Game of Farts

11 July 2013

684

R. Linda:

Okay so I found out one thing about you that I did not know and that is YOU CHEAT! Last night it was rainy, foggy and felt like the Amazon rain forest muggy. There was nothing on the telly but Big Brother and you don't like Big Brother, so you convinced me to leave Tonya to all the "immature egos" on the boob tube, and go to the computer and play an online game of Packman gets eaten by fart clouds. I was like REALLY? You insisted and me being the awesome host I am, agreed, "ONE GAME," I said.

So you got your laptop and I got the old PC reviving and of course, you were sitting there swinging your short legs that didn't reach the floor and sighing, as you waited for me dino-puter to get the screen on, and then for me to punch in the online gaming place, and then to go down the list to find the proggie, and finally for it to upload to me machine. I know, I know, I be a "pain in the butt" with the old machine, but I couldn't very well use me work laptop.

Finally, I click on the downloaded proggie (that I can't seem to delete now) and slowly it loads up and I be fit to go. I said to you, "Don't niggle I be almost there." And since then "niggle" has become your favourite word to bust me chops with. Oi!

So you explain I have one "fart master" who is a brown packman-like cartoon and three smaller green ones that vomit. Nice. So the object of the game is for me green men to bite or more correctly vomit at the heels of the colourful "normal" packman-like figures and each one is a colour where if me green guys can get them over to where the fart master lives in a trash bin on MY side of the screen he can fart at them and they change into little green vomit machines, that I then control to go after more of your guys. If I get a red guy, I score 100 points, a blue one 50, and a yellow one 10, and a pink one 5, and there are four of each. Same for you. The object is to have more green guys so you can obliterate your opponent.

I thought the remark about the immature people in the Big Brother house sort of applied to the two immature people sitting at computer screens ready to use packmen-like cartoons to fart each other into oblivion. Oi!

So we start this crazy game, and it actually isn't easy. There are these things that happen that they don't tell you about. If you knock over an oil bin that just happens to be sitting in the middle of the screen, your cursor gets slippery and it makes it harder to control any of your guys on the screen! Then, if you hit the fence and the cat drops on one of your green guys it stays on him for 5 minutes rendering him immovable BECAUSE the green guys are petrified of CATS. Who knew? And a few other things I don't feel comfortable mentioning.

Anyway, it took an hour for one game and of course, you won, because you had played it before and were on the expert level. SIGH. I am still a neophyte level and will probably always be neophyte level because I don't plan on playing this game again, THOUGH I cannot eradicate it from me machine. Add to this, the kiddos have found it! Yes, they have and what they like best are all the fart sounds. The fart masters constantly fart while the other cartoon guys are running around trying to avoid or bite each other making scared sounds, and when one of them is thrown IN the trash bin there is a long drawn-out fart and THIS me kiddos think is "awesome wicked cool!" When they say red guy comes out of the bin he shrinks to green and looks polluted for a minute before he becomes viable and you can send him after your opponent's guys as he makes barfing sounds. Pleasant, right.

When Big Brother was over Tonya came upstairs to the loft to find out if we needed some Beano to help our digestion after a meal of fish tacos, refried beans and Mexican rice. Yee-ah. I was embarrassed for her to see what we were doing. She looked amused and horrified at the same time but said nothing and left us with the bottle of Beano on the desk.

We played the fart game (as I have come to call it) until 4 a.m. I know I should be ashamed of meself, but it was addictive. After a while, I was getting the hang of it and each time I was just two guys off of winning, yourself would throw a fart cloud at me guys and well . . . it didn't take long to finish me last guy off. It took me fifty minutes to figure out you were cheating. You knew how to manipulate that game to where I was left in a brown haze while you were laughing and having an "awesome wicked cool time!" Oi! I just couldn't believe it took me so long to figure out why I couldn't make any gains. You'd allow me to get most of your guys off the screen just to toy with me, then wham, you'd swoop in and I was done, done, done! Cheater, cheater, cheater!

So for you to remember the fun, here be a photo courtesy Tonya.

You and me - fun times!

Gabe

Copyright © 2013 All rights reserved

Taking down the tree

10 January 2011

352

R. Linda:

Ok so here we go, it be the little things that drive me up a pole. And I felt a need to share me nervous apprehension with you, as I slowly become an emotional wreck along with me wife. Yes, the two of us sit with a palsy of head shaking, hands quivering as we pick up the hundredth cuppa tea. Our eyes have ticks to them as we try to process conversation at the dinner table, and our bodies twitch when we hear our names called.

I have been trying to make me parents last week staying with us a pleasant one. I've bent over backwards to make their stay fun and to send them home having had a truly wonderful stay. Yup. But little things interfered with me efforts. Like the weather. Looks like Mam and Da may be here an additional week because the weather in Eire is terrible. Seems they are getting hit with mega storm number 2 of the new year not to mention it would be storm number 7 if we took into account the end of last year which wasn't that very long ago.

I be near a crazy person from being housebound with two old people, two small "chillins" as a co-worker from New Orleans refers to me kidlets, and a crabby wife who just wants her house and privacy back. YUP. I've been the glue holding this mess together. I know I make no sense, but that's part of me job description, making no sense and holding things together even if I look the fool doing it.

So here goes, quick images in words of the crazy stuff happening around here.

Me Mam: "Gabriel dear, are we watching the Rasil Bathbone movie of Shylock tonight?"

I had to stand there in a "deep think" (an O'Hare observation) of what on earth she was asking me. Then I realised she meant Basil Rathbone and Sherlock Holmes movies.

Me Mam: "Can we stop at Barnes and Nobles do you think? And, if we pass Wal-Marts can we stop there?"

Yup pluralise everything! And now she's got me doing it. I dunnos.

Me wife: "YOU didn't really buy that did you?"

This referring to me buying a copy of the Ninja Turtle movie. Yes, I have a copy. Shut up.

Me Da to O'Hare who has discovered me father carries a pocket full of coins. "I feel an outrageous petty cash request coming me way, I do." Jingle, jingle of the pocket, outstretched small hand, coins being counted out, hand closing and little feet running for the piggy bank. Child should be worth more than me by the time the sainted parental units board Aer Lingus home.

And then a quick trip to the doctor because a penny was missing. Yup you probably guessed it, Guido thought it looked tasty lying there on the floor and before anyone could stop him, Bob's your uncle, and trip to doctor to be told watch his nappies because it will appear. And it did!

But the most nerve-wracking event was our taking down the Christmas tree. Me Mam and me wife had several heated words over how to store ornaments properly. Since when was this process such an outlandingly hard task? I had to go to Wal-marts and get a special plastic container for all the ornaments. I braved the cold and the wind to do this and was told I needed to go back for another one because, "Really Gabriel, one be not enough!" OK Mam. Off I went again and got the very last one, so this container business must be popular. I never thought we'd have to box the boxed ornaments in another box, but yes we did!

So there I was in the middle of the lounge with these big plastic containers. I was ordered to go get all the ornament boxes I had lugged down from the attic, then emptied, put back up, now down once more before I lugged them back up again, only this time in containers. Oi! Was it me or was the containers full of ornaments in boxes a heavier trip up to the attic? Oh yes it was! Thanks Mam.

What used to take a good afternoon to de-decorate a tree, took us an entire week and why? Because me Mam was sitting with her cuppa directing the de-decorating action from her comfy chair. A few ornaments met their end they did, when I mistakenly put them in the wrong box and when told about it and trying to fix the mistake, I inadvertently dropped them from sheer nerves alone, and then it was "Guido! Clean up on aisle 2 this time!"

Not to worry I did not have the baby cleaning up glass. I did it, but he sat on Grannie's lap watching to make sure I did it right, with one finger up his nose and the other pointing at the shiny broken babbles on the wood floor, to make sure I got up every last piece.

"I didn't realise ye filled in the bare places on that tree with ornaments," me Mam commented. Well, duh, there are always bare spots, and usually I turn the tree around so you don't see them, but this year General Mam had told me to "stop twirlin' da tree dere Gabriel, you'll have the needles all over da floor." Um hum, so yeah right you are mam, there are bare spots in front, which I cleverly filled with ornaments to hide the fact. Sigh.

Finally, I had the ornaments off. Did I mention I was the only one participating in this process? Yeah, everyone else was absent (meaning wife Tonya) and the wee ones weren't allowed for obvious reasons. That left yours truly naturally. I lugged the containers up to the attic and had a devil of a time storing them. They were big and cumbersome compared to the little individual ornament boxes I was able to arrange out of the way in the good old days. I was up there for a very long time in the cold, turning blue and cursing a lot. Finally, I got them arranged (not too happy about how), and went down to sit for a while, but NO, that didn't happen.

"Let's get those lights off."

Of course, there she was with the plural "Let's" but she didn't mean her, she meant me. I was tangled in lights by the time I had them off. I was wrapping them around me forearm and elbow when I was told not to do it that way but hold them like a cowboy does a lasso (letting them drape off me hand) and of course this got to be a tangled mess of breaking bulbs and once again brush and dust bin OUT.

Next I was faced with the question, do I take the tree out of the tree stand or do I drag the entire thing out? For me the answer was easy, drag the entire thing out, but no, no, "Gabriel, that be arse backwards it be, just take it outa da stand, dere be no water in it."

I knew there was no water in the stand, we had stopped feeding the tree after New Year's. So that meant the needles were falling off and once I had that sucker on it's side, there would be needles everywhere, just what I was trying to avoid, but hey, this be me Mam directing the process her way, so no arguing, just do it. I cursed, she held hands over Guido's ears like he didn't have a vocabulary worse than mine, and I tried to unscrew those bolts, I hammered on them, I hit them, I kicked them, and after two hours of this, I had an almost needle less tree but I had that sucker off. Instantly, I was made to trudge up to the attic with the stand, when what I started to do was remove the tree, but no, no, stand goes first. Who knew?

Finally the grande finale, what everyone was waiting for, because suddenly everyone appeared to watch me struggle with a very prickly tree. Me Da joined in, he had gloves on, me Mam ran to the kitchen to get me a pair which I thought was strange, we don't keep heavy gloves in the kitchen. She came back with a pair of those surgical gloves, the ones me wife uses when she cuts onions because she doesn't like the smell on her hands. A lot of good THOSE were going to do me. Between us, we dragged the tree to the porch as both women complained we were leaving a trail of needles like we could help that.

Well, Baby Guido has been cleaning up those needles for days now. I will say it occupies him, while the other one is busy robbing me Da blind of change for the hungry piggy in his room. Both Da and me were being asked WHEN we were going to get rid of the tree on the back porch. "It be a fire hazard, Gabriel."

It took Da and me several days to build the energy back up we needed to go lift that tree off the porch, down the stairs and into the woods. But we did it in the middle of a snow storm because we were given not much choice.

There we were out in the cold, the wind blowing the snow in our faces, and in almost white-out conditions we were both trying to find our way to the woods when me wife (having been ordered by me Mam) to record the event for prosperity on film, well not film a cd, stopped us for a "let's record the moment" moment. She'd stop us every three feet for another photo-op snap. Then we'd try to feel our way again before we had to stop for another and another and on it went until both Da and I had no feeling in our feet, hands, and our minds were almost frozen before we told Tonya NO MORE SNAPS!

I could hear me Mam from inside the house as she stood by the kitchen window, the ever present cuppa in her hand, shouting at us she wanted to record the event so she could show her neighbors back home how we did things in New England.

Not exactly warm and fuzzy moments for the three of us out in the snow storm, but to me Mam -- oh yea. Great pictures of two men hauling an almost needless tree into the woods like it was a body we were trying to hide. I couldn't see the romance in any of it.

So here I sit, up in the loft, away from the ritual of drinking tea in the kitchen, and chattering on about whatever takes their fancy. It is quiet up here, free from kidlets, just an occasional dog comes up, plops down and sleeps, something I might try to do and hopefully not be discovered.

Gabe
Copyright © 2011 All rights reserved