Snipped

My throne.

Just an update for all of you out there in Cyberspace:

Yours Truly can no longer produce human beings.

Yes, the fuses have been severed and no longer will the cannons be firing with live ammunition.  Blanks from here on out, folks.  Thank you, Jebus.

Okay, so here's a quick recap. . .  

Tools of the trade.

My appointment with the urologist had initially been scheduled for 11 am yesterday, but was pushed back to 2 pm due to some pressing emergency of his.  Despite my curiosity, I didn't ask the surgeon what could have been more important than my ball sack; honestly, just so long as he wasn't preoccupied with anything while wielding that scalpel of his, I was cool.  

I couldn't drive a car after the surgery, so Kris had to take the morning off of work in order to drive me down to the clinic.  She planned on just dropping me off so that she could get some Christmas shopping done in the area, as we had initially been told the procedure would take about an hour.  Unfortunately for her, it took about thirty minutes.

Seriously.

After the urologist pumped both sides of the sack with goof juice, he made a few cuts with the scalpel, pulled out the whatever-it-is (let's just go with 'fuse'), cut it, and then pulled out some kind of torch to cauterize each end.

F.Y.I. - no matter how calm a person you may be, there's something unnerving about looking down and seeing smoke rising from your genitals.

He had to repeat the process on each side of the sack, and then it was just a matter of sewing it up with some sutures and calling it a day.  There was practically no pain involved whatsoever during the surgery itself, but afterwards it felt like I had my nuts in a vice. When I got back to the house I crawled into bed, took some ibuprofen, and iced the hell out of the region.

Then, when Kris went back to work, I fired up the ol' Wii U, cracked open an imperial stout,  and burned away the rest of the afternoon and evening.

Bitchin' care package, courtesy of Mom.

When beer doesn't quite take the edge off the throbbing in one's balls, this'll do the trick just fine. . .

And that, dear readers, is how Yours Truly rid himself of his God-given ability to create life.

If anyone needs me, I'll be here in bed - drinking bourbon, icing my balls, and saving Hyrule.

- Brian

Walkin' the Green Mile

For those of you who keep tabs on our family, you may remember me mentioning before how Kris and I had determined to terminate my ability to procreate the species.  It was a long time coming, but with my current health insurance kicking ass the way it does, we decided to pull the trigger and get the procedure over and done with.

I go in tomorrow morning for what I'm sure will be a relatively lackluster affair, and honestly I'll be surprised if the whole procedure lasts longer than an hour.  No, what I'm far more concerned with is the aftermath of having my balls sliced open.

Three days of bed rest.

This is both a curse and a blessing.  On one hand, I've been given strict orders by the medical powers that be to stay off my feet until Monday.  I've been given prescriptions for Amoxicillin and Vicodin, and instructions to apply (ice twenty minutes on and twenty minutes off) for the next three days, not lift anything heavy, keep kids and pets off my lap, and not get up unless I absolutely have to use the bathroom.

While this sounds like a complete and utter Borefest, rest assured Yours Truly has taken several precautions to combat boredom at every turn.  I took down one of the bookcases from my Study and transformed it into a video game command center:

Booya.

As you can see from the above picture, I brought in the Wii U console and a few videogames from the living room, along with their respective players guides and some other controllers and accessories needed to play certain games.  The charging dock for the Wii U Gamepad is conveniently nearby, as is a charging station for most of my other gadgets.  Along the bottom shelf are two black, leather cases (you can barely see them) of DVDs and computer games, as well as some Rolling Stone and National Geographic magazines, and, of course, my Kindle.

One of my favorites.  Fully stocked.

My trusty, ol' MacBook Pro and random external hard drives are on hand, too - as I'll have plenty of time to work on my iTunes and iPhoto libraries, I'm sure. And there's probably a shitload of crap for work I should probably work on, too.

(But, then again. . . probably not.)

In the background to the left, you can see the black, mini-fridge I brought in from work (as I can't be walking to the kitchen whenever I want.)  That baby's filled with water, snacks, and - of course - tons of craft beer.

So, when all's said and done, I'm going to be charging down one hell of a gauntlet over the next three days, but I'll be damned if I get bored for one, single second of it.

Anyway, sack-slicing and bed-boredom aside, I had to take today off of work.  Yesterday, about half way through the work day I developed a severe headache and what felt like the oncoming wave of a fever.  That lasted throughout the rest of the evening and into this morning, but by early afternoon I was feeling better.  When I picked the kids up from school we decided to throw up a small Christmas tree I recently bought for the girls' playroom.

'Cause we can.

And so, I'll leave you with some pictures of that whole process.

Enjoy.

I had to split up the ornament sets into identical bowls because both girls wanted the pink/purple/silver balls instead of the red/burgundy/gold ones.  Of course.

I recently bought a 50mm lens for our SLR and took it for a test drive with these shots. . . but with the blinds drawn (so the kids could see the Christmas lights), the lighting (or lack thereof) made everything pretty granulated.

Striking a pose with the final product. . .

Alayna channels her inner Black Power, while Abby inexplicably smells the fake Christmas tree.

- Brian

Going Out of Business

Offer good while supplies last.

Okay, ladies.

If anyone out there is interested in owning their very own Mini Brian, this may be your last chance.  Consider it a Clearance Sale (one that may or may not be approved by the Mrs. - I can see where she might get upset) - I'm getting rid of my inventory and after that won't be restocking my stores, so to speak.

I'm officially going out of business November 21st.

I'm getting snipped.

Yes, it's truly an end of an era - one that started in puberty and netted me two blonde, high-maintenance (and expensive) tax-deductions.  And two, dear readers, is where I draw the line.   I don't want any more Goddamn kids.  Don't get me wrong, here - I love my kids and everything (no need to call the CPS), but I really don't want to go through the whole process of raising a baby again.

They're cute to hold for a few minutes, but after that you're constantly washing out breast milk stench from over-priced bottles (that fill entire dishwashing loads, preventing you from actually doing any dishes), changing diapers, dealing with fevers and rashes, bleaching toys ('cause everything goes in the mouth), and - my personal favorite - never sleeping.

Thanks, but no thanks.  Went through it twice, not again.

No, Kris and I have spoken about this continuously over the course of the last two years or so, and we decided that while my current insurance is awesome with this, we might as well take care of it.  I guess I can't be surprised that the overall price tag for this surgery is insanely low - $35 - after all, by destroying my ability to make more human beings, I'm saving them a lot of headaches and dollar signs down the road.  It makes good business since to cut me a ridiculously huge discount.

The specialist's office is in Kissimmee, surrounded by jungle.

I know general practitioners are fully capable of performing vasectomies, but I wanted to go to a specialist.  Seriously - if you were in the middle of a storm at sea, who would you rather have at the helm - a casual yachter who owns a boat and has previous experience taking his boat out in bad weather, or a crusty, old sea rover who's actually bored steering his vessel through thirty-foot tall waves?

Give me Ol' Salty any day of the week.

I had an appointment this afternoon with the guy that's going to be slicing up my balls - really nice guy who's been doing it for over 30 years and hasn't had a serious issue in all the years he's been doing it.  I had to take a half-day, which I wasn't fond of doing so early in the school year, but they require anyone going in for the surgery to have a consultation with the specialist first.

My future throne (I didn't get to break in the stirrups today.)

And to further inconvenience all those wishing to eliminate their ability to procreate the species, they require the spouse to accompany the would-be patient.  So Kris had to take a half-day too.

Anyway, the consultation wasn't much more than a "are you both sure you really want to do this?" speech, followed by a walk-through of the procedure (which I'll tell you about later - maybe after my balls have gone under the knife.)  He did ask that I drop my pants so he could feel around down there.

No matter how many times a doctor's done the ol' grope-and-feel in the past, that shit never fails to creep me out.

Let's do this.

So there you have it.  In less than two months - kicking off my Thanksgiving vacation, in fact - I'll be sterile.  Am I nervous about it?  Nope.  Second thoughts or lingering fancies of maybe someday raising more offspring?  Hell nope.

I'm looking forward to this, if only 'cause I've now got a prescription for Vicodin and orders to remain on Bed Rest for three days.

Wii U, Netflix, beer, and pajamas, anyone?

- Brian