How to Make a 2021

Active Time: 1 Year (May Feel Like 10 years)

Prep Time: A Couple Hours to Write

Servings: A Full Email List (Cut Into Individual Emails)

Ingredients

Spice Warning: This playlist has a couple songs where the language is really really not safe for work or little ears

Directions

Step 1 Celebrate your 50th birthday with your wife Wendy getting an 8 foot cutout cardboard statue of your getting-closer-each-year-to-5-foot self and combine it with a unique pandemic-induced Zoom birthday party filled with games and a song - written about you by your daughter Becca and produced by your son Zack - that talks about how you 'overlaugh' at everything (which you do NOT) and rhymes "it's not that funny" with "the bones are their money" - a reference to one of your favorite "I Think You Should Leave" skits

Step 2 Right before your year starts, find out that you have a stepsister 2-years older than you that your stepmother had when she was 19 and had just reconnected with via a relative finding the stepsister with 23-and-Me

Spend 52 weeks getting to know this stepsister. Marvel at how incredible genetics are when you see the same smile, laugh, sayings, actions, emotions you've seen in your stepmother since you were 9 in an entirely new (and fun) person

Step 3 Take what should be 1 week of upgrading your voiceover studio with soundproofing, new sound treatment, new microphone and extend it 12 weeks with construction delays. Complain a lot to the air a lot, but be happy with the transformation of your "blanket fortress" closet into a legit studio

Step 4 Take this new studio and mix it with a 30 second audition for an online ad for Amazon and AT&T. Watch 15 seconds of it get used (see video illustration). Follow it up by getting a new voiceover agent, Big Fish Talent in Colorado

Step 6 Realize that your wife will not be able to have her 'traveling-the-world' 50th birthday party that she's wanted to do for years. Let her know you will be throwing her a 5 stop, just-in-DC friends 'travel the world' themed party with one catch: she has to wear whatever costume you give her at each stop.

Continue to come up with strange themes like 'Animals in Ireland' (with a friend's daughter lining up stuff animals to make 'Ireland' in their backyard) and 'Grease in Cuba' wearing T-birds and Pink Ladies jackets.
Sprinkle in videos of friends and family who couldn't be there to introduce each stop. Cap it off with video of youngest son Pete attempting to moonwalk to introduce the '80s Pajama Party in the USA'

Step 7 For your wife's birthday gift, create a posse of 6 Steeler fans and 2 fans of a team with a QB-who-must-not be named and road trip to Canton, OH to see her favorite Steeler Troy Polamalu inducted into the football hall of fame.

Step 8 About week after celebrating your oldest son turning 21, get call at midnight the day before Halloween that he is being rushed to the hospital after having too much to drink. Get in car immediately to drive down to his college town and learn on your 2 hour drive that his vitals are ok.

Get to hospital and wait for 6 hours for him to wake up. Once you realize he is going to be ok, laugh at the 'drunk tank' of students strewn across the hospital in costume numbering so many that they just put them all around the nurses station instead of in rooms.
As you leave find out that son's blood alcohol content was .29 and later let him tell you how he's learned that he definitely can't drink vodka as fast as he thought he could

Step 9 Celebrate getting to 50 states in 50 years with your wife's birthday present to you which is planning a trip to your final states of Iowa, Indiana and a culmination event: 19-vaccinated-family-and-friends in a giant house in Maine.

End w/ a story that can only be told in person as those involved don't want it printed but it was SO DAMN FUNNY. (cue your invitation to find time to talk)

This is not the funny story mentioned above but it is true:
If Andy is happy, the state is happy

Step 10 End year saying goodbye to the stepmother you've known nearly your whole life. Have hard time writing too much about her in year-end-recaps but give those that want to know more about her a link to the eulogy you gave here.

Step 11 Swell with pride as your daughter writes, sings and plays instruments and releases her solo album (If You Think This Song Is About You It Probably Is) with your oldest son Zack producing...in addition he made his own song (angel/demon).