10 February 2023
Story #1090
R. Linda:
It has been a frustrating start to the year 2023. Not only have I been a nurse to me wife and her COVID, but I have also been a soccer mom to our kiddos. While the wife was down, I was running up and down the stairs with trays of food to keep her going, I was driving from one end of the kingdom to the other, getting each kiddo to their after-school activity. On top of all this, the Dragon Lady decided to come to help, and as you know, by now, she is no help at all; she is just another person yours truly has to put up with when times are inconvenient.
Starting me off was me middle child Guido and the wrestling team. Yup, the kiddo is a brute of a lad and can take just about anyone down, including me. In one fell swoop, I found meself on the floor in the parlour after batting at his head playfully. He got hold of me midsection, and wham, my big self was on the boards!
He did it playfully but I wasn't expecting a takedown. Sort of embarrassed me to be felled by a 14-year-old. This led to his older brother O'Hare thinking that looked like great fun and that he could do the same to his brother Guido. Well, think again older brother. Now O'Hare is as tall as me and he's 16, but Guido is built like a bull, whereas O'Hare and I are long, tall, skinny guys. It took one second for Guid to turn O'Hare upside down and slam! Yup. So that was two of us looking foolish.
Anyway, Guido takes after your fancy for having different-coloured hair. He's been au naturale for over a year, but decided to go PURPLE! Yes, your favourite hair colour. He came down after school for his ride to a wrestling match. I hardly recognised the laddie. The purple was screaming bright and I'd never seen that shade before, so I was a bit taken aback. He was very proud of it; his visiting girlfriend applied something to his dark locks and voila! She was grinning and looking very proud and yes, he has a girlfriend.
An aside here, all three of me kiddos have girlfriends. O'Hare, the eldest, is with girlfriend number 2, which be a good thing because the first one looked and dressed just like him and I couldn't tell them apart. I know it's crazy for a parent not to be able to tell which child be theirs. The smallest one, the 7-year-old (since pre-school), has been "in love" with Erin, a wisp of a girl, and they have playdates all the time since then, and I will tell you they are inseparable. This bothers me the most, but what can I say? Guido, who be a middle school jock has girls galore and will tell you he's the best-looking guy at school. I don't know who he is sometimes. This last gets his brother O'Hare in fits of ego blasting, but that doesn't phase the middle lad in any way, shape, or form.
So, with me wearing sunglasses to drive to the competition, we get out and make our way into the gymnasium. The first person we met was the coach. The man almost walked by us, not recognising his star athlete. He blinked (probably because of the brightness emanating off Guido's head like a halo) and did a double-take, and then with eyes wide open (I don't know how he did that without going blind), he stopped and said, "Guido? Is that you?"
To which the young hooligan replies, "Yeah, I better be because I'm wearing his underwear."
I tell ya!
I was about to hit the bleachers and watch the matches, when I got a text message from cousin Sean, asking where I be, and I told him, so he said he was down at Dunks not far and would bring me a coffee and join me at the match. Just the person I didn't want to see because, well, because.
About five minutes later, the match started, and in came Sean carrying two cups of joe. One was a large Dunkin's cup, and the other was Starbucks. Hum, I thought, this is new. And if he was at Starbucks, why didn't he get me coffee from there? In the past months, I have discovered that Dunks coffee isn't as tasty as it used to be and I have been favouring Starbucks instead, and Sean knows this.
He, of course, handed off the Dunks to me and took a sip of his Starbucks. I looked at him questioningly like wtf?
"Oh," says he, "Don't let this fool ya. I am not about to spend $7 bucks on Starbucks when I can get it for $5 at Dunks. I saved a Starbucks cup so I empty Dunks in it and everyone has no clue or be the wiser."
I just looked at him. There were no words, but these (said silently in me head), "Sean, you are a cheap son of a b and pretentious to boot, if only you looked the part you arse."
The culmination of my evening was finding the Dragon had arrived at me house and was ensconced in my living room watching the telly and munching on homemade caramel popcorn.
She regaled me how she was glad she didn't come up when it was negative 11. And here I was thinking if she had I could have put her out and locked the door and then I'd have no more Dragon as the bane of me existence. Oh yes, those thoughts go through me demented mind as wishful thinking.
"It was a balmy 12 the next day," I told her. "Today it was like Florida, a warm 20 degrees."
She snorted at that, and yes, she did, a dragon snort without fire coming out of her nose.
She was watching Dr. Pol, and one of the office vets, Dr. Brenda, was on her way to administer aid to a reindeer. But Dragon didn't hear that. She turned to me and said, "Why on earth would a veterinarian need to render aid to rain gear?" Oh no, I thought, here we go. I corrected this, and then the narrator on the program said, "There aren't too many veterinary hospitals that take reindeer as clients."
"WHAT?" Shouted the Dragon, "Do reindeer have tonsils?" Oi!
"NO, he said hospitals, not tonsils." I could see I was in for an evening I was.
She decided to switch channels and we were next watching the evening news. The presenter was in the middle of a story about Biden's border visit. And I got a confused look from Dragon as she looked at me and said, "Biden has a brother?"
"NO BORDER not brother!" I was exasperated.
This went one more crazy way when the presenter (on the same story) told about a bold woman making the trek from lower Venezuela, to the El Paso border, and was interrupted by Dragon in this way: "What's an old woman doing travelling alone and on foot all that way?"
I gave up and went to bed. Where I would like to stay until the Dragon goes home.
Gabe
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