The Stinky Boy

Tomboy enjoyed her first couple of days of school, but had a major complaint at the end of the second day.

I asked her how the day went and she declared, ‘There is a very stinky boy in my class!’

‘Was he farting a lot?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘Had he pooed his pants?’

‘Noooo, he was just really stinky,’ she replied with obvious frustration at my inability to understand the ‘stink’.

‘Okay,’ I said. To avoid aggravating her further, I changed the subject to her upcoming birthday party and who we should invite.

Tomboy’s first request was, ‘Can you not invite the stinky boy?’

We’d delayed her birthday party so we could also use it as a way for Tomboy to bond with her new school friends. The boys outnumber the girls two to one, and I didn’t want her party being too big or dominated by a bunch of boisterous boys.

I explained that I was thinking of having a small party with only the girls from her class.

‘No, I want boys there too. Just don’t invite the stinky boy. He has too much stinkiness!’

We didn’t invite the stinky boy or any of the other boys. As originally planned, we invited the other five girls in Tomboy’s class and have booked a fairy to come and entertain the girls with games and face painting tomorrow.

She may still end up with a stinky boy at her party if her brother, Boywonder, and his butt are in fine form.

Depressed Man Eats His Own Finger and it's Mr T's 40th Birthday!

Did you hear about the depressed man that ate his own finger? (Depressed Man Eats His Own Finger) 

I’d read the story a couple of days ago and had forgotten about it until Mr T’s 40th birthday arrived. I thought it was an interesting way to deal with depression and certainly guaranteed him the attention he needed, but what I really want to know is if anyone asked him what it tasted like and how he ate it. Did he slow-cook it, so the meat fell from the bone, or does he prefer his meat medium-rare?

Thankfully, Mr T isn’t about to start eating himself, but after an operation to remove a salivary gland followed by a bout of gastro, almost two weeks of inactivity, school holidays and now a 40 year milestone, he’s not feeling like the perkiest boob in the strip club.

I tried pointing out some positives: he’s married to a younger woman – he’s in his forties and I’m in my thirties; he may feel old, but a particular part of his anatomy has at least another 40 years left in it. In fact, when he woke and said he was surprised he hadn't passed away in his sleep, I pointed out to him that a part of him was awake and rearing to go a good 5–10 minutes before he was, and if he had passed away it would be waving about screaming, ‘Resuscitate him! I’m not done with this world yet!’

At least he isn’t insisting on buying a sports car, getting hair implants or swapping his wife for a younger model. The latter is certainly not an option; he can’t keep up with the one he has now (that may change when she reaches her forties in six months time).

So, how does Mr T cope with today’s depressing milestone?  He offers to shout everyone (who’s at home) McDonald’s for breakfast.

Some may see this as a typical act of depression – eating unhealthy food. At least it’s not his finger! But I see it as Mr T challenging himself. He’s challenging his cholesterol levels, challenging the kilos he lost over the last couple of weeks and he’s challenging his mouth to withstand the pain of chewing a bacon and egg mcmuffin. (I ordered hotcakes as well, just in case the last challenge was too difficult, but I forgot he had to eat excruciatingly slow and ate them for him.)

We all handle life’s events, good and bad, differently. Lucky for Mr T, he has me to hold him hostage, torture him with woeful jokes and force him to smile through gritted teeth.

Please note: Due to the momentous event of Mr T’s 40th birthday, a recount of the vomit battle has been postponed until next week.

Miss Flora's First Birthday.

Miss Flora enjoyed tucking into a wheat-free tea cake, which had a thin layer of chocolate icing. We were hoping it was enough icing to get a nice, ‘messy face’ photo, but not enough for the cocoa to upset her belly. She spent the early hours of next morning throwing herself about the bed restlessly, so her small intake of cocoa was too much for her to handle.  At least she enjoyed her hot chips for dinner and cake for dessert. We also had pavlova, because she loves it and doesn’t react to the sugar and egg.

She wasted no time ripping open her presents after dinner and gave us strange looks every time we threw the brightly coloured, ‘noisy when it crinkles’ paper away. I know I could’ve saved a lot of money by buying her a couple of packets of coloured cellophane paper, and making scrunch balls for her, but her ability to consume copious amounts of paper in one sitting was a little worrisome.

Miss Flora's First Birthday is Just Around the Corner!

We celebrate Miss Flora’s first birthday in a couple of weeks. Due to her food intolerances, we’ve had to find a cake that is free from dairy, wheat and cocoa. Basco do a nice tea cake, cake mix, which still contains a small amount of dairy, but we’re hoping there’s not enough to upset Miss Flora’s belly on her big day. We’ll put a little bit of icing on it so she can make a right mess when she tries to wear it. A first birthday isn’t a first birthday without cake on your face, head, arms, fingers, table, Mummy, and Daddy. I’ll let you know how we go.

No Birthday Shall Pass Without Cake!

Every year Mr T insists that he doesn’t need a cake on his birthday and every year I buy one, but in 2008 we were pretty busy on his birthday, so when he insisted he didn’t want one, I foolishly relented. As soon as I said, ‘Okay, we won’t get one,’ it felt wrong. I believe a birthday should be celebrated with cake and presents, the more, the merrier (cake, presents and people), but I couldn’t shake the feeling that we’d ruined Mr T’s birthday by not including a cake in the celebrations.

It wasn’t long until that feeling became fact. Boywonder and Tomboy were tucked in their beds for their afternoon nap while Mr T and I settled on the couch to enjoy a cuppa and one of the videos Mr T had received as a birthday present. Boywonder was the first to wake and at first we didn’t think anything of the fact he had woken much earlier than he usually did. He walked into the lounge room with his cheeks flushed and his eyes looking very glassy. As soon as I felt his forehead I knew his temperature was well above normal. I left him standing where I’d felt his forehead while I retrieved the thermometer from the kitchen. As I re-entered the lounge room Boywonder placed his hand over his mouth, his eyes bulged and his cheeks blew up like a blowfish. The next few seconds played out in slow motion; I knew what was going to happen next, but also knew there was no way I could stop it happening. All of my brainpower was focused on trying to prevent what was about to unfold, so my mouth was unable to communicate to Mr T or Tomboy. I looked back through the doorway to the kitchen for a suitable container, but there were none. I looked at where Boywonder stood in the middle of the lounge room carpet. As I started to cross the few steps that felt like ten metres, vomit began pouring out of Tomboy’s mouth and onto the carpet.

This stirred Mr T into action, but it seemed all of his brainpower was focused on communication, because apart from sitting up in shock, he was unable to move from the couch as his mouth started uttering incoherently, ‘What the …? Oh, man! What …? How …? Aargh …’

I grabbed Boywonder’s arm and coaxed him to the kitchen as fast as I could, but we still seemed to be stuck in slow motion. By the time I had him standing on the kitchen tiles, he’d finished coating the lounge room carpet in something that looked like chicken and vegetable soup, but smelt like sour milk mixed with rotten oranges.

Now that the emergency was over, we were moving at normal speed and the parts of our bodies that were left without power were once again functioning.

‘This is what happens when you don’t have cake on your birthday,’ I told Mr T as he surveyed the carpet in disgust. I knew from past experience that I’d be the one cleaning it up. If Mr T attempted to clean it, I’d end up having to clean up two lots of vomit.

As fast as Boywonder’s tummy bug appeared, it disappeared. The vomitous explosion was just what Boywonder needed to reduce his temperature and make him feel good again. Despite the afternoon’s disastrous turn Mr T was still in the ‘birthday’ mood that evening and enjoyed crawling about on the floor (upstairs away from the earlier disaster scene), acting the fool with Boywonder and Tomboy.

While they played I ran the bath. The sound of the water thundering from the tap into the bath makes it difficult for me to hear anything more than 30 cm from my ears, so when I heard a loud thud in the hallway, instinct insisted I investigate. I found Mr T lying on the floor, holding his head in his hands.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

Apart from a quiet groan, he was silent.

I moved closer, bent over him and asked again. I was starting to worry until he finally answered me.

‘I spun around on my knees and smacked my head on the stair railing. I think I nearly knocked myself out,’ he explained, still holding his head in his hands.

After a few more moments of silent cursing (the children were also watching and waiting) Mr T got to his feet.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

‘We should have bought a birthday cake,’ I replied with raised eyebrows and an ‘I told you so’ smile on my lips. 

As usual, I forgot to check the weather for that night and the next day, so Mr T volunteered to go downstairs and find out. Halfway down the stairs Mr T slipped and landed very hard on his behind.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked as I looked down on him, his shoulders slumped in defeat.

‘We should’ve bought a birthday cake,’ was his sad reply.

So from that day forth a new birthday law was passed in our house and it is ‘no birthday shall pass without having cake’. The good thing is that now we sometimes buy two cakes; you can never be too cautious.

Mr T has come a long way in the last two years. He not only agrees to have a birthday cake, but participates in choosing which one he wants. And this year he even went as far as complaining when the rest of us ate the leftover cake the following day while he was at work. Did he really think he’d be able to have his cake and eat it too?