How We Met Ted's Wife

After eight seasons of pushing our patience to the absolute limits, fans of one of the greatest primetime TV shows, and one of the greatest stories ever told, were given the privilege of finally seeing her face; giving all of the Ted Mosby's in the world a new dash of hope that somewhere out there she does exist.  

Who's Your Mommy?

Most kids on Mother’s Day buy a heart-shaped box of chocolates to go with the poorly wrapped plastic flowers for $8.99 from Wal-Mart to show how much they care about the woman who raised them. Or of course there is the classic, "I-burnt-this-serving-of-eggs-and-bacon-but-I'm-still-giving-it-to-you-in-bed-with-these-hand-made-oven-mitts" a patented Mother’s Day formula we have all concocted at least once in our life.

On the opposite side, most Moms fit into the typecast mold of women who teach their kids how to tie their own shoes, show them how to iron a pair of slacks, instruct them on how to budget their checking account, or coach them through the popping of their first zit. There are hundreds and thousands of things that "most Moms" do for their children from the ages 0-18, and for many years beyond.

But my Mom isn't like most Moms. My Mom is awesome. And I'm willing to bet she can beat your Mom in a leg-wrestling contest.

For full effect, download "Don't Take Your Guns to Town" by Johnny Cash and play at maximum volume throughout the duration of this post.

If being a Mother means you get handed a plateful of unorganized chaos, with a side dish of “WTF-is-going-on?, meanwhile Karma pulls your chair out from underneath you and makes balancing everything that much harder, with you handling it with a smile on your face like nobody’s business, then that’s my Mom.  Who by the way is the bomb.com.  How many Moms do you know have to raise a little hellion like me for five years all by themselves?  Come on now, we all know calling me a little hellion is an understatement.  And after that, how many Moms do you know marry a widower and are thrust into the spotlight trying to raise five girls who just lost their own Mother in a car accident four months prior? Or how about giving birth to five more daughters after that, adding the total number of women she takes care of (not including my Dad) to 10?

How many Moms do you know bury a daughter and a husband within the same year?

Yeah, not too many.  But my Mom, she handled it like Job.  This woman gets served a bowl full of trials and frustrations and spits them back out like nobody's business.  She's that incredible.

When I say she's incredible, I also mean that my Mom is brilliantly smart.  My Mom taught me just about everything I know in life. Now I know that sounds like a motivational poster you'll read while sitting in a Doctor’s office, but she really did.  She taught me how to read, how to ski, how to dress, how to poo, how to make spaghetti, how to read music, how to wrap Christmas presents, how to open the door for a girl, how to wash my own dishes after dinner, how to change diapers, even how to make my own bed believe it or not.  Heck, last week over the phone this lady taught me how to cross-stitch. Yes, true story, a big man like me cross-stitches.  So what?  My Mom taught me how to do it. 

Most of you can toss out the cliché phrase, "My mother has always been with me." Of course she was. She was at your soccer games, at your third grade Christmas plays, and at your high school graduation.  But did your Mom give you a hug on behalf of two parents the day she dropped you off by herself to be a missionary? Did your Mom spend every single night with you in the hospital when some guy was digging out your brain? Did your Mom drive 300 miles last week to greet you at the finish line of the Ironman triathlon just to be your personal cheerleader?  Because mine sure did, and she was great.

This is the part of my blog where you look up at the ceiling, turn your head slightly to the left, and think about the relationship you have with your own Mother, kind of like I'm coaching you to do right now. This will then be followed by the obligatory phone call serving out the spoon-fed compliments to the woman who raised you, who changed your diapers, who gave you a hug after your first break-up.  This might also be followed by a 15-minute reminiscing period once the phone call is over, being grateful for having such a noble woman grace your life.  This of course is an annual ritual we all do every second Sunday in May.  

But whatever it is you do, be thankful for those sweet ladies today.  Go ahead and hand out your cookie-cutter box of chocolates. Gift-wrap that bouquet of store-fed flowers she'll forget about by the end of the week.  Burn a package of bacon you'll feed to her in bed, only to leave a sink full of dishes for her to clean up.  Do whatever you think is the best way to show your Mom that you love her.  Because ultimately we are all ridiculously lucky to have these dear women in our lives, these women who have raised us to be the people we are today, the women who we should ever be grateful for.

I know I am.

The Times Of Your Life

A wise 24-year old former Dixie State Ambassador once posted on Facebook:

“The difference between friends and bestest friends.  When you see your bestest friends that you never see, and you feel like you see them daily and never missed a beat. 

Those are the bestest friends.  And I miss those friends daily!”

This woman is a sage I tell you.  Statuses like those put her in the same category as Morgan Freeman, or a Native American Grandmother, or someone else who has wrinkles coming from the corners of her eyelids, signifying many years of experience and motivational sayings.  Those words are 100% true.  No questions asked. 

Those words are true because we all have friends like that.  We all have those bestest of bestest of BFF’s that we don’t have to speak to for over a decade, but the instant we make eye contact with them we can laugh at inside jokes and remember the time when we peed our pants in the middle of the aisle at Harmon’s.  Yes, those are the bestest of BFF’s we all have in our lives somewhere. 

Whether they’re your little sisters who show up after three years for lunch and want to laugh about the time you broke your glasses walking into a locked door, or whether they’re the grandmother Ambassador from above who gets a stomachache full of giggles remembering when she chewed you out because she was having a panic attack about moving to Provo.  Those are the laughs that we all want to have.  That we all need to have.  Those are the laughs that make our lives worth living every single day. 

Pulling a red-eye road trip with my office last night we got to talking about all of the times we have shared together.  Yes, believe it or not, men sometimes get a little sentimental when they’re awake after midnight driving blindly through the desert.  For three hours we talked.  A little bit was about where we are now in life.  A little bit was about where we are going in life.  And a whole chunk of it was about where we have all been together, reminiscing the high highs and the low lows of the sacred brotherhood of higher education admissions.  Looking out the window I almost expected Green Day to start playing “The Time Of Your Life” from the backseat as my eyes moistened up a little bit.  But that’s a little too poetic for me. 

Road trips like those are the tales that will be rehearsed to my Grandkids around campfires in years to come.  They will be the stories I fall back on when I’m a balding white-collar mid-life crisis staring at a TPS report on a Thursday afternoon.  When my life turns into a monstrous redundancy with highlights showing up every other leap year, those are the memories I’ll have stocked in my storage bin, the ones that will add a silver lining to the smorgasbord of mediocrity which is what life is in general.

And when I turn into a hunched over wrinkle with gray hairs coming out of my ears, I will still be able to walk up to the characters that make up all these memories, and wrap my arms around them knowing that we are still the bestest of friends.    

Here Comes The Turkey!

Does your office have a bowling tournament in the middle of the day in between registration sessions for college freshmen?

I don't think so.  

Is your office as badass awesome as mine?

You wish.  

Between Heaven And Hell

I’m sitting in bed at 10:30 in the morning eating my third bowl of Dryer’s Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip ice cream.  And do you know why?

Because I can do whatever the curse word I want after yesterday. 

For full effect, download “Iron Man” by Ozzy Osbourne and play at maximum volume throughout the duration of this post. 

Honestly if decent shape present self were to travel back to June of 2006 and say to overly plump past self that he would be competing in the ultimatum of a triathlon, overly plump past self would have slapped present self upside the head and stuffed another deep fried Twinkie down his throat.  Yes kids, past self was not in shape.  I know this by the three pairs of pants he ripped within two weeks.  But that’s another story. 

Your average cocky jerk would normally be using this blog to brag about his times, showcase his pictures, or simply flaunt the fact that he completed an athletic achievement that most Muffintops would never dream about.  But that’s not me, and hopefully after reading the few hundred posts I’ve tossed your way you may know this by now.  Instead, I’ll make you laugh, make you cry, and maybe toss a moral lesson to you near the end of this page.   

If at some point in your life you get the chance to do an Ironman triathlon, take it!  Jump on that! By all means leap at the opportunity to turn into a gym junkie, live off of protein shakes and spinach salads, and give up the sacred nectar of Dr. Pepper for five months, because it will change your life.  And you will be a better person for it. 

It’s not really about being in prime physical shape, or that you can brag about that physical shape to your friends on Facebook, it’s the concept that you can have a group peeing session in the water with 120 other guys wearing purple swim caps waiting for the starting gun to go off.  Or when a volunteer hands you a few strips of tape to make sure your nipples won’t bleed out from chafing.  I’m telling you, doing an Ironman is like being in a sacred college fraternity, minus the alcohol and C-average gpa’s.    

On paper the race looks like pure Hell.  Think about it, swim 1.2 miles, bike 56, and then run 13.1. And that’s just a half Ironman! You have to think some lunatic in a straitjacket came up with figures like those for an athletic competition.  Either that or someone with very low self-esteem was looking to come up with a cold turkey cure for bulimia.

But once you’re in the race surrounded by a couple thousand people blowing snot rockets left and right, you’re in Heaven.  And those people are what make the race sublime.  There was the kid with balls of steel from Chicago I biked miles 20-24 with who had never done any type of triathlon before.  Or the Redditor who gave me a salt tablet at mile 3 of the run so leg cramps wouldn’t ruin my race.  The best was the Canadian who shared a Popsicle with me at mile 11 of the run, who told me stories about his beautiful family up north, and then challenged me to a duel on the last 500 yards.  I think in a past life somewhere I was BFF’s with that Canuck.    

In fact, those last 500 yards were the best part of the entire race.  Surrounded by hundreds of people screaming their guts out, volunteers patting you on the back, an announcer broadcasting your name to the triathlon world while you’re in a dead sprint to the finish line, tell me that doesn’t bring tears to your eyes.  Because it sure did to mine. 

Yesterday was Hell.  And yesterday was Heaven.  It was a joyride of pain, pleasure and every other emotion in between.  It’s the one time in my life where I’ve laughed, cried, and peed on someone all within six hours.  An experience I can’t duplicate, nor can I describe in full detail in a blog post.  And something that is complete justification for eating a three-course breakfast of Peanut Butter chocolate chip ice cream. 

Am I Ironman?

I have swam over 25 miles.

I have ran over 240 miles.

I have biked over 750 miles.

All so tomorrow morning I can piss my pants in a wetsuit, wipe boogers on my sleeves, and run around in tights for a few hours with a couple thousand people watching.

Call me crazy, I know.