I’m currently reading The Five Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman. It’s a fast-reading, insightful book about how to express love to your spouse in a way that they will fully understand and appreciate. An important element in reading it is discovering what your own love language is, and communicating that to your spouse.

So last night I told her. My love language is milkshakes.

The giving of milkshakes, the receiving of milkshakes, or even the loving mention of milkshakes. All of them make me feel a deep, unquenchable love for my wife. It can be a massive, frosty milkshake from Annie’s Pub, or the lowliest unnatural concoction from McDonalds, and it will cause me to weep without shame. Any flavor, too. From hot fudge to rancid beet, a milkshake’s a milkshake as far as I’m concerned.

This book has helped me to understand why Bridgette has seemingly not appreciated the nightly gifts of milkshakes that I offer her. I once tried to romantically pour a milkshake on her pillow to remind her of my love. Believe me, that didn’t end well.

I have also sent Dr. Chapman a milkshake in appreciation for the insight he gave me through his book.

For the past 3 or 4 months, my jaw has really hurt when I wake up in the morning. My suspicions were then realized when Bridgette mentioned to me that I grind my teeth in my sleep.

Sweetness.

This new development is no doubt related to my job-induced stress. While I enjoy my work and find it satisfying, there is certainly a higher degree of stress and responsibility that I must bear. Fortunately, this has caused me to begin the slow, horrible process of grinding my molars down to their roots. There are any number of advantages that this brings about:

-The foul, disquieting sounds of my grinding teeth-bones have informed and directed my wife’s dreams in many troubling ways. Mostly she now dreams about archaeological digs.

-My jaw muscles are being excercized and bulked up. My jawline will soon reach Patrick Swayze-levels of comic masculinity.

-The current shape and contour of my teeth bother me. I want them to be different, and this subconscious dulling process is preferable to the alternative (the hammer and pliers method)

-I always thought it might be cool to expose a bunch of nerves in my mouth and then go to Dairy Queen.

I just went and got the mail. I got two bills and some junk mail! Bridgette got a letter too.

Does that make any of you laugh? Is this a funny post so far? I’ll be honest, I really don’t have any idea what’s funny and what isn’t anymore. I thought I had somewhere to go with this whole “getting the mail” idea, but I guess I was wrong. I probably should have gone with my original concept of vividly describing the act of clubbing a horse to death with a brick.

Perhaps it’s time to give up on this whole comedic blog thing and try something else. I suppose I could run with my original idea of using this website to publicly chart how much water I’m drinking each day. That way other people would know.

I could also shift the John Larroquette Project into the realm of politics. I have important opinions that I think others should read. For instance, I don’t like this Jack Abramoff character one bit! All this corruption in the Beltway makes me sick. Somebody should do something to fix the problems. I also oppose gun violence in schools.

Or maybe I should have written about much wheelchairs bother me…

This morning I discovered, much to my horror, that my wife and I are out of breakfast cereal.

For what seemed like an eternity, my heart raced into a raging panic attack. My pulse quickened, my nostrils flared, and my eyes widened like some Chex-craving Rasputin.

My mind quickly ran down my alternatives. Olives? No, too cold and salty for such an early hour. Cabbage? We don’t have any. Bath soap? Bridgette doesn’t like toothmarks in the soap…

Suddenly, I hit upon the solution. In the back of our pantry was a warped, browned old box of Quaker Instant Oatmeal. That’s it! Flavored oat-pulp! I found a packet labeled “Maple & Brown Sugar”, which looked promising. Indeed, the flavor of the maple tree has long satisfied the tongue-lusts of man and beast alike. Unfortunately, the oat-meal itself was a mite underwhelming. It was dry and rugged, and it made my mouth feel like the old homestead in The Grapes of Wrath.

In hindsight, I probably should have added water and cooked it, rather than just pouring the contents of the packet into my mouth.

I just finished taking a shower. It wasn’t bad, as showers go. A pretty good shower, I’d say.

Now I’m sitting in the living room of my apartment typing on our laptop. I’m wearing a gray sweater. I put lotion on my hands just a moment ago.

Why am I telling you this? Because I can. And because idiots will read it, much like you are reading these words right now. After all, what’s to stop me from listing the inane banalities of my evening? Nothing except my regard for your pleasure, of which I have none.

So here we go. I watched a Civil War documentary on the First Battle of Bull Run, or Manassas for the Confederates out there. I ate a sandwich for dinner. My left eye has been irritated for the past hour or so. And, of course, the aforementioned shower. I don’t know - it’s been a pretty pleasant night, I suppose. Perhaps that comes across in this post, although I couldn’t really care less if it did.

So here you are. Take this post and go home and shut your mouths up and come back tomorrow.

On the news last night they said that this is shaping up to be the warmest January in Minnesota history.

That ain’t right.

It ain’t right that today, January 24th, I am looking svelte and bronzed. It’s the dead of winter in the Northland - I shouldn’t be this lithe and tanned! I swear to you that I’ve never been to a tanning salon, my skin is healthy and glowing from the sheer unnatural warmth of this 2005-2006 winter. It is downright unnatural - nay, demonic that this should be the state of things.

Granted, come June, everybody knows that ol’ Pete’s gonna be sun-drenched and magnificent in his summertime finery. That’s as familiar as apple crisp and dried blood on a baseball glove. But for Ma Nature to be demanding timeless beauty from me during my off-season is something else altogether. Quite frankly, it pisses me off. After all, I get well-compensated by the E! cable network to look as good as I do in the summer. Who’s going to pay me to be gorgeous in January? WGN Chicago?!

I’m going to call my agent to complain about this…