Tales of the wind

Wow, three posts in one day? I must have a severe case of bloggerrhea. Known causes: boredom at work.

In my last post, I mentioned a fear of farting while doing yoga. Here is some insight into Umbrella's brain. I will mention something, and then obsess about it for hours. So I have spent most of the day thinking about farts.

I don't embarrass easily. Lack of pride will do that to you. But for some reason, I have a real tough time farting in front of people. Anyone who knows me would be shocked by this admission, but it's true.

The last time I blushed was about a year ago. I was grocery shopping, and I could feel some pressure building up in my gut. Luckily, it wasn't the "OMG, I'm gonna shit myself" pressure. It was the "pass gas" pressure. For most people, no big deal, but for me, I was sweating. I found an aisle that was empty, and proceeded to relieve the pain.

The problems started immediately. Problem #1 was that it was quite a bit louder than I expected. Problem #2, it stunk pretty bad. Problem #3, and this was the doozy, was a really attractive woman came around the aisle right as all of this happened. Shit!

My first instinct was "Maybe she didn't notice." This thought instantly disappeared when I saw the look on her face. If there was ever a way to say "You nasty fuck" with only facial expressions, she nailed it. At this point, I was lost. There was no save. I sheepishly pushed my cart away and got the hell out.

However, my best (or worst, depending on your point of view) fart experience happened on Halloween several years ago. The girls were still pretty young and into trick-or-treating. My ex would take them out, and I would stay at home and give out candy. My ex really got into Halloween, and our house was the coolest one in the neighborhood.

So like every year, I was at home, drinking beer, and scaring kids. The girls got home, and I proceeded with my fatherly duties of going through their candy. Neither of them liked peanuts, so I was digging around trying to find all the Snickers, Mr. Goodbars, Paydays, etc. I started scarfing them down in earnest.

Finally, my ex decided it was time to gather the decorations. We learned the hard way that if we left things out on Halloween night, they would get destroyed. So I began my husbandly duties of tearing everything down.

At this point, I think the combination of beer and peanut-infested candy formed some sort of unholy union in my gut. No biggie, I'm outside, in my own yard. I let it fly.

It didn't take long to realize this wasn't any ordinary fart. Not only did it assault the normal senses of sound and smell, I'm pretty sure I felt it, tasted it, and even saw it hanging in the air. Usually people don't mind their own brand, but this one was beyond disgusting. Luckily, the women were inside putting stuff away when this happened.

My daughters were the first to open the door. I yelled at them that they might want to stay inside. My children are intelligent, and turned right around.

My ex, on the other hand, didn't heed this advice. She came outside, and it hit her. She gagged, and barfed in the yard. It's tough to explain my emotions at this point. One the one hand, my wife is puking, and is REALLY pissed off at me. On the other, I may have created the world's most awesome fart. It's a toss up.

She started yelling at me when I tried to cut her off at the pass. I told her that I warned her not to come out here, and she chose to ignore me. She responded that she didn't think it was possible to ruin the outdoors. It's a good point, and up until then, I didn't think it was possible either. I do know that her yelling at me wasn't helping my issues with farting at all. I wonder, are these issues are related to my fear of shitting in public restrooms? I guess that is analysis for some other time.

At last, my weakness revealed

My boss decided to show up at work today at 1:00. He's never been the model of early arrivals, but this is pretty late even for him. His mom has been very ill lately, and I guess he was at her place cleaning up her puke.

I've got a pretty iron stomach. I can brush mold off of food and eat it with no problems. I can drink an insane amount of alcohol, and keep it all down. Changing nasty diapers doesn't bother me in the least. But the slightest hint of puke, and it's game over for Umbrella. I am a classic sympathy puker.

As an example of this Achilles heel, let me tell you a story. Quite a while back, when my oldest daughter was pretty young (5 or so), we were driving to northern Arizona to spend Christmas with my ex's family. When the oldest was young, she had a horrible problem with getting car sick. Every trip was an adventure. One of the things we read was that sitting the child in the front seat will help prevent them from getting sick. It makes sense, it's hard to throw up when you are being smothered by an air bag.

So she was sitting in the passenger seat, I was driving, and my ex was zonked out in the back. We were approaching Flagstaff right as an old fashioned blizzard was hitting town. I don't drive in snow very often, so I was driving a bit slow, and really focusing on the road. All of a sudden, my daughter turns to me, says "Daddy, I'm going to be sick," and before I could respond, promptly barfs all over me.

I reacted as if someone threw acid on me. Warm, stinky, bile-filled acid in various states of digestion. I did everything I could to create a multi-car pileup as I swerved off of the highway. Apparently, the yelling and reckless driving woke my ex up. She must have thought she lost her mind as she woke up to me jumping out of the car, stripping on the side of the highway, in a blizzard, no less, while my daughter was crying. I had chucked my clothes as far away from me as I could, as I washed my skin with the snow. By this time, she had gotten out of the car, and was looking for clean clothes for my daughter. She looked over at me and asked if I was OK. Let's see, I'm standing on the side of the road, wearing nothing but boxers in the middle of a blizzard, while fighting my gag reflex and/or frostbite. I think it's safe to say, I'm pretty fucking far from OK.

It was pretty much a recreation of this scene, except with puke. And in the snow. And I probably overreacted more. And I'm way sexier. But other than that, it was exactly the same.

Also, as an aside, I am going on a business trip tomorrow, so I don't know if I will get a chance to post the Golden Umbrella before I go. I have to admit, the pickings have been slim this week. But I do have a frontrunner. If anyone wants to nominate a worthy site, let me know via comments or email.

The story behind the umbrella

I just realized, I promised a long time ago to tell the story of Umbrella. Keep in mind that it is pretty retarded, and I think it is a "you had to be there" moment.

Waaaaay back in the day, when I was a young and somewhat wild and rebellious lad, my ex-wife had a fairly important party she had to attend for work. All of the bigwigs from her work were there. I hate bigwigs. A bunch of dorks standing around thinking they are God's gift to women because they are rich, telling stupid jokes, and generally getting on my nerves. I tried like hell to get out of it, but trying to give all of the potential babysitters polio didn't work. Damn vaccines.

Plan B involved getting drunk to the gills to dull the pain. However, when I am drunk, I tend to get... well let's call it brutally honest. In other words, I would be asking her boss if he ever used that tooth of his that stuck out sideways as a can opener. She quickly informed me that my alcohol intake was going to be monitored closely. Great, so I was going to be bored and sober.

We went to this party, and it turned out I knew very few people there. I am generally pretty quiet when around people I don't know. Combine this with the fact that when I do talk, I am pretty blunt and crass, and I was told to be on my best behavior. A recipe for a miserable evening. I basically just leaned up against a wall and didn't say anything all night.

My ex was drinking, so pretty soon I was being scolded for not mingling enough. Damned if I do, damned if I don't. So I started hanging on the outside of conversations. I soon found out that I was the only one there who was probably legal to drive, which was pissing me off even more.

There was one small group of people talking that didn't look like they were total losers, so I wandered over and began listening in. Turns out, they were fairly drunk, and were talking about sex. More specifically, the wierdest stuff they had done. I think the question was what was the kinkiest thing you ever did. Now this was something I could probably get into.

Unfortunately, most of this stuff was lame. They were talking about doing it in a car, doing it in their parents bed, stuff like that. One girl mentioned that she once had sex in a closet. I must have been making faces that showed how weak I thought this was, because she looked at me and asked, "Don't you think having sex in a closet is kinky?" I answered, "I suppose it depends on whether or not you keep your umbrella in there." She got kind of flustered, and everyone else started laughing. From that point on, much to my ex's chagrin, I was always known as the umbrella guy to all of her work.

So no groundbreaking stuff, like I invented the self-drying umbrella, or anything like that. And in the early days where most people used screen names like BobR123, Umbrella was a little different. So that has been my internet identity ever since.

Mothers and Daughters

Sorry for the lack of posting. It has been an interesting week, to say the least.

I got a call from my teenaged daughter the other day. She was asking if she could spend the night at my house. I told her sure, and asked what was up. She told me she was at a friend's house in my neighborhood, and just wanted to crash here. I told her it was OK with me, as long as it was OK with her mom. She assured me it was.

About 15 minutes later, I get a call from my ex. She was absolutely livid. She was carrying on about some tile or something, and how she gets no respect from her kids, and they walk all over her, and blah-de-dah. She had a weird relationship with her mother. They were best friends. Heck, her mom was the maid of honor at our wedding, if that gives you any idea. She always thought that was the norm, and would get mad at me when I told her that nobody else in the world is that way. Bottom line, she feels like she and her daughters should be buddies. Gee, I wonder why her kids don't respect her. She always does whatever the kids want, and then I was always the disciplinarian. Lucky me. So while she was going on and on with her rant, I just wanted to say "Maybe if you spent more time trying to be their parent then their best friend, they would respect you more," but I bit my tongue.

Whatever it is my daughter did not only got her KFMA ticket thrown away (KFMA day is a giant day-long concert), but it got her thrown out of the house. So she has been staying with me. From a selfish standpoint, it has been great. My oldest and I get along really well. She has been helping me around the house, and it is nice to have some company. However, I need to find out what is going on.

Last night, after dinner, I ask her what the deal is with her and her mom. She insists she doesn't know. All she knows is that her mom is furious with her, and she has no clue why. I was married to that woman for 13 years. There has been more than one occasion I was sleeping on the couch, and didn't have any idea why I was in trouble. So it is entirely feasible that my daughter doesn't know what she did wrong.

She has a dentist appointment today. Her mom is taking her. This will be the first time they have talked since the blowup. I told my daughter to find out why she is in trouble, and that it is her responsibility to correct the problem. And maybe, if she does, she might get to go to the concert after all, but don't count on it. We'll see what happens.

What is the deal with mothers and daughters? I grew up with all boys in my family, and I don't remember all this drama. Oh well, I only have about 4-5 more years of this, then I get to go through it with my younger daughter. Woohoo. Still, it feels good to know that she is still willing to come to me when she has problems. I hope that continues.

This concludes the Dr. Phil segment of my blog. We will now return to our regularly scheduled programming.