BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

THE PUF REPORT: Part 5 of 5

Meet “Paducka.” He’s a Pirate Duck, and as you can see from the picture he is also a bit of an antenna adornment for E Kay’s Evilmobile. (Given the curve in the antenna, you may also have noticed that  in this particular snapshot he has a headwind blowing up his duck butt at about 80 MPH.)

I’m sure you are probably wondering why anyone would name a Piratized Rubber Duckie something like “Paducka”. I mean, after all, he’s both a bath toy and a spyglass wielding Pirate, so shouldn’t he have a more nautical, salty, scary, eye-patchy, sword wielding, buccaneerish name?

I dunno, something like “Yellow Beard”… No, wait, that was a movie… Okay… I’ve got it… How about “Duck Billed”… Or better yet, “Captain Jack Mallard”?

Still no, eh?

Well, I can understand that. But, of course, I still haven’t explained why he has a name like “Paducka”… If he was made in Pennsylvania, that might make a bit of sense, but from what we can tell he was injection molded somewhere in Taiwan. Therefore, I suppose “Peking Duck” could have worked, considering… But, no… We have a tendency to pick names that reflect a moment or place in time. Such as one of our rescued cats being named “Asphalt” because we plucked him, half starved, from the middle of the highway.

Okay, okay… Stop chasing the chickens, or ducks as it may be. I know, I know…

So, why did we name the antenna bobble “Paducka”? Simple. Someone at PUF impaled him on our antenna while we were in Burns, Tennessee, but we didn’t notice he was there until we reached Paducah, Kentucky.

Seriously. We didn’t. It was this sudden, collective, “WTF moment” as soon as he was noticed. Shortly afterward, when we made a pit stop, we also found three different sized skull stickers affixed in the corner of the back window. Kind of like the Daddy, Mommy, Offspring “family” stickers you see on the Soccer Mom Mobiles.

I guess skulls not only fit for Pirates, but for the Evilmobile too.

Speaking of Evil, have a look to the right. For all of you who never believed me about the whole Queen Bitch of the Whole Fucking Universe thing, there you go.  E K and Kristin Madden wearing their official QB of the WFU t-shirts. Now, if that isn’t evil (X2) looking for a place to happen, I have no idea what is. The only way to make it worse is for Morrison to throw on her shirt and get involved – as well as all of the other QB of the WFU’s the Fearsome Threesome have inducted into the order over the past year.

So… About the whole “She Loves Me” thing… It actually ties right in with the evilness of the E K, but I’m sure you had already figured that out. But, to properly tell the story I have to run after this pullet over here.

You see, when I sleep at night I kinda look like a lazy F-15 Pilot. What I mean is, since I’m sleeping I obviously don’t look like I’m flying (and let’s just forgo any nocturnal joystick jokes here, okay?) However, I do have a face full of gear that would suggest otherwise. With regard to the flying thing, not the joystick… Sheesh.

The thing is, I have a wicked bad case of sleep apnea, and it’s not just because I’m a fat guy. It’s also because something is wrong with my brain. But, we already knew that. So, anyway, in order to actually sleep and not spend the night drifting in and out as I snore, snort, gasp, gulp, and otherwise just quit breathing altogether, I have to use a CPAP machine (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure)… Basically it’s a fancy, medical grade, regulated air pump that forces my body to breathe while I’m asleep.

I’ve been attached to one of these for several years. In fact, I even own two. One that stays home, as well as a travel sized model that bops around the country with me. I first discovered I needed it when I woke up in the middle of the night to find E K kneeling on my chest with one hand clamped around my nose, and the other hand over my mouth. She says she was just trying to make me stop snoring, but I’m still not entirely sure about that… Especially since I still occasionally wake at night to find her sitting on my chest again, crimping the hose, then letting it go, then crimping the hose a little longer, then letting it go, ad infinitum… All while grinning this evil, wicked grin and giggling.

Let me tell you, it can be just a bit disconcerting…

…As can a sudden pain in your shoulder that seems to come from nowhere.

Yeah… We’re back onto a new chicken. But, it’s the correct chicken this time.

I felt the pain, not entirely sure what it was. Given that it was in my left shoulder, I was understandably concerned. For some reason I was also somewhat dazed, even though the pain was in my shoulder, not my head. I seemed to recall there having been some manner of noise that accompanied the discomfort, but I was damned if I could figure out what it was. I looked around, saw nothing but asphalt slipping past the window, E K behind the wheel, and Johnathan & the O-spring in the back. Since there wasn’t a repeat, I allowed myself to relax.

When it happened again, I was much more cognizant of the hollow, but no less frightening noise that sounded something like, “SKKKRXXXXX SluuuuuuuuggggBnnnuuuggguh SNORT SCHNORT SKRNNNNNRRRXXX OUCH Whaaaaaa?”

Yes. Somewhere along the road home, I fell asleep in the passenger seat while E K endeavored to make the Evilmobile reach the necessary ground speed to become airborne. Since I don’t have a D C adapter for my CPAP, not to mention that I wasn’t intending to fall asleep in the first place, much snoring ensued. E K, wanting to keep me alive so that she could torture me some more did the only thing she could do since she was also occupied with driving.

Yeah, she yelled Slug Bug and hit me.

You know, I never did see the VW. Something tells me it was just an excuse to reach over and smack me. But, I actually find that to be a bit heartening. I guess I must be growing on her, because she’s never felt the need to have an excuse to hit me before…

More to come…

Murv

So, I’m pretty sure it’s no secret that I was in Nebraska last month for WillyCon XI, so I won’t bore you with those particular details…

I will, however, bore you with some other stuff. Hey, it’s my job, correct?

You see, WillyCon was one of those 3-5 day jaunts. I left on a Thursday morning, and returned Monday afternoon. Normally, I would have returned sometime Sunday, but as I noted in the previous WillyCon specific blogs, you couldn’t get there from here. My choices were pretty much St. Louis to Minneapolis to Sioux City or St. Louis to Dallas-Fort Worth to Chicago to Sioux City. Thursday – Monday. Take it or leave it. So, obviously I took it. But, I digress.

The thing here is that these days my daughter really is all about the 3-5 day jaunts I take to do book signings. You see, they seem to be just about the right amount of time. Anything past 5 days and she starts missing me too much. The 3 dayers are pretty much her favorite, 4 is pretty good, 5 is pushing it, but not quite over the line just yet.

I think what she really likes most about me being gone for these events is that when I am only disappearing for a few days I don’t do the whole cooking and freezing dinner thing. I make sure there are nukeable foods in the fridge and freezer, plus plenty of canned goodies, but they are almost always right where I left them when I return. Why? because since E K doesn’t cook, and I haven’t done the prep for her, they tend to eat fast to semi-fast food the entire time. Quizno’s, Pizza, etc…

So, what’s not to like about this for a kid? The parental unit isn’t gone too long, and they get fast food. It’s kind of like a Pinnochio Nirvana sans strings and donkey ears.

But, let’s get back around to the whole gist of this blog entry. The kid actually does start to miss me, especially around day 4 or 5. This happened, like clockwork, on my trip to Nebraska.

Long about the evening of day 4 my cell phone rang. When I answered it, instead of being E K or my publicist as I would have suspected, it turned out to be the offspring. She wanted to hear my voice and tell me about her day. It was obvious that she was starting down that “I miss you, daddy” road when she just kept talking and talking. You see, for the first three days I usually get, “I’m busy playing googly-monster-barbie-fun-petz on the computer. Can I go now?”

That whole bit used to hurt my feelings, but just like kids grow and evolve, so should parents. I think maybe I’ve managed that, because I understand that it takes some time for my absence to have a direct affect upon her 9 year old world.

But, back to the story…

We were at that stage of me being missed enough to warrant a long conversation, which of course, made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, because I have like the coolest kid in the world and stuff. (But, I won’t digress into bragging… for the moment, anyway.)

After several minutes of chatting, the offspring tells me that she and E K had gone for a hike in one of the local parks. In the process they came across a Calico cat. Well, E K being a cat-fanatic, (probably because in some kind of freak accident her DNA was fused with that of an actual feline – that’s my theory and I’m sticking to it), plus the kid being a kid, they oohed, ahhed, and spoke to said cat. The offspring told me that even though they had informed the Kitteh that they meant it no harm and weren’t going to bother it, that the animal still watched them suspiciously.

Well, what do you say to something like that? Especially if you are me and you are generally warped and working hard at warping your child… Glad you asked…

When the offspring told me this, I replied, “Well honey, maybe the cat doesn’t understand English. Maybe it’s a foreign cat and it only speaks French or Spanish, or some other language like that.”

Without missing a beat the kid said, “Pssshaw! Daddddeeeee! Cats don’t speak French or Spanish.”

“Okay, so what do they speak?” I asked.

“I dunno,” she replied with a healthy shrug audible in her voice. “Probably Catnamese or something like that.”

Yes… I almost dropped my cell phone I was laughing so hard.

It’s true. My kid is definitely just as warped as I am. I’m so proud I think there might even be tears involved…

More to come…

Murv