In which great quantities of laughing gas are dispensed...

Been a rough week here in the Breadbin, battling old demons and an annoying virus.

Eva had the virus first, and I got it as it was clearing up for her. Sore throat, general aches and pains..and a cough.

Thanks to chronic bronchitis when I was a kid, any virus that comes equipped with cough is going to remain in memory long after its every other symptom has faded away. I'm the picture of health now, if you can ignore this hacking cough that will probably persist, if history is any guide, for a week or even two before it finally peters out.  I can get to sleep just fine, but after three or four hours I wake up coughing away....out of deference to my wife, who needs her sleep much more than I do right now, it's led to me keeping some odd hours.

The demons--you don't need or want to hear about them. The battle continues, let's leave it at that for now.

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So this blog entry is either going to make you laugh out loud or disgust you. Possibly both. Can I go for both?

I've written before about Eva's fascination with flatulence. Her mom reports that when she was a toddler she could while away the time in her crib pffffting to herself and giggling. To this day, you fart, she laughs--it's Pavlovian in its simplicity. She just can't help herself. 

For a husband like me who silently added to the vows that he would endeavour to make his wife laugh loud and often, this predilection for pootery is a gift from heaven. If I ever need to lighten the mood around here, I can just perform a one-cheek-sneak and brrrrap! mission accomplished.

But there are times I outdo myself. I outdid myself this week.

Bubbles the cat has a case of kitty pinkeye, and we give him eyedrops daily. He doesn't appreciate the ministrations overmuch, and so lining up his head and actually getting the drop in is a minor exercise in feline physics. To make things worse, I have a real issue with being the bad guy in any interaction with pets (or humans, for that matter), and so Eva's forever trying to get me to actually hold the damn cat, c'mon Ken, you've got vice grips for hands, use them...which means in turn that once a day we're standing cheek to cheek, as it were, for an extended period of time.

You think you know what's coming. I assure you, you have no idea.

So a couple of nights ago Eva's got something meaty in the microwave and Bubbles presents himself  for inspection...we decide to put the eyedrops in. First I have to actually get the cat. He's not super suspicious like some felines I've known: you can walk up to him, slowly, and bend down, slowly, and--

--see, now, bending down was where I went wrong. My joints weren't the only things that flexed. A series of pancake-shaped gobs of gas leaked out of my behind, silently and merrily filling my pants. I'm not kidding here: there was a distinct sensation of weight surrounding my bean-blower all of a sudden, and can I be forgiven for thinking oh, this is going to be fun?

I grabbed the cat and straightened up, causing more silent protests in southern regions, and calmly walked out to the kitchen, proffering Bubbles the cat and a secret cargo of bum-bubbles to my darling wife.

Now you must understand that I have been called "you rank son of a bitch" by no less an authority than Eva's brother (who is himself quite an accomplished fartiste). I have cleared rooms, provoked coughing fits not unlike the one that woke me up this morning, and elicited cries of profanity. I'm not rude enough to fart in public where other people might taste me,  but...sometimes you can't help the hang time. On one occasion, at 7-Eleven, a gentleman customer walked down an aisle I had strafed more than a minute before, turned around, and exclaimed "It smells like a God-damned SEWER in here!" before high-tailing it out of the store. I've left a McDonald's bathroom, sat down at my table, and observed a little boy going in and immediately coming back out to tell his father, "Daddy, I can't go in there." Load me up with French onion soup and I just might be poisonous. I'm the man behind the screaming Zeller. Are you getting the picture?

Eva's nostrils suddenly flared. Her eyes widened. The cat's whiskers twitched. 

It was horrible. It was awful. It was glorious.

The best thing was that the smell was not identifiable as a product of Arse at all. It had neither the searing brown reek of excrement nor the burnt rubbery bouquet of charred tire that can sometimes accompany a squadron of mud-ducks. No, this was something altogether different. Sickly sweet, the kind of thing you might smell in a morgue. Eva told me later, once all the tears had been shed, that she was positive whatever was in the microwave had gone over.

Normally when I have set a trap like this, the look of guilty pride on my face gives me away instantly. Not to mention that Eva's giggles, let alone the ones induced by air biscuits, are infectious: on more than one occasion I've added to the haze in the room when my laughs come out both ends.

This time, somehow, I kept my cool even as I continued to steam-press my boxers. I think again it was because the smell was so novel, so grotesquely interesting, that even I couldn't determine with absolute certainty that I was, in fact, to blame.  

Meanwhile, Eva's nostrils flared again and again, taking it all in. The droplets safely deposited, I let go of Bubbles and started to walk away.

"Did you-- was that your ASS?"

And I dissolved into a puddle of chortle. I mean, how could I not? Eva was sputtering around the room cursing everything in sight. I had done this. Me. 

This one, in case you're wondering, has been christened the "crop duster". It really did have a kind of pesticide odour to it. And Bubbles? His pinkeye's gone.

He's got stinkeye now.