By Tuesday Nancy was starting to get bitchy.
Tammy Oates believed it was because Nostrils had opted out of a planned visit to an ailing aunt’s house in Philadelphia, scheduled for Wednesday. Originally all of us were going to go, but I made it crystal clear that I was staying home (I mean, seriously), and Nossy apparently saw it as an opportunity to do the same.
Nancy doesn’t much care for people making up their own minds about things, so she was walking around playing the Ice Queen.
At one point she went into the kitchen and couldn’t find her water glass. Nancy believes dishes should only be washed when absolutely necessary (once there's a threat of contracting a chronic disease), to help save the Earth’s natural resources. So when she found out Nostrils had washed her glass, and placed it in the drainer, she completely lost her shit.
“Why would you do something like that?!” she screamed, like a howling maniac. “Why would you wash a glass?!”
She was saying all this in the tone of a person who’d just stumbled onto the scene of a mass murder. Nostrils began begging for forgiveness (click! goes the sound of the testicle lockbox), and I just stood off to the side and took it all in. What a grand gang of weirdos.
After the water glass meltdown, Nancy stormed downstairs to the family room. I was watching TV and suddenly there was loud snake charmer music blasting throughout the house. The crap??
I took a peak downstairs, expecting to find someone sitting cross-legged in front of a basket. But it was just Nancy doing her so-called exercises. She was wearing some sort of black leotard with her arms stretched above her head, her pit hedges glistening and swaying to and fro. I thought I could hear something that sounded like a field of wheat blowing in the wind, but I could be mistaken about that.
I decided it was a perfect time to take our dog Anthony for a walk, and got the hell out of there. I can put up with a lot of stuff, but when that fur comes out to play, I need to find an exit. It looks like she’s smuggling a Doobie Brother under each arm, and I can’t have that.
Anthony and I took an extra-long tour of the neighborhood, and when we returned I thought we’d walked inside, literally inside, a human colon. It was a full-on house of funk, and I immediately identified the culprit: Nancy was in the kitchen “cooking.”
Tammy Oates called me to the side and was clearly at the end of her rope. She told me Nancy was being a “complete bitch,” and had turned the TV off while our kids were watching it. Tammy Oates turned it back on, and Nancy sneaked back in a few minutes later and clicked it off again. In our own house.
It never stops.
I went into the eye of the funk storm to get some water, and Nancy was chasing one of the translucents around, trying to get him to eat a “segment” of clementine. As far as I know they’re called tangerines, but that’s far too common for Eninen. As is, apparently, the word “piece.”
Nossy entered the room and wanted to know if the youngest translucent had anymore clean underwear and pants. Nancy asked if he’d had an accident, and Nostrils said no. “There’s just some light soilage,” he announced. WTF??
Bill Oates is a very busy man, but I’ll try to update this site more often. Things came to a crackpot head later that same day, and I’ll tell you all about it next time.
Until then....
January 25, 2007
January 8, 2007
Christmas Day at Oates Manor
After the Christmas morning “family hike,” the gang returned to Oates Manor and proceeded to tear shit out of our kitchen.
Nostrils was in there making more of his horrible assplosion coffee, and Nancy was puttering around as usual, always puttering. My wife, Tammy Oates, walked into the room at one point and Nancy was rubbing Nossy’s ass, getting way up in there and everything. Apparently leftover vegan fare in stank Tupperware gets them hot.
A little later Nancy gasped in apparent shock, during mid-putter, and somebody asked what was wrong. “This bread has Omega 3s in it!” she exclaimed, as if she’d just stumbled onto the scene of a mass suicide. “Omega 3 is code for fish oil, and I almost fed it to my children,“ she wailed. It sounded like she was on the verge of crying.
Once those freaks cleared out, Tammy Oates asked me to help her with the turkey, which she wanted to cook for dinner. Tammy Oates is a recovering vegetarian, and still gets a little queasy around raw meat. So she asked me to plunge my arm into the bird’s “cavity” and retrieve something that looked like a gray meat carrot, and a bag of miscellaneous goodies.
And come to think of it…. I believe that’s exactly what Nancy was doing to Nostrils when Tammy Oates caught them in the kitchen a few minutes earlier.
They do, you might note, have a history of sex in the kitchen. Their third son was reportedly conceived on the kitchen floor, and I lobbied for them to name him Swiffer. But, of course, my ideas are never taken seriously. It’s as if my sincerity is always being questioned.
After we got the turkey in the oven, I went back into the living room and was intending to free-fall into a sofa. But the youngest translucent was in there, wearing nothing but a t-shirt, and rubbing his naked soy ass all over the upholstery of our love seat. He was taking it arm to arm, east to west, against the natural flow of his crack. I just turned on my heel, went out the front door, and “got a little air.”
Apparently Nancy was preparing to give her kids a bath, because that’s what was going on when I returned. And that explained some of what I’d just seen.
I went to the downstairs bathroom to take a leak, and was standing there finding sweet relief, when somebody busted in. The door slammed against me, and I almost went down. The stream was greatly disturbed, and may or may not have striped the basket of wash cloths atop the toilet tank. And the shower curtain, and the mirror.
It was Nancy! She was coming in to retrieve their “family towel,” the one towel all of them use, again and again and again, the entire family. You know, to save Earth’s natural resources. She mumbled an apology, but her tone made it clear I was causing her a delay, and she was not happy about it.
Grrrr…. Nearly knocked to the ground in my own house, while taking a piss, and I’m the bad guy.
After I wiped everything down, and changed pants, I went back upstairs just in time for a dogfight. Our dog Anthony and Eninen’s hammer-headed hound were going at it in the kitchen, and it was no fun and games. There was an abundance of growling and leaping and heads whipping from side to side. Then the hammer-head yelped, began walking with one paw raised, and Anthony slinked away whimpering as well.
Turns out Nostrils had been feeding their retarded sack o’ parasites out of Anthony’s bowl. And this guy has a doctorate! Yeah, everybody’s shocked, simply shocked, that a fight broke out.
But, of course, it was all Anthony’s fault. He’s a male after all, and naturally aggressive.
I believe it was just after the dogfight when Tammy Oates caught Nostrils trying to sneak one of our hairdryers out to their car. She confronted him, and he pled ignorance, claiming he believed it belonged to Nancy. He was overly apologetic, and made repeated jokes through the evening, about how he was caught stealing a hairdryer.
Which is exactly what happened.
As dinner was being prepared, snow started falling outside. Not much, but enough to be kinda pretty for a while. When Nancy saw this, she let loose with a tone that started out incredibly high, and climbed from there. I think she was excited, and emitted an amazing piercing sound. I’d never experienced such a thing. I don’t know how a human makes such a noise. It was like one of those special ringtones that only children can hear.
Then she made some snotty comment about a Christmas visit to our house several years ago, when it snowed about two feet on Christmas day. In her revised version of history, Nostrils shoveled the driveway and I stood by and watched. In reality, Mumbles and I shoveled that day, and Nossy got “overheated” then had to run indoors to put lotion on his windburn. But their version is fact now, and there’s no changing it.
The turkey turned out well, but Nostrils wasn’t happy with the way I carved it. He eats meat when he’s on vacation (ha!), and asked if he could have a crack at it. He said he worked at an expensive restaurant when he was in college, and “knows all the secrets.” I shrugged and handed him the knife and fork, and went to the dining room to have dinner. I don’t like doing that bullshit anyway.
When I was finished with my meal, I returned to the kitchen and there was a shiny bird skeleton sitting on the counter. And Nostrils was stripping every last morsel of flesh from it. There was a platter nearby that was piled high with all manner of nasty-ass turkey meat, including all the junk that most people send down the disposal. His eyes were all bugged out with concentration, and he was flittering around on his tip-toes…. I mean, he was carving.
When he finally finished he loaded his plate, to the point where sideboards were almost needed. Then he went to the table and tucked a napkin into his collar, like something off Hee Haw. “I like the red meat the best,” he said, in a voice tinged with a hint of sexual arousal. Then there was a buzz-saw sound, and turkey and saliva flew all around the room for a full fifteen minutes.
And all I could think was, what in the living fuck is red meat??
That’s everything I can remember about Christmas day, but it’s not the end of the story. Not by a long shot. I’ll tell you more, as soon as I can.
Until then, I am, and always will be, Bill Oates.
Nostrils was in there making more of his horrible assplosion coffee, and Nancy was puttering around as usual, always puttering. My wife, Tammy Oates, walked into the room at one point and Nancy was rubbing Nossy’s ass, getting way up in there and everything. Apparently leftover vegan fare in stank Tupperware gets them hot.
A little later Nancy gasped in apparent shock, during mid-putter, and somebody asked what was wrong. “This bread has Omega 3s in it!” she exclaimed, as if she’d just stumbled onto the scene of a mass suicide. “Omega 3 is code for fish oil, and I almost fed it to my children,“ she wailed. It sounded like she was on the verge of crying.
Once those freaks cleared out, Tammy Oates asked me to help her with the turkey, which she wanted to cook for dinner. Tammy Oates is a recovering vegetarian, and still gets a little queasy around raw meat. So she asked me to plunge my arm into the bird’s “cavity” and retrieve something that looked like a gray meat carrot, and a bag of miscellaneous goodies.
And come to think of it…. I believe that’s exactly what Nancy was doing to Nostrils when Tammy Oates caught them in the kitchen a few minutes earlier.
They do, you might note, have a history of sex in the kitchen. Their third son was reportedly conceived on the kitchen floor, and I lobbied for them to name him Swiffer. But, of course, my ideas are never taken seriously. It’s as if my sincerity is always being questioned.
After we got the turkey in the oven, I went back into the living room and was intending to free-fall into a sofa. But the youngest translucent was in there, wearing nothing but a t-shirt, and rubbing his naked soy ass all over the upholstery of our love seat. He was taking it arm to arm, east to west, against the natural flow of his crack. I just turned on my heel, went out the front door, and “got a little air.”
Apparently Nancy was preparing to give her kids a bath, because that’s what was going on when I returned. And that explained some of what I’d just seen.
I went to the downstairs bathroom to take a leak, and was standing there finding sweet relief, when somebody busted in. The door slammed against me, and I almost went down. The stream was greatly disturbed, and may or may not have striped the basket of wash cloths atop the toilet tank. And the shower curtain, and the mirror.
It was Nancy! She was coming in to retrieve their “family towel,” the one towel all of them use, again and again and again, the entire family. You know, to save Earth’s natural resources. She mumbled an apology, but her tone made it clear I was causing her a delay, and she was not happy about it.
Grrrr…. Nearly knocked to the ground in my own house, while taking a piss, and I’m the bad guy.
After I wiped everything down, and changed pants, I went back upstairs just in time for a dogfight. Our dog Anthony and Eninen’s hammer-headed hound were going at it in the kitchen, and it was no fun and games. There was an abundance of growling and leaping and heads whipping from side to side. Then the hammer-head yelped, began walking with one paw raised, and Anthony slinked away whimpering as well.
Turns out Nostrils had been feeding their retarded sack o’ parasites out of Anthony’s bowl. And this guy has a doctorate! Yeah, everybody’s shocked, simply shocked, that a fight broke out.
But, of course, it was all Anthony’s fault. He’s a male after all, and naturally aggressive.
I believe it was just after the dogfight when Tammy Oates caught Nostrils trying to sneak one of our hairdryers out to their car. She confronted him, and he pled ignorance, claiming he believed it belonged to Nancy. He was overly apologetic, and made repeated jokes through the evening, about how he was caught stealing a hairdryer.
Which is exactly what happened.
As dinner was being prepared, snow started falling outside. Not much, but enough to be kinda pretty for a while. When Nancy saw this, she let loose with a tone that started out incredibly high, and climbed from there. I think she was excited, and emitted an amazing piercing sound. I’d never experienced such a thing. I don’t know how a human makes such a noise. It was like one of those special ringtones that only children can hear.
Then she made some snotty comment about a Christmas visit to our house several years ago, when it snowed about two feet on Christmas day. In her revised version of history, Nostrils shoveled the driveway and I stood by and watched. In reality, Mumbles and I shoveled that day, and Nossy got “overheated” then had to run indoors to put lotion on his windburn. But their version is fact now, and there’s no changing it.
The turkey turned out well, but Nostrils wasn’t happy with the way I carved it. He eats meat when he’s on vacation (ha!), and asked if he could have a crack at it. He said he worked at an expensive restaurant when he was in college, and “knows all the secrets.” I shrugged and handed him the knife and fork, and went to the dining room to have dinner. I don’t like doing that bullshit anyway.
When I was finished with my meal, I returned to the kitchen and there was a shiny bird skeleton sitting on the counter. And Nostrils was stripping every last morsel of flesh from it. There was a platter nearby that was piled high with all manner of nasty-ass turkey meat, including all the junk that most people send down the disposal. His eyes were all bugged out with concentration, and he was flittering around on his tip-toes…. I mean, he was carving.
When he finally finished he loaded his plate, to the point where sideboards were almost needed. Then he went to the table and tucked a napkin into his collar, like something off Hee Haw. “I like the red meat the best,” he said, in a voice tinged with a hint of sexual arousal. Then there was a buzz-saw sound, and turkey and saliva flew all around the room for a full fifteen minutes.
And all I could think was, what in the living fuck is red meat??
That’s everything I can remember about Christmas day, but it’s not the end of the story. Not by a long shot. I’ll tell you more, as soon as I can.
Until then, I am, and always will be, Bill Oates.
January 3, 2007
Christmas Morning at Oates Manor
Because our kids go to bed at a normal hour, and Eninen's are allowed to run wild through the house until they decide it's a good time to go to sleep, our boys were up on Christmas morning at least two hours before the "fun" kicked in. That gave them ample time to admire their presents, then hide them so they wouldn't be destroyed by the see-thru tsunami.
Our youngest stared at the filthy Playmobil truck with a door missing that Santa left for Translucent 2, then looked at us with concern. He didn't say anything out loud, but his expression said, "Holy crap, man. I'm going to be extra-good next year."
Nancy and her gang came dragging into the living room around 8 am, and one of them was howling without delay. "I wanted a farm!" the youngest kid whine-screamed, over and over again. A farm?! The other two looked their gifts over with curiosity, then one said, "We have more under the tree, right?"
They did. And our boys were enlisted into the process of doling out the wrapped gifts, while the translucents got themselves cranked up for another day.
The noise in that room was unbelievable, it sounded like a livestock auction in there. Nostrils was already in the kitchen preparing another batch of his famous projectile-diarrhea hippie coffee, and Nancy was standing off to one side looking as if someone had just waved a fresh-cut turd under her nose. And their kids were, as far as I could tell, hollering for hollering’s sake.
It was difficult to sort the gifts, because the ones Eninen brought were wrapped in newspaper and Kleenex. Plus, the names were just scrawled on the outside, there were (of course) no tags or anything. But the task was finally done, and each translucent received things like flashlight key chains, paddle ball sets, and magnets.
I felt kind of sorry for them, at least until the next time a piercing howl was unleashed, and my central nervous system almost said fuck it.
But, to be fair, it wasn’t as bad as anticipated. It helped that our kids and their kids got up at different times. And that the earlier booty had been stashed away.
After all the presents were opened, Tammy Oates prepared a homemade coffee cake (yum), the translucents took their 1940s gifts downstairs to the family room, and our boys played with their stuff in the living room. And for a brief window of time it was almost quiet at Oates Manor. Not completely, but almost. I even dozed off for a few minutes, my coffee cup tilted precariously on my lap.
But, of course, it didn’t last long. We’d barely settled into our comfortable semi-quiet existence, when Nancy shattered it by suggesting “a family hike.” Wha’? A hike?? On Christmas morning?! The kids were playing happily, for God’s sake, there was peace on earth, and now this? I think she does it on purpose….
Sure enough, the screaming and the tears were back in short order, as Nancy and Nostrils dragged their children away from their new “toys,” and began forcing them into bulky coats. It was utter mayhem. The neighbors probably thought there was an acid-flinging home-invader on the loose.
And I’ll tell you more about it next time, because I am Bill Oates.
Our youngest stared at the filthy Playmobil truck with a door missing that Santa left for Translucent 2, then looked at us with concern. He didn't say anything out loud, but his expression said, "Holy crap, man. I'm going to be extra-good next year."
Nancy and her gang came dragging into the living room around 8 am, and one of them was howling without delay. "I wanted a farm!" the youngest kid whine-screamed, over and over again. A farm?! The other two looked their gifts over with curiosity, then one said, "We have more under the tree, right?"
They did. And our boys were enlisted into the process of doling out the wrapped gifts, while the translucents got themselves cranked up for another day.
The noise in that room was unbelievable, it sounded like a livestock auction in there. Nostrils was already in the kitchen preparing another batch of his famous projectile-diarrhea hippie coffee, and Nancy was standing off to one side looking as if someone had just waved a fresh-cut turd under her nose. And their kids were, as far as I could tell, hollering for hollering’s sake.
It was difficult to sort the gifts, because the ones Eninen brought were wrapped in newspaper and Kleenex. Plus, the names were just scrawled on the outside, there were (of course) no tags or anything. But the task was finally done, and each translucent received things like flashlight key chains, paddle ball sets, and magnets.
I felt kind of sorry for them, at least until the next time a piercing howl was unleashed, and my central nervous system almost said fuck it.
But, to be fair, it wasn’t as bad as anticipated. It helped that our kids and their kids got up at different times. And that the earlier booty had been stashed away.
After all the presents were opened, Tammy Oates prepared a homemade coffee cake (yum), the translucents took their 1940s gifts downstairs to the family room, and our boys played with their stuff in the living room. And for a brief window of time it was almost quiet at Oates Manor. Not completely, but almost. I even dozed off for a few minutes, my coffee cup tilted precariously on my lap.
But, of course, it didn’t last long. We’d barely settled into our comfortable semi-quiet existence, when Nancy shattered it by suggesting “a family hike.” Wha’? A hike?? On Christmas morning?! The kids were playing happily, for God’s sake, there was peace on earth, and now this? I think she does it on purpose….
Sure enough, the screaming and the tears were back in short order, as Nancy and Nostrils dragged their children away from their new “toys,” and began forcing them into bulky coats. It was utter mayhem. The neighbors probably thought there was an acid-flinging home-invader on the loose.
And I’ll tell you more about it next time, because I am Bill Oates.
January 1, 2007
Christmas Eve at Oates Manor
Nancy, Nostrils, and their brood of li'l translucent children arrived at our house on Christmas Eve, sometime in the late afternoon. They were, of course, traveling in their hilarious toy car, powered by sunflower oil and righteousness, or whatever. All five of them, along with their hammer-headed dog, were wedged inside, as the big sixty (high)horsepower "engine" whirred like a weed wacker while laboring to conquer the slight uphill grade of our driveway.
The shrill noise caused a thousand birds to leave the trees.
After shrugging off their vehicle, Nancy and the see-thrus went inside the house, instantly transforming it from a calm and sedate setting into a crazy-box. At least one of the kids was shrieking and wailing, and the other two were bouncing from room to room, completely wired. Their eyes were wild, their teeth chattering with manic energy. Nancy made a beeline for the kitchen, where she proceeded to remove, I think, every pot and every pan from the cabinets. Here we go.
Following a weird-ass horizontal handshake (European?), Nostrils returned to the driveway, and started to unpack the clown car. Trying to be nice, I went out and asked if he needed any help. The trunk lid was raised, and it was packed-out completely. The crap was crammed in there so tight, it had taken the shape of the lid itself. He gave me a couple of boxes, and said he'd have to do the rest himself, "because it's going to be quite an undertaking." Whatever, dude.
When I went back inside Nancy was on her cell phone, talking to Sunshine. She was spinning a nightmare tale of fussy children and terrible traffic, and I rolled my eyes and had another M&M cookie.
Then I heard Nancy tell her mother that she and Nossy had written alternative lyrics to "Jingle Bells" while they drove, in a global warming theme. She was laughing just full-out as she recalled the exceedingly clever words they'd concocted, and promised to write them down and mail Sunshine a copy. Somehow I doubt Dorothy Parker's ghost is too concerned.
After briefly lamenting the "billion dollar wrapping paper industry," the phone call was ended, and I was already into the booze. Oh, this was going to require a whole lot of medicine....
My wife, Tammy Oates, had been working all day preparing a nice Christmas Eve food spread, and after a couple of stiff drinks we began dragging everything into the dining room, and setting-up for the evening's festivities. I put on my beloved Elvis Christmas CD, and was actually feeling a twinge of the holiday spirit. Pass the beer nuts.
Then the Nancies emerged from their room, all dressed-up. She was sporting some sort of expensive-looking Hillary pantsuit deal, and he was wearing an over-the-top Perry Como sweater which almost made me laugh in his face. The translucents were now in matching Endangered Species of the Hawaiian Islands t-shirts(?!), each with a sticker that read, "Glow In The Dark!" What the shit?!
Nostrils dove into the food like he'd just been released from the Hanoi Hilton, and Nancy started chasing their kids around the house with a quivering hunk of something white and slimy on the end of a fork. The noise, between Nostrildamus's lip-smacking and the kids' sustained wild Indian war whoops, was incredible.
With an exasperated shrug of her shoulders, Nancy said, "Oh, this reminds me of when your kids were young." Yeah, keep telling yourself that, sister, if it makes you feel better. But our boys never acted like the Borneo monkey child Donnie, from the Wild Thornberries. Not even once.
Banana Nostrils cut a wide swath through our holiday spread, and his Adam's apple was nothing but a blur, moving up and down as the swallowing reflex labored to keep up with demand. The translucents made noises like air raid sirens and fax machines, and Nancy prepared her "famous" homemade eggnog in the kitchen, using three dozen(!) raw eggs. When she was finished, it looked like a large bowl of swirling frothy piss, and nobody would go near it. I saw her take a sip of the concoction at one point, and something slimy and stringy slung under her chin. Shit!
I dodged flying food as Nostrils asked me about internet access here at the Oates Manor. He'd brought his laptop with him, and wanted to check his email later. I told him we have a wireless network, and I'd be glad to give him the username and password, so he could tap into it. "You have wiffy?!" he shouted, all excited. Yes, we have wiffy, I assured him.
After the kids were finally put to bed (thank you, God), we had several more adult beverages, and Nancy told Nostrils to get their Christmas CDs from the car. He did as he was told, of course, and it was only a matter of seconds before the sound of African tribal drums could be heard in our living room. Supposedly it was holiday music, but it sounded like we were getting ready for a human sacrifice in here. Festive!
Then we started getting out the "Santa" gifts. Tammy Oates and I dragged box after box from their hiding places, and set them up in a theatrical configuration around the tree. For the first time ever, I looked at the lineup and felt like it was enough. I'm notorious for panicking on Christmas Eve, thinking we didn't do enough for the kids. But this year it felt right.
Nancy went out to their car and returned with a filthy toy truck that was missing a door, a used erector set(?!), and a frightening stuffed animal that may or may not have been a lemur. And the lemur (or whatever) was radically frayed. Nancy and Nostrils are not poor, they just don't "believe in" lots of gifts at Christmas, and no NEW gifts at all. You know, because of political reasons, or somesuch.
As I surveyed everything before turning off the lights, one thing was clear to me: in the morning we'd have a freakin' war on our hands.
And until next time, I am Bill Oates.
The shrill noise caused a thousand birds to leave the trees.
After shrugging off their vehicle, Nancy and the see-thrus went inside the house, instantly transforming it from a calm and sedate setting into a crazy-box. At least one of the kids was shrieking and wailing, and the other two were bouncing from room to room, completely wired. Their eyes were wild, their teeth chattering with manic energy. Nancy made a beeline for the kitchen, where she proceeded to remove, I think, every pot and every pan from the cabinets. Here we go.
Following a weird-ass horizontal handshake (European?), Nostrils returned to the driveway, and started to unpack the clown car. Trying to be nice, I went out and asked if he needed any help. The trunk lid was raised, and it was packed-out completely. The crap was crammed in there so tight, it had taken the shape of the lid itself. He gave me a couple of boxes, and said he'd have to do the rest himself, "because it's going to be quite an undertaking." Whatever, dude.
When I went back inside Nancy was on her cell phone, talking to Sunshine. She was spinning a nightmare tale of fussy children and terrible traffic, and I rolled my eyes and had another M&M cookie.
Then I heard Nancy tell her mother that she and Nossy had written alternative lyrics to "Jingle Bells" while they drove, in a global warming theme. She was laughing just full-out as she recalled the exceedingly clever words they'd concocted, and promised to write them down and mail Sunshine a copy. Somehow I doubt Dorothy Parker's ghost is too concerned.
After briefly lamenting the "billion dollar wrapping paper industry," the phone call was ended, and I was already into the booze. Oh, this was going to require a whole lot of medicine....
My wife, Tammy Oates, had been working all day preparing a nice Christmas Eve food spread, and after a couple of stiff drinks we began dragging everything into the dining room, and setting-up for the evening's festivities. I put on my beloved Elvis Christmas CD, and was actually feeling a twinge of the holiday spirit. Pass the beer nuts.
Then the Nancies emerged from their room, all dressed-up. She was sporting some sort of expensive-looking Hillary pantsuit deal, and he was wearing an over-the-top Perry Como sweater which almost made me laugh in his face. The translucents were now in matching Endangered Species of the Hawaiian Islands t-shirts(?!), each with a sticker that read, "Glow In The Dark!" What the shit?!
Nostrils dove into the food like he'd just been released from the Hanoi Hilton, and Nancy started chasing their kids around the house with a quivering hunk of something white and slimy on the end of a fork. The noise, between Nostrildamus's lip-smacking and the kids' sustained wild Indian war whoops, was incredible.
With an exasperated shrug of her shoulders, Nancy said, "Oh, this reminds me of when your kids were young." Yeah, keep telling yourself that, sister, if it makes you feel better. But our boys never acted like the Borneo monkey child Donnie, from the Wild Thornberries. Not even once.
Banana Nostrils cut a wide swath through our holiday spread, and his Adam's apple was nothing but a blur, moving up and down as the swallowing reflex labored to keep up with demand. The translucents made noises like air raid sirens and fax machines, and Nancy prepared her "famous" homemade eggnog in the kitchen, using three dozen(!) raw eggs. When she was finished, it looked like a large bowl of swirling frothy piss, and nobody would go near it. I saw her take a sip of the concoction at one point, and something slimy and stringy slung under her chin. Shit!
I dodged flying food as Nostrils asked me about internet access here at the Oates Manor. He'd brought his laptop with him, and wanted to check his email later. I told him we have a wireless network, and I'd be glad to give him the username and password, so he could tap into it. "You have wiffy?!" he shouted, all excited. Yes, we have wiffy, I assured him.
After the kids were finally put to bed (thank you, God), we had several more adult beverages, and Nancy told Nostrils to get their Christmas CDs from the car. He did as he was told, of course, and it was only a matter of seconds before the sound of African tribal drums could be heard in our living room. Supposedly it was holiday music, but it sounded like we were getting ready for a human sacrifice in here. Festive!
Then we started getting out the "Santa" gifts. Tammy Oates and I dragged box after box from their hiding places, and set them up in a theatrical configuration around the tree. For the first time ever, I looked at the lineup and felt like it was enough. I'm notorious for panicking on Christmas Eve, thinking we didn't do enough for the kids. But this year it felt right.
Nancy went out to their car and returned with a filthy toy truck that was missing a door, a used erector set(?!), and a frightening stuffed animal that may or may not have been a lemur. And the lemur (or whatever) was radically frayed. Nancy and Nostrils are not poor, they just don't "believe in" lots of gifts at Christmas, and no NEW gifts at all. You know, because of political reasons, or somesuch.
As I surveyed everything before turning off the lights, one thing was clear to me: in the morning we'd have a freakin' war on our hands.
And until next time, I am Bill Oates.
December 29, 2006
Stories to Tell
Occasionally I have stories to tell. Like right now, for instance. My crazy-ass sister-in-law Nancy, her so-called husband Banana Nostrils (they were "married" on a beach by an actor amongst a pack of leaping dogs), and their gang of l'il translucent children descended on our house for Christmas.
Oh, I've got pages of notes about the whole sad affair, and no outlet through which to purge the poison from my system. A friend suggested a "blog," but that sounded mighty gay to me. Mighty gay. After all, Bill Oates is a man, not some typing dandy, sitting around hitting the shift key with his pinky, that gayest of all digits.
But I had to admit that it made some sense. I could write it out, a little here and a little there, and others could read it, and maybe we could all share in the pain. You know, in a strictly heterosexual way.
So that's what I'm going to do. Against my better judgment I started this so-called blog to write about Nancy's latest visit, and whatever else might pop into my head along the way. It'll probably be updated in fits and starts, possibly more than once a day in some instances, then not at all for several days in a row.
Because Bill Oates is a very busy man.
Oh, I've got pages of notes about the whole sad affair, and no outlet through which to purge the poison from my system. A friend suggested a "blog," but that sounded mighty gay to me. Mighty gay. After all, Bill Oates is a man, not some typing dandy, sitting around hitting the shift key with his pinky, that gayest of all digits.
But I had to admit that it made some sense. I could write it out, a little here and a little there, and others could read it, and maybe we could all share in the pain. You know, in a strictly heterosexual way.
So that's what I'm going to do. Against my better judgment I started this so-called blog to write about Nancy's latest visit, and whatever else might pop into my head along the way. It'll probably be updated in fits and starts, possibly more than once a day in some instances, then not at all for several days in a row.
Because Bill Oates is a very busy man.
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