Of all the biggest change in my life has been the birth of my Daughter, something that has changed my core values, the way I think and all that I live for. Never before has something so strongly shaken the foundations of my life, it is amazing that something so small at birth, can be so big in a more metaphysical sense.

When the news broke, that my wife was pregnant, I had planned on blogging my experience as I knew it would be a roller coaster ride. My wife is not known for her stable moods and these were bound to be made worse by the rush and increase of hormones that were now circulating her system. However life got in the way, and the excitement and drama was something I wanted to live and experience rather than write about and share. To some degree I regret that decision as there were so many opportunities to amuse the world with my simultaneous joy and misery, and there were stories that I would love to have written down fresh to share with my daughter as she ages, before they are lost in the ether and fog of my memory.

As it stands now, my daughter will be turning one in a little over a month and the experience has been golden, it will go down as easily the best thing I have ever experienced in my life, even when you throw in the sleepless nights and utter distress you feel at times, every day brings new joy and new smiles and the bond and love that is there, grows stronger every day, the first 5 days of her life were spent in hospital, and I spent every day of that from, sunrise to late at night holding her in my arms, and they are precious memories that I will never forget.

So with such a massive change to the way i think, feel and do things, it is my hope that I can now retrospectively relate some of the stories and experiences to you, of course with the classic Blokeman comedic style added, where appropriate. Some of the people that read the blog from time to time or stumble across some of my old world of thoughts, may not be interested, some may, but I would dearly like to re-ignite this site as all people should have a place to put their thoughts, even if some of those thoughts are mundane and probably should not have been shared publicly.

I’ll endeavor to start retrospectively chronicling my journey in the next few days so stay tuned.

As I grew older I tended to become as you would expect, somewhat wiser, and as you would expect, I learned the ability to control my bladder better, and hold out for a suitable location to relieve myself.

However, 4 years ago I moved to Queensland, Australia, and in doing so have come to realise, that either Queenslanders are not taught to use toilets, or they truly believe in the saying “The world is my Urinal”.
My first introduction to this was at a BBQ of some people we had only recently met and, obviously after a number of beers, I needed to use the bathroom, being the surprisingly polite person that I am, I asked the host, where their bathroom was.

“Mate just go anywhere over there” he replied, with a sweeping movement of his arm indicating some 200+ Square metres of land in which to urinate.
“nah seriously man, I am not going to piss in your yard” I replied
“Poof” he said, as he proceeded to walk over to his fence and just start pissing on it…….

When in Rome I figure, and found my own fence paling to paint yellow.

However I could never quite shake the feeling that I was doing something wrong, at every party and opportunity I still prefer to use the toilet rather than someones yard.

What strikes me as amusing though is that at my last house some of my Queensland friends would walk past the toilet to go piss in yard. I mean seriously, why walk past, and further than the toilet to piss, or worst still was another friend, who at times would piss, just outside the toilet window in the garden……crazy man.

I guess, it’s better than pissing in the spare bedroom….but that’s another story altogether……

Read about it here http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/men-told-to-soften-the-f-up-20110705-1h0a6.html

For those who have had friends and family who have come to the conclusion that ending their own lives is the only option, they know the devastation, guilt and trauma that it leaves behind, often rippling through and damaging so many more lives than the person could have ever imagined.

I stopped posting very much on this site after a close friend of mine chose to end his life back in February 2010. It was a tragic time for all of his friends and family and he left behind 3 young and beautiful children. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him and not a day goes by that I don’t think to myself what more I could have done to prevent it. We all knew he was down and we all knew he had tried before, and we all tried to prevent it, but you can’t be with a person every minute of every day.

One thing however does come back to me and that is, if I had approached it more softly and asked him to speak about it rather than offering my typically male opinion and offering tough love. It doesn’t work and men certainly do need to learn how to be softer, and talk about their issues, whether to a friend, family, a therapist or even anonymously on the internet. The more you bottle it up and the more you think along the lines of “Harden up” the worse your situation will get.

Personally I don’t like the term Soften the fuck up, however its point is well made, even if mine is not.

So this post may be lacking in any real structural point, but I hope that some read it, think of a friend or think of themselves, and reach out and try to help someone, or themselves.

For those in Australia seeking help, please reach out to http://www.beyondblue.org.au/ a great charity and initiative that can help you work through your problems.

Don’t get me wrong I understand the romance side of things, but pulling out a camera should by and large be left for the bedroom and tourist attractions. In all honesty, I just want to eat my meal whilst it still has thermal nuclear properties and isn’t getting on the cold side. I can’t foresee a time in the future where I will site back and think, hmmm you know, I wouldn’t mind going through all those old photos of the dinners we have eaten. Hell I can’t even imagine saying to any kids I may have in the future “And this is the panfried Sea Trout that we had, ooh and that’s the lemon sorbet we had for desert”. I am all for torturing my children through boredom but even I have limits to my mental cruelty.

I decided to question Wifey on what her reasoning was behind this, and her response chilled me to the bone. Before I offer it to you I should give you some background. Some friends of ours were in town and heading out to dinner, they asked for some suggestions, so we offered up some of the nicer eateries in the town that we have found to be both delicious, well services and reasonably priced. These friends however, decided to ignore our advice and went to an all you can eat Chinese buffet. I know everyone has different tastes, but please, lets be reasonable here, why have buffet chinese, when for the same price you can have a specialty cooked gourmet dinner?

Now despite what may otherwise be assumed of my nature, I am actually a fairly passive and patient man, sure I have my pet peeves, intricacies and mental health issues, but by and large I am an easy going, if slightly psychotic person and let things go fairly easily. So the above, was something I simply shrugged off as not impacting my life at all….but wifey?…no her reasoning for photographing the meal was so that she could show our friends what they missed out on, and stick it to them…….is that not one of the scariest things you have heard.

I take this as further proof that women are just plain crazy, and should be restrained to the kitchen and kept away from the BBQ……right?

“Do you see a ring on this finger” was a phrase made popular by Eddie Murphy, and it left a generation of men sitting there, believing that the outlandish shit proposed by our dear friend eddie, would all be possible once we placed that little slither upon our fair ladies hand…….but no men…don’t believe it, it’s just a way for your bitch to show that she owns you.

It’s been one week and Blokeman has has lost a massive part of his blokiness, well to an extent anyway.

Thankfully blokewife…..or as she has been known for the last week “Wifey” understands what it means to a blokeman to be a bloke, and a wonderous thing happened this week, you see Wifey works in advertising sales, and this week she visited a homebrew beer store, in here region trying to sell some advertising in her paper. Oldmate, and an honoury blokeman legend and possibly someone more blokey than I, managed to get Wifey to have a free glass of homebrew beer, enough that she came home telling me she enjoyed it. Now there is an upside and a downside to this

1) UPSIDE:Wifey can handle drinking beer
2) DOWNSIDE: Wifey may want to drink MY beer….there was nothing in our vows about that though

So me and Mr Homebrew need to have a word about priorities and a man’s beer is his beer and not Wifeys. But one thing I have to praise the man for is that when Wifey was in there he showed her the “Keginator” and wifey said that once we have paid off the last of the wedding, she is taking me in there to get one and a full keg setup…….oh how I love homebrew man now

So 2 weekends back there I was minding my own business, well actually we rushed back from the shops as the mother in law had arrived at our house, so that we could meet up with her, putting a dampener on the plans we already had. She brought her little dog with her, and I use the term loosely. It is a tea cup Pomeranian, nuff said.
Now I will be the first to admit that I am not the biggest fan of this “Dog” but I tolerate it as I do all animals, however this is what I was greeted with

1 – I sit down the dog jumps on my lap, covered in pee where it had wet itself, I shove it off and go wash my hands and change clothes
2 – I go inside and my partner lets the dog in. It pees on the rug. I clean it up and sit down to watch the football
3 – I catch the thing pissing on my carpet!!!!! I yell at it and tell it to get out. Granted not in nice tones, but 3 strikes, come on, don’t piss on my carpet, the dog is over a year old it should be over that and I would have thought after I had said it pissed on the rug, the matter would have been resolved by the dog being removed from the house.
But no. It proceeds to piss on the carpet, and I caught it right as it was starting to pee. So I yelled at it, with a sound of utter contempt in my voice and shooed it from the house.

This has greatly upset the inlaws, and we are currently not on speaking terms, I have to keep reminding my partner that the dog is a dog and not a child, the dog does no rationalise, it knows it did something wrong, something very wrong, and if it is ever in my house again will think twice about pissing on my carpet.

The thing that irks me is that I am being treated like I yelled at a 3 year old child, I didnt even yell that loud, I just did the standard “uh-uh” and “Outside, get outside NOW” shit what a terrible thing to say, how dare I yell at a dog. I cant stand people that treat their animals as if they are human, they are animals, with no rationale, just instinctual.

I guess the silver lining is that I wont have to bother yelling at the dog for a while, because I am barred from seeing it because I “Hate it, obviously”……no I hate animal piss on my carpet!

I have been confronted, with snakes, almost run down by kangaroos, spiders as big as your hand, grasshoppers that are directly from the Jurassic period, rain so heavy you would swear you were swimming under a water fall and coming to terms with owning a home and the various activities that go with that, i.e. building and maintenance.

It looks like now, I will be confronted with my first ever cyclone. A cyclone is a severe tropical storm, known as a Typhoon or Hurricaine in other parts of the world. The one header our way is apparently the same in size and power as Hurricaine Katrina that devistated New Orleans in the USA. At this stage the cyclone is sitting a fair way North of us but is heading nearly directly towards us, but only moving at about 15km/ph. There is an eerie feel about the town, though by and large people are just going about their business.

Tomorrow will be the exciting time for us. We are likely to go from Watch (48 hour warning) to Warning (storm going to hit within 24hours). Basically that means, we are in iminant danger, and it is time for us to not only clear all loose objects and tie things down, but also to prepare to either evacuate or if staying, get inside and stay inside. Winds are picking up and we need to make our decision by midday tomorrow of whether we are staying through te storm or whether we are high tailing it to safer ground. The Blokeman in me says stay, chain myself to a tree and take that sucker on, the adult in me says pack the car, photo albums, dogs and fiance and get the hell out of town…….though I think we will take the middle ground secure the house, have some friends and family over and ride it out together in the hallway of the house…….

Bring it on………………….

Last night I was awoken with a sudden pain in my stomach and as realisation dawned upon me through the haze of the world between awakedness and comforting slumber, I threw back the sheets and made an all out dash for the bathroom, kicking my little toe on the door frame on my way through I swallowed down a scream and continued my dash of mercy.

Making it to the bathroom in the nick of time, I managed to remove said boxers and proceeded to spray paint the toilet bowl a violent shade of brown and probably yellow I spent the next 30 minutes or so sitting there, my legs a cramping, sweat beading on my brow and fighting off sleep, lest I slip from the porcelain throne and project my body produced art on the walls of the bathroom.

Thinking it was all over I cleaned up and decided the couch would be the best place to rest my head, due to it’s proximity to the bathroom and not wanting to wake my other half.

It was whilst sitting there, that I was reminded of an advert from my childhood, that wen a little like this: “How does it feel <insert something that you have done>, it feels like a tooheys” obviously, this advert lent itself to many a school yard variation, it was one such variation that came to mind and reminded me of the easer of youth.

“How does it feel, when you’re sitting on the Dunny and yours shit’s all runny and the doorbell rings”

For my non-Australian readers, a “Dunny” refers to the toilet.

I started to ponder on this little ditty, and thought how very apt and descriptive of the youth who came up with this, for I believe that many of us have been in the situation, where we have in fact been sitting on the dunny, and the doorbell rings, humans being naturally curious creatures are then split between finishing what you set out to do, on your journey to the bathroom, and getting up to find out who was at the door. For many the mystery of never knowing would be too much and they would have to get up, to others, well it’s a matter of getting through the ordeal and preferring to never know.

However…..when you’re shit’s all runny, well the choice, is taken from your hands, you have no way of getting up, unless you leave a slippery trail of disgusting mess, this is the true genius in the song. Because everyone knows exactly what it would feel like to be sitting on the dunny, with their shit all runny, and the doorbell rings……

So for years my family ridicule me for being the only non-tradesman in the family as if it is some form of effeminate thing not to want to toil away behind tools all day for less pay than I can get perched behind my computer at home.

However, now the tides have turned and I can happily smother my family with the ridicule they once reserved for me. Geocaching has swept through them, a craze like a wild fire. I take such wicked delight in reminding them as oft as possible of the sorts of single 30 something men with only their mothers for friends, who generally partake in this activity globally.

They have provided me of tales where they have bumped into fellow geocachers and described exactly the type of social retards you would expect of this sort of activity, red haired, freckle-faced with coke-bottle glasses.

In short now my Family are NERDS eeegads

“A hot summer night, fell like a net
I’ve gotta find my baby yet
I need you to soothe my head
Turn my blue heart to red”

Ok I get the first part, very poetic, the heat descends upon you like a net on a hot summer night, though not where I am from, instead it descends on your like a hot fucking humid cloak. But that is all fair enough, i can get the soothing the head part, I can let it go and in the context of later mistakes, the “Turn my blue heart to red” even works, though we then have to assume that this Doctor, is in fact some for of heart surgeon or specialist.

“Doctor, doctor give me the news
I’ve got a bad case of lovin’ you
No pill’s gonna cure my ill
I’ve got a bad case of lovin’ you”

This is the part of the song that really has me wondering. Now, whilst the general interperetation is that the man is in love with someone, this lyric chunk actually is saying that said singer is in love with the doctor. Now, with that said, I ran some searches to see if I could find any female heart surgeons or specialists, the net result being I could find vague references to only 1, however, this Doctor, at the time of the song being published, was not yet a heart specialist. Meaning that the singer of the song, must be in fact in love with his male heart surgeon. I mean I know the guy likely saved your life, by fixing your blue heart and making it red again, but surely this is breaking the bounds of the patient-Doctor relationship isnt it?

“A pretty face don’t make no pretty heart
I learned that buddy, from the start
You think I’m cute, a little bit shy
Momma, I ain’t that kind of guy”

Ok so let me get this straight, first of all he is looking for love from his surgeon, now he is getting all prissy and bitchy because he is saying that a pretty face, doesnt mean she has a nice personality. Obviously Mr Heart Surgeon has rejected our patients advances. He has at least let us know he is male by saying “Buddy”. But now he is starting to big note himself and bullshit too, “You think I am cute, a little shy” talk it up big fella, and this song really highlights that shyness you mention. But who the fuck is he talking to when he mentions his Momma?

He busts back into his Doctor Doctor routine again then, and all of a sudden is all back in love….come on guy I know you just had a major heart operation, but lets make up our mind here hey, our Doctor doesn’t have the time, he is a busy man you know.

“Wooah

You had me down, 21 to zip
Smile of Judas on your lip
Shake my fist, knock on wood
I’ve got it bad and I’ve got it good”

Right so now, his fantasy is starting to get a bit over the top. He starts with ecstatic screams of woah and then talking about how his doctor likes it on top, I mean surely his doctor hasn’t taken the relationship that far, and if he has there are some serious questions about his professionalism here, not to mention the fact that it goes for so long he doesn’t know when it will stop.
Then what is he talking about 21 to zip, a game of vollyball?
And I like similes, metphors and poetic technique as much as the next guy, but what is the point of this whole Judas lip and fist shaking, it sounds like some kind of kinky heart surgeon sex game to me, and it sounds like our dear singer is loving it.
Overall I can see the idea of being in love so much it seems like you are sick, but this guy is sick, truly sick, and after such massive heart surgery, shouldn’t he be resting anyway….ZOMG!!!!!!!!!!