olutfey – Page 44 – Lutfey.com

Hello, and welcome to my 2009 Christmas Letter. For anyone reading this in the future (from when I wrote this), I’ll provide some historical context to help fully appreciate this letter. For anyone reading this while I’m writing this, please stop spying on me. I know how the industry works– radio transmitters in dental cavities, spy satellites tracking my movements from overhead in real time, and, of course, who can forget all the supposedly “free” rectal exams that are only a cover for placing global positioning devices. However, if you are still going to spy on me– even after I very kindly and clearly asked you not to– please feel free to correct any grammatical errors as I’m writing.

Now where was I? Oh, yeah, historical context. It being 2009, the hit movie of this Christmas season is the CGI filled mega-disaster “2012.” The reasoning behind this is obviously is that if the world does end in 2012 as the ancient Mayans predicted, the ticket sales for the film would really be in the crapper along with the rest of humanity if the film were to be released in 2012. The only way to prevent a grisley death would be to follow John Cusack around, since he seems to be the only one with the ability to escape the upcoming doom.

In television news, the most hyped show is the remake of the 1980’s sci-fi show “V.” The original show centered around alien “Visitors” who came to the planet with unclear motives. In a creative writing masterpiece, this time around the Visitors have acquired DNA from our 43rd President and created an army of clones to destroy our civilization. Stay tuned in early 2010 for the exciting first season finale of “W.”

OK, so back to my world. This year has been one of the most eventful times in my life. Katherine and I decided we were both ready to get married and start a family. It turns out that one of those two items requires a lot less effort than the other. (But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself for those who prefer the traditional “chronological” order of storytelling.)

After reviewing our wedding location options, we decided to get married on June 20, 2009. Most of the preparations were quite straight foward. Katherine ordered a dress and I found a nice three piece suit. I’m not sure if I ever documented this, but one of my informal “goals” in my life was to never own a suit. I made it 34 years, but I decided that I would rather buy a suit than rent another tuxedo. And who knows, maybe someday I’ll be a bigwig at UPS and need something other than company issued apperal to go to work each day. Stranger things have happened.

Next on the wedding list was to get rings. I kept my father’s wedding ring in a safety deposit box for the past ten years, and I decided to have the diamond put into a new setting for Katherine. She really likes sparkly things. That, and she found it all romantic and shit. I had my dad’s gold band resized to fit my ring finger.

We had a bunch of flowers at the wedding, but I don’t have any recollection of consulting a florist. Either the experience was so incredibly horrible that I’ve completely repressed the memories in the deepest recesses of my brain or Katherine took care of it all without me.

The best pre-wedding planning experience by far was choosing a wedding cake. In fact, I would recommend to anyone who likes cake to go to a bakery that specializes in wedding cakes and pretend you are getting married. They bring you samples of all their different cakes for you to try. Just eat all the samples and tell them you will be making your decision shortly. Just remember not to go back to the same bakery more than once every few months unless you are committed to creating elaborate disguises and fake personal histories.

Before I knew it, the big moment was upon us. And by that I mean Katherine handed me a home pregnancy test that came back positive. (See, I told you I would get back to this.) These devices have come a long way in recent years– instead of a simple plus or minus, a small computer inside the handle proclaimed, using the man’s voice from AOL mail, “You’ve got a baby-mama.”

The wedding itself went off without any major problems. One of my favorite parts of the evening was the unusual table number scheme we used. It caused a lot of confusion, which is exactly what we wanted. The other highlight was getting to use the microphone during the reception. My friend Brian wanted to hear a song, so I sung the first tune that came to my mind– the “free credit report” pirate song. It went over quite well with everyone that night– my only regret was not getting it on video.

We spent one weekend in November attending a birthing class. In retrospect, I think I didn’t go into the class with the best attitude. I told Katherine that my role in the birthing process was analogous to a father crawling inside the lower cabinets on his back to fix a leaking kitchen sink when the young son comes by and asks the father how he can help. The father looks around and hands the boy a wrench to hold while the dad finishes the job. When the baby gets here my job is to stay out of the way of all the hospital employees and hold any random object that are handed to me. That, and not pass out.

December rolled around and our baby preparations kicked into high gear. Originally Katherine was due December 5th, but after the second ultrasound that date was pushed back to December 15th. Isabel Lutfey finally arrived the night of December 23 after she was forced out of her mama-Jacuzzi by the modern marvel known as a C-section. The delivery took place at the Medical Center of the Rockies, and the experience was made as pleasant as possible considering what had to be done. The staff in the delivery wing catered to our every need, and they even play “Brahms’s Lullaby” over the public address system when a baby is born. When someone dies, they play an entire CD of William Shatner’s spoken poetry. That was, at least, until it caused an unfortunate cascade effect of wildly premature deaths throughout the building.

We spent Christmas in the hospital and finally came home on December 26. The dog went crazy when we first arrived with our latest addition to the family, but after a few minutes he calmed down after realizing that Isabel isn’t food or toys. I suspect he plans on hovering around her innocently until she is old enough to start dropping food on to the floor. So all in all it has been quite a busy year. I suspect that this latest addition will keep my quite busy, but I am excited to learn how to be a dad.

I thought I would end this year’s letter with a quote from the best 80’s B-movie I watched this year, “Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death.”

Jim (played by a young and, oddly enough, funny Bill Mahr): Bunny, don’t worry! You’ll save me!

The days are getting shorter, the kiddos are getting taller, and I finally found a few minutes to stop all of my other important business to get around to writing my Christmas Letter for the year.

Speaking of the days getting shorter, one of my new ideas is to get the whole country to stay on daylight savings time all year round. Being a package car driver at United Parcel Service I start driving at 8:30 in the morning. In the winter time during standard time the sun starts to rise around 7:30 and sets at 4:30. During the busy Christmas season this means I deliver packages for several hours in the dark. If we stayed on daylight savings time, I would be able to start working right when it gets light and be out in the dark an hour less each night. So I’m starting a word of mouth campaign to get this changed. If that doesn’t work out I’m going to try and get transferred to a UPS center in Australia where they get the benefit of having their longest days of the year coincide with their busy holiday shopping season. I’m not sure what my wife and kids would think of that, but now that I think of it Isabel has a severe Vegemite allergy and Samantha has an unexplained fear of marsupials. And Katherine’s Australian accent is just horrible.

If I was going to describe my two children in just one word, it would be “growing.” But I don’t see the point in being so terse, so I will elaborate. Isabel is turning three years old two days before Christmas. Fortunately she isn’t quite old enough to realize the negative consequences of having her birthday so close to Christmas. Read my 2016 Christmas Letter for more information on that topic. Also, any potential parents should take this into consideration when getting busy in February. Some of Isabel’s favorite activities are quite typical for a girl her age and include suddenly laying down in the middle of the aisle at Walmart for no apparent reason, insisting on playing on all the playground equipment within sight, and asking why the car is stopped at every red light.

Samantha is 17 months behind her sister and is just chugging right along. Her favorite activities include going around on the Sit and Spin until I get dizzy just watching her. Then she goes the other direction to unwind. Then, usually, she falls over sideways and starts laughing. Her second favorite activity is waiting until we aren’t watching her for more than five seconds, walking into the kitchen, quietly opening up the dishwasher, and sitting on the front edge of the dishwasher door. I’ve never designed a dishwasher, but I’m pretty sure they aren’t designed for those types of weight distributions. Check my 2013 Christmas letter to see if it includes any kitchen appliance repair. She also has taken a liking to anything her older sister is doing at the moment.

This summer the whole family competed in the annual kinetics race in Longmont. We were called “The Busy Bees” and I was the queen bee. Just about everyone at the race was both mildly intrigued and slightly disturbed by my outfit that included a tiara, yellow wig, black lipstick, a tight yellow tank top, black bra, a black and yellow tutu, black fishnet stockings, and black boots with yellow laces. My wife and kids’ outfits were more gender appropriate and received much more positive feedback.

Once the race started my craft went about ten feet into the water at which point something happened that could best be described as “sudden massive critical widespread structural failures.” So despite our great costumes our team came in, rounded to the nearest integer, last place. Some people may view this as a failure, but I had a great time. And the crowd loves seeing someone crash and burn more than the same teams that have great crafts that finish in first place year after year. Anyone who has spent their childhood playing countless hours of the board game “Risk” knows what I’m talking about. If everyone plays conservatively and just builds up their armies the game isn’t going to be any fun and the game is going to last for eleven hours instead of the usual five. I’m the one who commits all of his forces to invading Russia on my third turn. I know it isn’t the best strategy for winning the game. Sure, that short bald guy from “The Princess Bride” will be best known for saying, “Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders – The most famous of which is ‘never get involved in a land war in Asia’”, but in the case of Kinetics having the most radical and untested device makes for the most entertaining race.

So I had a few extra minutes to contemplate the meaning of life the other day when I was taking a break at work. The weather was pleasant and I had a picturesque view of the Rocky Mountains while I sat in the driver’s seat and ate my lunch. I came to the conclusion that everything we do, in some way or other, serves two goals of humanity. The first is to use supercomputers to completely understand how we are built to reverse engineer every species on the planet and use this information to make new things like women who can fly like birds and men who can lick their parts like a dog. The second is to take all the molecules on the planet and rearrange them into a completely self contained spaceship to depart the vicinity before the sun runs out of fuel, collapses on itself, and explodes into half the size of the solar system. Please refer to my 2074 Christmas Letter to see if the first goal has been realized. Once we find a cure for cancer we will be halfway there. I suspect the second goal might be considered more “long term” given the estimate that we have a few billion years before that whole “sun” thing becomes a pressing issue. I hope this document will be around long enough so that scholars in the future can look through all the historical documents and say, “boy, that Omar guy really knew how things were going to play out.”

So that about finishes things up around here. I’ve made it through another year, which was one of my goals. My goal of creating a tuba/baritone/trumpet comedy street performing troupe has been put on hold and my “Latin for Dummies” book has collected another year’s worth of dust. And maybe next year I’ll get around to purchasing the newly released Lego “Firefly/Serenity” set before uptight conservative groups get it pulled from the shelves just because one of the characters is a licensed companion (future speak for “prostitute”). But don’t forget to refer to my 2013 Christmas Letter for documentation of my near future accomplishments. I’ll end things here with one of many great lines from the movie “Serenity.”

Inara Serra: Mal, what are you doing here?
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: You invited me.
Inara Serra: I never thought for a second you’d be stupid enough to come!
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: Well that makes you a tease.

Author: olutfey