No Idea What I'm Doing by Clint Edwards

Okay guys, wow! After 3 days of recording I finished the audiobook for my new collection of essays Breaking Dad. Yes, it’s cool to record your own audiobook. Yes, it was fun to do so with RandomHouse. They gave me an audiobook director who was in LA and a recording engineer in Eugene. I felt kinda like a big deal.

This picture of Mel graduating from college came up on my memories the other day. That’s our daughter, Norah, helping Mel get her cap on straight. She must have been 6 years old. She’s 13 now, and it’s really incredible to think about what was behind this picture.

So I’m in the studio recording the audiobook for my new collection of essays Breaking Dad. I have to admit, recording an audiobook is exhausting. Yesterday was 7 hours of reading aloud, with an audiobook director and a sound engineer stopping me every couple paragraphs to say something like “is that how you pronounce ‘opossum’?” I argued.

I put the final touches on the audiobook recording of my forthcoming collection of essays Breaking Dad yesterday. As we were doing the final pickups (essentially edits for audiobooks) and I was looking at a collection of words that I’d mispronounced, all I could think about was how, in elementary school, I had a speech impediment.

I posted awhile back about moving in with my grandmother as a teen. I mentioned how I was a bit of a rough teenager, particularly when my dad was in jail. A woman left a comment that really gave me pause. She mentioned she’d been a high school counselor for years, and that she’s come to realize that the teen years are just a glimpse into a very long life. And it got me to thinking about how much I personally changed between my freshman and senior year.

I took my girls to the park yesterday evening and Aspen, my 7yo was stung by a wasp. Now to put this into perspective, Aspen is absolutely terrified of all things with stingers, but has never actually been stung, so to say she was freaking out because it had finally happened, was an understatement.

I was walking through the Seattle Airport with my 13yo daughter. We were between flights, stretching our legs, her arm around mine. It was just the two of us, and somehow we got into the topic of my wife and I, and our marriage, and how much Mel and I have changed over the nearly 18 years we’ve been together. “I’ll tell you this,” I said.

This is a Polaroid of Mel from 2003, when we first met. Mel found it while cleaning the garage. We were 21 and and working at a hardware store. This picture hung on the “Get To Know Your Coworkers” board. I stole it the day she quit. It was around this time that I told Mel I wanted to go to college, but I didn’t know how to type, and I’d never read a novel, and I barely graduated high school, and I honestly didn’t know where to start. She didn’t run away.

My new book Breaking Dad hits bookstores in 3 weeks! It’s a hilarious read, particularly for dads raising teens and tweens. Here is a short excerpt. Buy it for the dad in your life this holiday season. Available on paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

Mel and I got dressed up for my work Christmas party. I was in a suit, and Mel was in a stunning green dress.