WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE????

I told you I can now be found at www.blogbyfattom.com.  If you hurry, you can still be the first to actually SUBSCRIBE to my blog.

Important Announcement….drum roll please!

Okay gang,  I know some of you have asked for an update on our situation.  Where are we going to live? Texas? California?  Some place entirely different? What will Tom do for work?  Stay in the mortgage industry? Become a model for “Big and not so Tall’s” permanent sweater collection? Will he ever write a funny post on this blog?  Well our prayers have been answered.  Here are the answers to all of your questions….wait…If I just tell you, that’s too easy.  Okay, if you want to know any of those answers, you’ll have to go to www.blogbyfattom.com

Yes…I’m serious…what are you waiting for???  Think of it like an early Christmas treasure hunt (just don’t plan on finding any treasure).  If you hurry, you might even be the very first person on my new site!!!!

In loving memory of Chirp (11/24/07-12/06/07)

I’ve been having a dream of my own funeral lately.  Everyone gets a chance to stand up and read their favorite post from my blog.  Quickest funeral ever.

I was probed by Aliens again!!!!

Okay, I might not have a job, but I’ve got a big head.  It turns out a couple of people actually do read this thing.  I was telling my wife, “Wow, I got three comments this is the most response I’ve ever had.”  “Well…” my wife said, “…you had something traumatic happen so people are concerned.”  So from now on, all blog entries are going to be extremely over-sensationalized.  Hence, the alien probing.  It didn’t really happen as  I had to draw the line somewhere.  I just told the little guy, “Yeah…I’m very impressed that your finger lights up, but you just keep it to yourself!”

Yesterday after I left my place of employment for the last time, I thought to myself, “What am I going to do tomorrow?”  I’ve been waking up and going to some sort of mortgage job every day for almost 10 years…now what?  Well, now that it as about half way through the day, I have my answer of what people do on their first day of unemployment.    It basically consists of talking to a wise man and sweating with about 50 women in tights.

The wise man is my Pastor,  Dr. Wayne Braudrick.  I’ve been extremely blessed in the sense of having some very, very good Pastor’s in my day.  In my six years of being a Christian, I’ve been Pastored by the best of them.  Some of the men I have had the privilege of seeing and hearing include: Chuck Swindoll, Jack Graham, Rick Warren, Chuck Smith,  Reverend Lovejoy (just seeing if you are paying attention), and Pete and Stuart Briscoe.  ALL of them are extremely gifted at serving the Lord, but Pastor Wayne Braudrick is in a class of his own.  For those of you who haven’t had the privilege of meeting Pastor Wayne of Frisco Bible Church, think of….mmm… maybe Yoda.  Pastor Wayne is probably even wiser than Yoda, but Yoda has more wrinkles and is probably a little taller than Pastor Wayne. 

Pastor Wayne, in his infinite wisdom, said, “Tom, we would be thrilled to have you guys back!  We would kill the fattest calf and welcome you guys back here with open arms.”  Now, I’m not sure why he would threaten my life like that, but sometimes he’s just crazy.  “But…” he continued, “we would be just as thrilled if you went somewhere else that you felt the Lord was leading you.”  As our conversation went on, he hit me with, “How could you best use the gifts God has given you?”  Hmm…very good question Jedi-Master.

When it comes to gifts God has given me, I think I might have been cheated.  I got stuck with the very uncool gift of tongues.  Well…I think I did anyway.  It’s either that or my wife is right and I actually do mumble.  Nahhh…I’m pretty sure my wife can’t be right (not at least that I’m going to admit to publicly anyway).  So…what gifts do I have and how can I use them for God’s glory?  That might be the question of the day for this 1st day of unemployment.

After getting off the phone with Pastor Wayne, my wife and I took our kids to school and then headed to the gym.  I was planning on doing something manly like pumping iron, but my wife asked if I wanted to do “Cardio kickboxing” with her.  So, I got a little aerobic workout in and since it went exactly like something I wrote about in my “book,” I figured I would just reprint it here free of charge.  This was from the chapter, “Buy some tights!”

            This weekend you need to go to an athletic apparel store, and get yourself some sort of leotard (a pink one maybe?).  Now I know some of you haven’t bought tights before, so here is my advice: Make sure the pair you buy accentuates your love handles (maybe neon pink even?).  While you are in there, go ahead and pick up some leg warmers and a headband.  As soon as your outfit is complete, you can start wearing it everywhere.

          Now go to the gym in your new outfit and spend the day scoping out when it is the most crowded.  You want to specifically look for Aerobics classes where it looks like the participants resemble sardines.  When you find one that looks completely packed, go right in (even if they are halfway through the class).  Now as you may or may not know, location is everything in an aerobics class.  Remember that neon pink leotard you just bought?  You want to make sure everyone gets to appreciate not only it, but also the love handles it is accentuating for you.

          For this reason, I usually want to make sure you go right to the front of the class.  You either want to start a new row three feet in front of the instructor or just go directly next to her.  Since she is facing the class, you probably should also.  Now that you are up there, start dancing your butt off!  The rest of the class has probably already been there before and they’ve got to practice being in sync.  Ignore them.  Show them your flashdance impression.  Let the music move you!  In fact, it probably isn’t a bad idea to sing loudly, “I’m a maniac, Maniac dancing on the floor.  And I’m dancin’ like I never have before!”          The rest of the class is going to be moving right, moving left, frontwards, backwards, making circles with their arms, and kicking their legs.  They are all going to basically be moving together.  This is good so that they don’t get in your way.  While they are making circles with their arms, you’ve become a fighter plane.  Stick your arms out to your sides and run up and down their rows making jet noises.  Feel free to weave in and out of the rest of the group and verbally “shoot down” anyone that gets in your way. 

          When they start kicking their legs, you start kicking your legs.  You’ve seen the Rockettes right?  Do a couple of their high kicks (feel free to lean on your aerobics instructor for support).  After a few of these, go ahead and let the class do their little kicks.  You should move right into a full-fledged karate routine.  Now as you kick and karate chop, don’t forget your loud, “HIIII-YAAA!” That’s it.  You’re done.  You’ve just completed your first aerobics class.  Bow to your instructor and then bow to the class.  You technically don’t have to bow to the big dumbell that is escorting you out of your first aerobics class, but you might want to remind him to get his hands off your leotard. 

Okay…now that we know what my talents aren’t (writing), I better go do something productive from my wife’s honey-do list that has been piling up for the past 9 1/2 years. 

The Wisdom of Fat Pat

If this post was a Quentin Tarantino movie, I’m sure it would start out with me cowering in my Mom and Dad’s shower.  As the camera pans out, you would realize that not only am I not alone, but I am also fully clothed.  In fact, I am more than fully clothed.  The seat of my sweatpants is stuffed with toilet paper, pillows, and a hard back book.  Three of my brothers are with me and we are trying to jockey for the coveted position of furthest back in the corner of the shower while making sure we didn’t lose any of the padding in our pants.  You see, Dad was home and we knew what was coming.

6 hours prior to Dad getting home:The four of us kids (I was probably about 8 at the time so my brothers would have been 6, 10, and 12) were at a friends house down the street where we found a fun way to spend a summer day.  It basically consisted of calling our house every five minutes or so and when my brother Pat answered the phone, we would say, “Fat Pat, fat Pat, fatty fat fat Pat” and then hang up.  This went on for about an hour or so before Pat became wise to our little game, and stopped answering the phone.  Hmmm…now what?  It looked like we had to take the action to him.

4 hours prior to Dad getting home: We were now riding our bikes in front of our house singing at the top of our lungs, “Fat Pat, fat Pat, fatty fat, fat Pat” (it really did have a good ring to it). We were yelling it as loud as we could with no reaction from our brother, or at least so we thought.  Out of nowhere, he came flying out the door.  He had fire coming out of his eyes and was going to physically destroy any brother that he caught.  For a heavy kid, he was pretty fast but out of sheer terror we peddaled as fast as our little legs would allow and all luckily escaped. 

2 hours before Dad got home (which meant exactly 2 hours and 30 seconds before Dad took off his belt): We were at the park regrouping.  We already went back to our friends house and grabbed whatever items we could stuff our pants with.  Come to think of it, they weren’t even our pants.  Luckily, our friend knew we were in for a serious beating and was nice enough to loan us pants to stuff.  We grabbed whatever we could and headed to the park.  Once we were there, we discussed our options:  We could run away from our house forever. We thought maybe we could just go live at the local arcade, but then remembered we were a poor family and living at an arcade while not having any money would be torture.   We opted for a less wise idea.

10 minutes before Dad got home: We went home.  Pat was gone and our thought was that if we could get our spanking from Mom, it wouldn’t hurt as much and we could fake up enough tears so Dad would think we had already learned our lesson.  One mistake: I forgot to take the hardback book out of my pants before my Mom spanked me.  That was one spanking that really did hurt Mom more than it hurt me, and somehow I was in even more hot water than ever.  It was time to go hide in the shower.

Well since this isn’t a Quentin Tarantino movie, you’ll never know that long Summer day ended. The point of this was to share the wisdom of my brother Pat (he dropped the “Fat” part and now just goes by Pat).  Pat has always been wise.  He is one of those Christians that actually does a pretty good job of walking the walk.  He and his wife played a big part in me becoming a believer.  They saw me leading the downhill slalom race to “H E double hockey sticks.”  They could have shunned me as the sinner I was and went happily about their Christian lives.  Instead they invited me to Church.  Not once, but several times.  If their wasn’t something different about how they were living their lives, I would have never even accepted their invitations to what I thought was their “hokie Church,” but there was something different.  So I checked it out. 

Pat is a better fishermen than me.  Not fishing as in the local lake fishing (heck…he is pretty girly when it comes to this kind of fishing…he won’t even put his own worm on the hook), but fishing as Jesus said to Peter and Andrew, “Follow me, and I’ll make you fishers of men.”  Pat is wise here in that he knows his limitations: He is Pat and God is God.  He doesn’t confuse the two.  Me, I’m proned to confuse the two.  If this was still a fishing analogy, you could say that I usually eat the bait and then stick the hook in the fish’s eye.  God wants to use me, but he doesn’t need to use me. God is God, and Fat Tom is Fat Tom.

So, in his good fisherman way, Pat shared some more wisdom with me yesterday.  “You know” he said, “maybe you shouldn’t do your blog everyday.”  What? He, along with my brother Tim, was probably my biggest promoter.  Oh…I got it…now he was getting jealous.  I mean, on a really good day my audience had gotten up to about 5 people, and old Pat was getting jealous. “Wise?” Ha!  He’s no hoot owl!   Well, that was just fine with me, I never really liked the guy anyway (did I tell you he won’t even put his own worm on his hook?).

Well, after sleeping on it, I think I might be getting what Pat was trying to tell me.  Remember my priorities.  God first, Family second, blog third.  Pat probably knows that as I type this, my one year old is trying to swim in our toilet.  There’s nothing wrong with me trying to blog (I’m sure there is plenty wrong with the actual blog), but if it comes at the expense of one of the higher priorities, then I’m no longer glorifying God. So..and please hold your applause here…you might be seeing less of your Fat Blogger buddy, but just know that when you least expect it, I’ll be posting another blog entry (and that one might even be good!).