Cruising to fifty, part seven: Films, fags and farting chairs

This is the seventh part of a series of blogs about the cruise the Wife and I went on last October. You can read the others here:
part one | part two | part three | part four | part five | part six

A quick set up:

I turned 50 on October 6, 2012. My wife surprised me about three weeks before, during a particular low spot in my life with a piece of paper. “Happy birthday,” she said. I opened the paper and quickly scanned it.

“We’re going on a cruise?” I said, and my mind kind of shut down with happiness after that. In fact, it wasn’t until several minutes later, as I was refolding the paper, that I saw the word “Greece” and just about shit. This is the story of what happened on that trip, taken almost exclusively from the diary I kept along the way.

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There was a farmer who had a dog,
And Bingo was his name-o.
B-I-N-G-O
B-I-N-G-O
B-I-N-G-O
And Bingo was his name-o.

B-I-N-G-O – Traditional

October 11: At sea

Our one and only full day at sea, we found ourselves with no agenda. A day of sleeping in, and resting and reflecting on the amazing week we’ve had so far.

We woke late and, after taking our time, went down to breakfast, then bummed around the ship, checking out some areas we either hadn’t seen up to now or wanted to see more of.

Karen thought she might be interested in giving the morning session of bingo a shot. If it was any good, she might even hit the afternoon session. Turns out a ton of people wanted to play bingo, so, with limited seating left of the deck, we could only find seating in the smoking section.

You’d think that wouldn’t be a big deal out in the open air of the top deck, but you’d be wrong. Remember, we’re Canadians, (where, as a friend says, you can marry a fag, but you can’t smoke one–and before you get all uppity about “fag,” a gay friend has officially and formally allowed me to use the term as I see fit. So there. Nyah.) used to people huddling out in the middle of nowhere, smoking their butts as outcasts of society, not provided areas to smoke. So, yeah, it was nasty. And while it was nice to be out in the open on the Mediterranean, Karen also found the sea breeze cold.

And finally, the bingo caller, one of the ship’s entertainers, was a complete and utter dick. He might have thought he was amusing, because he seemed to be insanely entertained by the noise coming out of his mouth, but no, he was just a dick. Enough of a dick that it turned her off from coming back to the afternoon session.

By then, it was lunch, so we sat with a couple from Australia and a Swiss couple. The Aussies seemed nice, but the wife really seemed to have a burning need to name every single city and country they’d visited. Now, granted, it was an impressive list, but after a while I was simply hoping she’d give it a rest and move to another topic that we could all participate in.

The Swiss couple, however, we quite enjoyed. He had lived for a time in both Montreal and Vancouver and they were both very interesting to chat with.

Afterward, we headed down to try our hand at another challenge (seeing as how we kicked such serious ass at the Classic Rock one). This time it was movie theme songs. Now, this one, I basically took a back seat to, as Karen was the movie master. We had the same host as the Classic Rock challenge. I’d found him friendly, but only mildly amusing last time around, but this time, he was hysterical.

The trick this time was for him to play a snippet from a movie theme, and we had to name the film.

The first one was ridiculously easy, the Raiders of the Lost Ark theme. The second one immediately proved Karen’s superiority at this game. I heard the snippet, was sure it was the song The Heat Is On and went to put down Beverly Hills Cop.

Karen flashed her don’t even consider questioning me look, told me…okay, sorry, demanded I write down Top Gun and not interfere with her genius. Which, to be fair, really was the right move. I’d hear something, have no clue whatsoever, and she’d be there with the title.The song, of course, was not The Heat Is On, it was Danger Zone.

In the end, we only missed two. Beetlejuice and Jurassic Park and got beaten out by a group of six from Ottawa who got a perfect 16/16. Ah well, no umbrellas this time. The prize was luggage tags, so no biggie. Still, Karen kicked ass.

Now, I mentioned that the host was hysterical. What made it funny was that this entire challenge was based on us listening to the snippets, but the game was continuously interrupted by a ship announcement, which isn’t funny in its own right, but by the third announcement cut in– “To BINGO or NOT to BINGO? THAT is the QUESTION!” –the host’s reactions were screamingly funny. And then, just as the announcement finished, the host would open his mouth to say something, then the message would again. In Italian. The again. In German. Then again. In Spanish. I can’t do it justice, but it was hilarious.

After a lazy afternoon, we had a quiet dinner by ourselves. Now, as it happened, we sat nearby another table of four who were talking books. Killed me, but no, today was about the two of us. And dinner was about the two of us right now.

Then I heard the words, “Pet Sematary” and seconds later, “Stephen King.” Without breaking stride from the meat she was cutting, literally without looking up, she said, “Tobin. No.”

Meanwhile, I’d already reacted, glancing over at their table. Likely with a longing look. But no, I needed to fight this. Listen to the wife. Eyes front, soldier.

A few minutes later, I moved to get up for dessert and my belt rubbed against the back of the vinyl seat, making a farting noise. Karen glanced up sharply, gave me the stink eye and said, “That wasn’t you, was it?” Death awaited a positive response.

“It’s not me!” I said desperately. I pointed at the offending furniture. “It’s the chair!”

This got the Pet Sematary woman laughing beside me and she apologized, still chuckling.

Well, hell, that was the only opening I needed. Pet Sematary woman had spoken to me. So of course I had to throw in some comment referencing their Stephen King conversation from minutes earlier.

At which point Karen flashed the stink eye again. “Couldn’t not say it, could you?”

Guilty as charged. It did, however, lead to a short but pleasant chat with the four of them. And one of the couples (not the Pet Sematary woman and her husband, but the other couple) seemed very nice. About our age, very friendly.

Then, we crashed early, because we were up early the next morning for our last stop on the cruise, Dubrovnik, in Croatia.

Cruising to Fifty, part four: Corfu cats, Christ and classic rock

This is the fourth part of a series of blogs about the cruise the Wife and I went on last October. You can read the others here:
part one | part two | part three

A quick set up:

I turned 50 on October 6, 2012. My wife surprised me about three weeks before, during a particular low spot in my life with a piece of paper. “Happy birthday,” she said. I opened the paper and quickly scanned it.

“We’re going on a cruise?” I said, and my mind kind of shut down with happiness after that. In fact, it wasn’t until several minutes later, as I was refolding the paper, that I saw the word “Greece” and just about shit. This is the story of what happened on that trip, taken almost exclusively from the diary I kept along the way.

---

Someone is waiting just for you
spinning wheel is spinning true
Drop all your troubles, by the river side
Catch a painted pony
On the spinning wheel ride

Spinning Wheel – Blood, Sweat & Tears

October 8

Today, we left Italy and landed in Greece. Corfu, to be exact. Beautiful country, beautiful scenery, amazing mountains, cliffs, water.

We left the ship and clambered on the bus for a trip to two different places in Corfu.

On the bus

I had high expectations for our tour guide after Frederica yesterday. Today’s tour guide was an older woman, I’m going to guess 55-60, who seemed to amuse herself long before anyone else. As we drove to our first destination, she took frequent pauses to laugh at her own jokes or anecdotes.

Yeah. She wasn’t funny.

Okay, well, that’s sort of a lie. I’d say she wasn’t consciously funny. She did, however, have this habit of getting pissed if it looked like rain, which it did off and on all through the tour.  So, she’d exclaim “JESUS CHRIST” out of nowhere.  As an example, she might be pointing out a mountain, so the accompanying dialogue would be something like, “And over there is a beautiful mountain and JESUS CHRIST it better not rain!”

I can’t do it justice, but trust me, everyone on the bus chuckled every time she did it. She did it a lot over the four hours we spent with her.

The first place we visited was at the top of a mountain–with one hell of a ride up and down it. There were long, curving sections with honest-to-God hairpin turns…think about that for one second. Take one of those big comfortable buses designed for travel. Now, put it on the side of a mountain. Now, give it a super tight hairpin turn. Repeat. A lot. Now, add in a “JESUS CHRIST!” every time we encounter one.

The entrance to the Achilleon

We eventually made it up this crazy mountain to a half-castle, half-mansion, known as the Achilleon built  by the estranged Empress of Bavaria Elisabeth, better known as Sisi (or Sissi, depending on which spelling you prefer). Apparently she travelled throughout Europe avoiding her husband, eventually finding a home in Corfu.

Catching ourselves in a mirror

For anyone local to me that reads this blog, imagine Robert McLaughlin’s Parkwood Estate, but built up on a mountain.

Rubbing for luck…why does every tourist attraction have one of these?

Karen checks out an ass…

…and she likes it!

We spent a solid hour or so there, and everywhere you turned, there was another beautiful section to discover. Really, the place was absolutely stunning. Then to imagine everything being hauled up this mountain and built with the technology of 1890…it boggles the mind.

After the Achilleon, we got back in the bus for our next destination. This involved a harrowing ride back down the mountain and through all those damn hairpin turns again. There were times when I looked out the window of the bus and could not even see the edge of the road, just a long drop to the ocean below. Got the blood racing, let me tell you. JESUS CHRIST!

Once we were down on more level land, we headed to the northern area of Corfu. The old tour guide droned on. I mean, you can only handle so much of:

“As we pass troo dis cahn-tree, don’ t’ink. Don’ t’ink, juss breede in all in, fill your lungs wit all de byoo-tee aroun’ you. Juss let it fill you and calm you and make you ‘appy.”

I have to admit, she put me to sleep for a bit.

We headed to a small monastery, also built on a mountain, but nowhere near the crazy trip we just experienced.

Outside the monastery

I’ve decided, having forgotten the real name of the monastery, to rename it the Greek Church of the Holy Felines. Seriously, there was more cats than I’d ever seen collected in a single place, ever. Cats in the hallways. Cats in the gardens. Cats on ledges. Cats in flowerpots. Cats in boxes. Cats just hanging around. Chillin’ cats.

To be honest, I lost interest in the monastery and became completely fascinated with the cats…as you’ll be able to see from the pictures.

Back on the bus, back down the mountain and tour guide did point out one thing that absolutely fascinated me. We passed a small inlet that had a large outcropping of rock rising from the waves. Apparently this was where Ulysses landed after his experience with both the Trojan War (as chronicled in Homer’s The Iliad) and his adventure-filled return home (as chronicled in The Odyssey). That outcropping of rock? That was supposedly the petrified remains of his ship. It totally captured my imagination and drove home how much history lived in these mountains and valleys.

We had a very quick stop in “old town” then back to the bus one last time and back on the ship.

Loved that, whoever this guy was, now he was a bird perch.

In the end, we got incredibly lucky, passing through at least two major rainstorms, but seeing only sun whenever we got out of the bus.Whether it was Jesus Christ or the Greek Gods smiling down on us, I’ll never know.

Our ship, the Splendour of the Seas

In front of our ship

We grabbed a late lunch and then sat out on the balcony and watched as the ship left the Corfu harbour.

The light blue waves are the water stirred up from the ship turnig 180 degrees before leaving port

Heading out of port

Then, once at sea again, had a nap. Hey, I’m old. I’m allowed.

Woke up and got all dolled up for the first (and, though we didn’t know it yet, last) formal night. We sat with a nice couple from England and an older couple from Ottawa along with their son, which was a cool surprise. Even cooler, the mother knew people from Killaloe, the town not far from Barry’s Bay where I went to high school.

The Ottawa couple were taking their son on a cruise as a celebration for him gaining his MBA from Rotman. Turns out he works for PriceWaterhouseCooper, very close to one of the offices I work out of in Toronto. Even four thousand miles away…

After dinner, we scooted over to the Top Hat bar for a game. Now, I’m the first one to admit I’m not much of a game guy. But when you advertise Classic Rock Trivia, dude, I’m there.

The game consisted of them playing a three-to-four second snippet of a classic rock song, and then we had to provide the title of the song. Oh come on, this is like taking candy from a baby, I thought.

Turns out three-to-four seconds of a song is a stunningly short amount of time. Damn, this wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought. And what made it even worse? There was this guy and his wife a couple of seats over that obviously knew the damn songs too. The host would play a snippet, both of them would bop along with it, then immediately go to the sheet and start scribbling. Messed with my mind, I tell you.

Anyway, I got a little jammed on a Led Zeppelin song. I knew it was Led Zep, but I got stuck on remembering only two parts, the “gonna give you my love” part and the “waaaaaaaaay down inside” part. I. Could. Not. Remember. The. Title. JESUS CHRIST!

Got a much-needed assist from Karen with another song. I knew it was Blood, Sweat & Tears, and I wrote down What Goes Up. Karen looked at that and said, quietly, bless her soul, “Isn’t that one Spinning Wheel?” When she’s right, she’s right.

He gave us a chance to replay a couple of the riffs, and I had him hit that Led Zep song one more time, and Whole Lotta Love just popped in, just like that.

When it was done, we had to pass our sheets to a neighbouring table to mark. I got a 16 out of 16, with Karen’s assist. Turns out the table that marked ours had a teacher or two, so I had to laugh at the “16/16! Well done!” note at the bottom.

And that other couple, the one I was sweating over? 14/16. Yeah, baby! The Canadians kicked ass! Apparently the host had never seen anyone get a perfect score before. So, we scored two Royal Caribbean umbrellas. As the Boy would say, “Dope!”

Victorious, we came back to our room and ended up chatting with our room guy. He’s the one that decorated the room for my birthday and made sure everything was perfect. Great guy, from Romania, where Dracula’s castle is.

One of the towel animals our room guy left for us

Karen decided to pull down the birthday decorations down. As she’s doing it, she says, “Isn’t it cool how they got the little Royal Caribbean anchors on these streamers?”

Yes, it was cool, but when I’d said that the night before when I noticed it, she’d looked at me like I had two heads. Typical woman. Ah well, it was good for a laugh.

And then, I finished up another perfect evening writing  the notes for the day out on the balcony with the distant lights of Greece in the distance, along with the running lights of a couple of other ships at sea with us, and enjoying the warm breeze of the Ionian Sea.

Really, does it get any better than this?

See part five here.

Be careful what you encourage

At the risk of becoming thematically linked to all things ass-related, as I did in three parts, starting here, continuing here, finishing here.  I’m going to write about one more ass-related thing here.  Once more into the breach.

When I first hooked up with the Wife…back when she was still classified as the Girlfriend, she had this odd quirk.  Now, I’ve heard a lot of guys weigh in on this and there’s quite a few that this wouldn’t have bothered, and I’m not saying it bothered me, I just found it a little…weird.

Initially, it was the fact that she locked the bathroom door whenever she went in to do her business.  Yeah, okay, that’s fine.  I’m not a big fan of sharing my bodily functions with others… and yeah, that includes public restrooms.

But there was a point where the the Girlfriend became the Fiance, and then, the Wife.

And through all of that, not once had she ever farted in front of me. Not. Once.

In fact, this lasted a long time.  Like, years.

There came a night when we were both reading in bed.  The Wife got up to get herself a drink.  Now, at this point, I was working a lot of evenings, so she was used to me not being around.  And maybe it was partly because of that, and maybe it was partly due to me quietly reading.  Whatever the reason, as I lay there, I heard an absolutely unmistakeable sound rip out of the kitchen.  She’d finally broken through the barrier.  She’d finally shredded the sound barrier.  In a big way.

Her ass had betrayed her for the first time.

Though I said nothing, in my mind, Gotcha! swirled round and round.

What made it even funnier was that, for someone that was going for a quick drink of water, she didn’t come back to the bedroom for a solid twenty minutes.  I pictured her, standing in the kitchen, silently shaking with nervous giggles, panicking and desperately trying to come up with anything else that could be mistaken for a fart noise.

Eventually, she did come back to the room.  I pretended nothing happened, didn’t even look up from my book when she entered the room.  But the Wife, man!  What a poker face she had!  She walked in, stopped beside me, and in a high-pitched I’m-trying-desperately-to-act-normal-but-I’m-in-total-fart-panic-mode voice, squeaked, “WHAT?  WHAT?”  As though I’d said something.

I said nothing.

The next day, though, I got my revenge.  I worked in the Oshawa Centre mall back then, selling cameras and other photography equipment.  On my break, I went to the greeting card store and bought a really large card that originally said something like, “Congratulations on your new job!”  I then crossed out “job” and wrote “fart” in.  Then I changed the verse inside so it spoke more eloquently to her gassy emanations.  I got the eight or so employees in the store to sign it, amid much laughter.  Then my boss, with a mad twinkle in his eye, encouraged me to take some time out of my busy workday and go visit as many of the stores in the mall that I could, and collect as many signatures as I could.

I’m guessing there was likely over a hundred signatures on that card by the time I was done with it.  Needless to say, when I presented her with the card, I thought she was going to kick my ass.

Funny enough, she didn’t seem to want to go to the mall much after that…

But the problem with that entire fracturing of the flatulence border meant that all bets were off.  From then on, she lived by the phrase “wherever you may be let your wind blow free.”

Which, again, is no big deal.  Yes, there’s been some times where I think I was lucky to make it out of the car or room alive, nose hairs singed and eyes watering, but overall, what the hell, I did it, why can’t she, right?  So I didn’t discourage it.  Hell, I’ll admit it…in our house, it was never discouraged.

Gotta say, even with our best friends, it’s not discouraged.  I remember a New Year’s Eve when one of our friends was pretty much experiencing explosive decompression out of her ass most of the night and her husband, with evident pride in his voice, just kept saying, “Yep!  That’s my girl!”

Now, this all happened over eighteen years ago.  So you might say the Wife’s become quite comfortable with dropping a rose now.  Sometimes, a little too comfortable.

A few years back, we drove down to Florida.  At one point, needing food and bathrooms, we stopped at a Wendy’s at the side of the highway.  I can’t remember the particular city or state we were in, but I’m going to apologize to all Americans for what happened next.  I fear it may have been the lynchpin in the downfall of the U.S. economy and possibly the reason why George W. was re-elected for a second term in office.

I got out of the car, the kids piled out and, as usual, I stood waiting for the Wife to finally get her shoes on, grab her purse and do the 341 other things she feels are necessary prior to exiting a vehicle.  Finally, she got out and I locked the car and turned toward the restaurant.  And it was then, in broad daylight, mid-afternoon, in a very public parking lot, that she actually stopped, raised a leg slightly and flamboyantly heaved a load of gas that partially melted the tarmac.  The sound was that of stressed jet.

And it was only when she completed this unholy act that she realized exactly where the hell she was.  As the kids and I pretty much fell down onto the softened pavement, she yelped, “OH MY GOD!” and ran for the restaurant.  She’d completely zoned out to where she was.

And seizing that split second of inattention, her ass had betrayed her a second time.

Then, just a couple of weeks ago, we were up at Carleton University with the Girl.  We’d been up for the entire weekend and were stopping at the bookstore prior to heading back home.  It was unbelievably cold and maybe that, in part, contributed to the tragedy that occurred.

We went into the bookstore, walked around, got the stuff we were looking for, paid for it, and headed back out.  The Wife and I split off and headed to our respective sides of the car, where I opened my door.  Then I heard the most incredible sound.

It can only be described as a cross between a horrendous ripping noise, and the bleating of a Canada Goose being beaten to within an inch of its life.

Then the Wife cranked open her side, jumped in and, ducking as low as she could, yelled, “Get in!  DRIVE!  JUST DRIVE!”

Blame it on forgetfulness, blame it on the switch from warmth to insane cold sending her butt into paryoxic spasms.  Blame it on anything you want, she had been betrayed yet again by the diabolical beast that is her sphincter.

While I’ve never bought into the gloom and doom end of the world scenarios, as I write this, I fear those damn Mayans may have foreseen the power of the Wife’s butt trumpet and the world’s inability to resist it past Dec 21.

The lesson here?  Be careful what you encourage.

The reluctance of age

I’m struggling to produce content for this blog lately.  Not sure if it’s the time of year, or the time of my life, or what.  It’s not that there isn’t an abundance of things going on around me.  It’s not that I don’t want to write about this stuff.  So, yeah, I think it’s more a reluctance to talk about what’s swirling around in my head.

So, let’s just get it out of the way, then.  Let’s just empty out all that crap that’s swirling around up there, shall we?

I had the great fortune to meet up with a couple of guys I’ve known since Grade 11.  These are guys I’ve known for almost 35 years, so we go way back.  We know a lot of each others’ secrets from our formative years.  I’ve seen both of these guys do some dumb shit and they can say the same for me.  We’ve shared a lot of laughs, we’ve had arguments, and we share that bond that only those that went through the journey of boys to men can have.

P is a career Navy man.  He basically went in pretty much straight from high school.  He’s been all over the world and he’s seen a lot of things I’m sure few of the rest of us would prefer to remain blind about.  Defending your nation takes a special breed.  I know I’m not the right kind of person for that job.  Funny enough, had you asked me 30 years ago, I would have expressed my doubts that P was the right person, just from what I’d seen of him in high school.  I have none of those doubts now.

D’s area of expertise is in building houses.  D was always the hardest working of any of us in high school.  He always had jobs when the rest of us were sitting around listening to our records or goofing off.  He was the first person to ever own a 12-speed bicycle in our little town and he cut a hell of a lot of grass to earn it.  And I don’t think he’s ever slowed that pace of work since.

So now, after all these years, we all happened to be in Ottawa when I had to bring my daughter up for an end-of-term exam.  I dropped her off at her rez and headed over to meet D.

We had a great conversation for about an hour while we waited for P to finish work for the day.  We talked about a lot of stuff, but I took two things away from that hour.

The first is, D is, for all his small-town, down-home charm and personality, a very, very smart man.  It’s not something I’ve ever doubted, but I’m sure there’s some that may make the mistake of viewing him as less than whip-smart.  That would be an error of great magnitude.

The second is, he’s getting old.  As are we all, but he’s not in the greatest health right now, and I fear for him.  More on this shortly.

P got home and we all headed out to dinner.  The old stories were trotted out and they’d aged well.  We had a lot of laughs.  The 18-year-olds that were buried in these 48-year-old bodies and minds came out to play for a while and it was a great thing to behold.  I still look back on those latter-teen years as some of the best of my life.  I’m always glad to go back to that time for a visit.

After dinner, we headed back to P’s “cell” as he calls it–his real home’s out East–and we settled in and talked for another three hours.  We talked about old friends from high school and where they were now.  We talked about our kids and, as aggravating as they are, how they likely weren’t anywhere near as bad as we were (that kind of came as a shock to me, but in the end, it was a pleasant and hopeful shock).  We talked of our parents, both alive and dead.  We talked about our jobs and the good parts and the frustrations of them.

We covered a lot of ground and basically brought each other up to speed on the intervening time between our get-togethers.

I enjoyed it very much, I had a great time getting to know two guys who had been very important to me three decades earlier.  Much of my sense of humour, many of my jokes and expressions come from these two guys.  Hell, they show up in my fiction, though greatly exaggerated and changed.

My point is, I love these guys.  They know me in some ways, better than anyone else in the world just because of what we experienced and lived through.  Together.

But what bothers me is, as I said previously, they’re getting old.  I’m getting old too.  One talked about freaking out when he tipped the scales at far higher than he ever wanted to be.  One talked about having a bad reaction to some drugs to treat his hiatus hernia.  One talked about heel spurs.  One talked about having high blood pressure.  One talked about a possible blockage in an artery.  One talked about being diabetic.  One talked about issues with their prostate.  One talked about having their cholesterol “through the roof”.

Obviously I’m being cagey about who said what, because I don’t want to call anyone out.  But I couldn’t help but start to feel my own mortality at several points through the night.

I’m still coming to grips with the fact that I likely have less time ahead of me than I’ve had behind me now.  It’s not an easy fact to wrap your head around.  At least, it isn’t for me, the guy that mentally stopped aging around 21.  And, for the most part, I actually feel healthier than I did at that age.  God knows I’m a happier person than I was at that age.

I guess, just hearing a lot of this made me realize that it’s only going to get tougher from here on out.  Believe me, I’m not going to go quietly, and I’m not going to sit back and accept my fate.  Screw that.

I intend to be the biggest pain in the ass when it comes to shuffling off this mortal coil.

But still…that’s some tough stuff to swallow.

So forgive the mostly maudlin blog…seems like the last couple have been.  So, unless something crazy happens, the next one, I promise, ain’t gonna be maudlin, morose or moribund.

Life’s too short for that shit, right?