Betsy Lies....

This is for anyone who ever hears my wife tell stories about the things that I do at home, or ways that I help Betsy out. This could include chores, caring for the girls, basically anything that can be defined as doing my share. So to her awesome co-workers and especially their spouses who may have heard bits of the lies that Betsy said about me and believed it. I think it's awesome that she is so believable and that she says so many nice things about me, but...

I want to make it clear that I ONLY do the bare minimum of everything I can and I try to get out of everything possible. I am as lazy as you will get from a husband. I like to just sit on the couch with the TV on and play games on my cell phone. I don't even think I average a shower a day (more like once or twice a week). Basically, I love to go to my "nothing box" and well, do NOTHING. I make every possible attempt to ignore any requests made by Betsy. I like to sit in a chair in my garage wearing only my underwear, maybe a tank top and stare at the neighbors occasionally throwing rocks at them. I leave my clothes all over the house, I do NOT put any dishes away. If she asks me to go to the store for something specific, and I CHOOSE to go, I never get the right items and usually buy things we do not need or things that I think are cool.

Now, I did recently clean the entire house, but before you get any weird ideas that I do this often...I DON'T (once a year). My favorite in-laws were coming to town for a special occasion celebrating just how awesome their daughter is and remind me what a bum I am, so I felt a little ambitious and motivated to do a little more this time. If I could have hired a service, I would have. Now that I think about it, I cannot understand why I did not do that. I could have easily found someone walking around aimlessly looking for work. Yeah, we may have lost some things to theft, but at the end of the day, I could have napped all day and the house would have been cleaner than it was before. Maybe not be much, but a little.

It's funny now that I think about it, but I remember the way that my mom would clean the house while my dad only worked. He would come home and go to the garage and tinker with things, come inside and eat dinner and go back to the garage for some more tinkering before coming back inside for a little television and then to bed. He pretty much came and went as he pleased with 8 monster kids even before me. Now I see where your going with this (Betsy you too). If that was the life I wanted, then I did something terribly wrong when I married Betsy, because she is not that kind of person, nor will she ever be which is just the way I like her.

Regardless of how awesome Betsy may be (she is), she has many faults (more than me), like lying. She must have gotten that from her mother (just kidding Judy). So when she is telling you stories about how much I help her, or anything that sounds too good to be true, keep believing it!

Thanks Betsy! You amazing lovable human! There is no one better (outside Maura and Mollie)!!

A Clean House...sort of?

So about a week ago, I stayed home from work, my in-laws (my favorite in-laws) were coming into town to attend Betsy's 40 under 40 reception and she seemed a little stressed about the state of home and let me tell you, I HATE to clean! Worse than that, I hate to dust. It seems so easy and there are way worse things to do (IE: bathrooms). Now, I had the opportunity to clean WITH Betsy the night before, but I thought it would be more appropriate and maybe the right thing to do it the next day while everyone was out, because everything is so much easier when the girls are at my mom's or daycare.

I made the decision to do it, still not sure why. I put on some great music, play it loud, kick the dogs outside and go. I can tell you that being married to Betsy for these past 10 years, I know what and where she looks when someone else cleans the house. This can be an extreme advantage or disadvantage. For example, I vacuumed for her in our bedroom and thought I did a pretty darn good job. She comes home and the first thing she does is compliment me on how nice everything looked, but then she asks if I did "the carpet test?" What the heck? So she proceeds to get on her knees and starts to pull on the carpet and of course begins to pull up dog hair as if I never vacuumed. Lesson learned. I can tell you that I do not do the "carpet test" to this day, but I am better at vacuuming.

So I am cleaning the house. Now here's the kicker, now that I have spent my entire day off cleaning the house preparing it for in-laws, and my VERY first thought was..."these girls will get home and mess this house up!" One of the things that I truly appreciate about Betsy is that she can keep things pretty cleaned up for a little bit, but when she starts to let go, what a domino effect because when she gets messy, it is like a green light to stop picking up and then we all start to get messy. I remember when we were dating and I would walk into her room and there was no floor, just a pile of clothes everywhere.

I like a clean house as much as the next person, but man, where is the maid service?

What was I thinking?

We currently belong to a super church with a lot of great people, with a pretty amazing pastor. One Sunday we were in service when they played this video about participating in Team World Vision, running in a marathon (May 2011) in Lincoln to raise money for kids in Africa. I have to admit that I have moments where certain things tug at the "heart cords" and I secretly have always wanted to run in a marathon, or I should be honest and say that, "the idea of running in a marathon" has always sounded like a really cool thing to do, right? I also kept hearing people talk about this love for running and how they get hooked after their first marathon (Liars..).

Well, after something thinking about it, I thought, "OK I think I can do this, and I kinda want to do this." There was some time before one of the informational meetings were scheduled in case I wanted to change my mind. I can tell you that Betsy did not think I would do this (she has been super supportive). I went to the meeting and became a little more confident that I could do this. Then I saw the "PRE-training" 1/2 marathon schedule. The confidence pretty much went out the door. The down side of all of this is that I felt like I had made it to the meeting and I should go ahead and sign up since everyone there was doing it. If I was smarter I would have made a run for the door and not looked back, but...

Now, those of you who know me, know that I DO NOT run for anything unless I am being chased or I am running for the front of the line for food. I will also chase someone for a cinnamon roll. EVEN in my prime I could run about ten feet without requiring oxygen, but if I went past that I was falling to the ground yelling for someone to call 911. Unfortunately, there are some people who have got to see that happen and I am sure it is pretty entertaining.

I can tell you, after three weeks of this "PRE" training and getting ready to start the fourth week.....I have passed out 4 or 5 times and have almost fallen off the treadmill like every time I get on it. People who love to run are crazy, I am not sure what even gets you excited about this. For example, this weeks schedule states to run for 3min, then walk 1 min for a total of 35 minutes. It sounds easy enough, but let me tell you...3 minutes seems like forever when you are running, plus I am not a little boy and next week I am "supposed" to run for 4min and walk 1 min for even longer. Ha, should be interesting. Now, I will say that TODAY (only today so far) was probably the first day since I started that I actually enjoyed the run (I did put a double cheeseburger on the treadmill in front me for some extra motivation). We will see how Monday goes...as long as I remember that I am doing this for these kids in Africa, I think I can make it.

I cannot even imagine crossing that finish line next year, mostly because I cannot even imagine running for 4 min one time, so stay tuned and I will keep you updated as this journey continues. "It's for the kids." "It's for the kids." "It's for the kids."