cooking, cleaning, laundry, collecting toe nails in a bag in the closet, reorganizing my stuffed animals, and attempting to teach math to blind kids using flash cards (which is about the least productive thing I’ve ever done – they just won’t learn!)

Now you might ask about my recent birth on Facebook and question my fidelity to Wyltie here. Well, as I said, my ENERGY is going to the list of minutiae above, which does take about 95% of my TIME. The other 5% of my time, when I’ve got no energy, is when I spend time twiddling my thumbs playing Scrabulous and updating my status message to whatever witticism strikes me as fleetingly suitable.

Wyltie, on the other hand, is not forgiving when I just type and ramble or link random sh!t. Wyltie takes energy. Plus, I know for a fact that you people are more likely to sniff out the latest Facebook updates rather than come here & look for posts – mainly because a) I update FB more often; and b) you get the deets on everyone in your virtual universe all on one page, as opposed to having to flip through to various blogs. Believe me, I understand the convenience of that. So Wyltie pays off less than FB does – people are much more likely to write on my “Wall” (what the fuck kind of concept design is that? who do you know that has a wall anywhere that other people write on? wall-writing is for rest-stop bathrooms and prisons, not social gatherings, whether they’re virtual or in meatspace) than they are to leave comments here on the blog. Why? Presumably it takes more effort to comment here (not same page as in FB), plus there’s a psychological thing about actually being able to see YOUR comment on the person’s page rather than just see Wyltie’s little comment-count thinger go up a digit – you feel secure your message will be seen / heard by at least the intended recipient (for the record, I’m just nerdy enough to have Wyltie email me automatically any time someone posts a comment, so invariably, I do see them… I don’t always respond, but am trying to get better at that part too), but you probably think maybe AngelSlut22@yahoo.com will see it and check out your profile & want to #$meet&* you in the @#Taco Bell Drive-Thru$*& and call you a #$*343#ugly woman@@ and twist your %$*nipple$&$ at a medium pace. Don’t steal that, by the way… I’m the first FIRST FIRST to ever just put the word I’m censoring in the middle of the usual censor characters. One point for me in the Creativity column, one in the Genius column (come on, it’s Awesome), and one in the First Nerd To Claim It column.

So, it may be too late to apologize (love that song, mainly because of its immense popularity in New Zealand whilst there for our honeymoon), but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry for not having the ENERGY to be here as often as I promised I would be. Cry me a #*fucking&@ river. (Told you. Awesome.)

Now, the update:
1) work is busy busy busy but I still like it almost every day;
2) training is going well – did 13.3 miles on Sunday in 50-60mph winds during the run over the Golden Gate, leg is definitely sore (ACL inflamed) but should mend with time;
3) R and the Marriage are doing well – though I’m already panicking a little about the first anniversary present because I can’t afford to mess that up (TOLD YOU IT WAS AWESOME);
4) acting is not happening so much – see reasons 1-3 above, but I DID go to a Chess club a few weeks ago in the interest of remaining social among my people (Nerds);
5) family is doing okay – sister had her car totaled by some old woman in San Diego who probably shouldn’t have been driving, but at least sister wasn’t in it at the time and everyone is okay, parents seem to be doing well as Dad gets closer to surgery on neck/back and Mom finishes up her Associate’s degree at Penn State, seeing the Iowa clan in a month down in LA but they seem good (loony, but good) as always, in-laws sound healthy & happy which means I can’t be totally screwing up the Marriage, and there is no movement on the needle that measures Pregnancy, which means there will be no new Hansens in the world any time soon (thank you drospirenone!)

This post is mainly about getting you up-to-date, but in the interest of getting back to the point of this whole Wyltie thing, I pose you, dear Reader, with a question: do you think there is space on, say, the Food Network for a loveable, approachable, slightly rotund & balding male chef in his late twenties (it’d take me a year or two to get through Culinary School & actually have some kitchen experience) who cannot only demonstrate his skills in the kitchen, but that can do so whilst also causing you to laugh hysterically? That is to say, if Rachel Ray were funny, but at the expense of being able to show you each and every detail behind her recipes, would you watch her?

‘What a weird question… why do you ask?’ Because, dammit, I want out of this corporate stuff (still like what I’m doing but it’s not who I am) and I want to be on stage in some way. Given the ‘slightly rotund & balding’ qualifications, I may never make it in a completely dramatic or comedic way, so I have to find my own niche, and I’m considering that maybe it’s the one-two punch of Comedy & Cuisine. The little bit of stand-up material I’ve been writing (yes, I’ve been working on it) has almost zero to do with food, but that’s only because I haven’t been focusing in that way. (Can’t shoot a deer in the woods if you’re aiming at the ducks on the pond… unless you’re really really bad at hunting… or if you’re Dick Cheney.) I think, I THINK, that I could make cooking funny. Or food funny, or some combination thereof. Or hell, I could just bring my comedy into the kitchen – Would you still laugh at Richard Pryor if he had done his Africa routine whilst whipping up a Sour Cream Cheesecake? Probably, because it’s damn funny. But I want to know what you think. So tell me already.