What Happens in Center, Stays in Center

I have returned, my dear blog monkeys, did you miss me greatly? I'm betting the general answer is "no," since my trusty Site Meter has shown that weekends are generally pretty low traffic. Anyway, I made it to the Center of Eeeeeeeeevil and back without losing my life; as for my sanity, well, I think we're all agreed that its health has been in question for quite some time now. I can only really think of three truly Eeeeeeeeevil things that the Doc did while I was there; lulling me into a false sense of security for next time? Perhaps. But now that I've made it back in one piece, I'm sure you're all dying to know all the juicy details of my trip, right?

Sorry to disappoint you, my insatiably curious blog monkeys, but the G'ovich household was declared a blog-free zone for the weekend; apparently, the Parkerites do not trust my judgment on what is and is not appropriate blogging material; I don't know why that might be, other than the fact that I once stated something to the effect “you’d better not just trust my blogging judgment and tell me if you want me to leave stuff out.” So, true to my word, I hastily agreed, and so the vast majority of the events of this weekend will not be revealed. However, there are three things I think I can mention without violating the spirit of the agreement and incurring the wrath of all involved. *knock on wood*

(1) Had a good time watching the eldest of Doc and Rocket's kids play football on Saturday; due to him being one of three kids on his team with the same name, he was given two nicknames by the coaches: Cujo, and Little Insert-apparently-very-popular-in-1997-boy's-name-here; for our purposes, he shall be known as Li'l Cujo G'ovich. Having inherited a good portion of my mother's DNA, I yelled very very loudly for large portions of the game; most of the time I tried to focus my attention on what Li'l Cujo was doing, but it all depended on which side of the field he was positioned. Biggest play of the game (from our perspective, anyway) came during one of the times he happened to be closest to our side of the field; the other team had the ball, and were attempting a rare passing play. Li'l Cujo, who, we learned later, had heard them call for a passing play, kept his eye out for a receiver, and positioned himself for the interception. As soon as the ball was thrown, I think all of the Parkerites could see that it was all Cujo; he was positioned just right so that the only other person close enough to interfere was his own teammate; well, no sooner had Li'l Cujo caught the ball, then that's what his over-eager teammate proceeded to do; apparently caught up in the idea of making an interception himself, the kid plowed right into Cujo, knocking them both down. When the play was dead and the dust settled, guess who it was getting up with the ball in hand and doing a mini victory dance? If you said "Li'l Cujo" then you are an optimist, and I praise you for your positive, if sadly naïve and mistaken, worldview. In the grand scheme of things, not that big of a deal, since their team was getting the ball either way; still, for Li'l Cujo to make one of his biggest plays of the season while we were all there rooting for him, and then have it swiped by a teammate . . . a bit irksome.

(2)The night before the trip I only got about 4 hours of sleep, due to my mega-blog posts of Thursday and Friday; staying up till all hours of the night after reaching Center and not being able to make myself sleep-in the next day resulted in another approximate 4 hours of sleep; I did manage to get about 7 hours of sleep last night, but the damage had already been done, especially in light of the fact that I spent a good portion of Saturday throwing the football around and roughhousing with Li'l Cujo; yes, that's right, I spent a large amount of my time beating up on an 8 year old; listen, it's not that often that I find someone I can pick on successfully, I have to take full advantage of it; besides, this morning he called in his sister for reinforcement, and I was the G'ovich children's personal punching bag and jungle gym for most of the morning. All of that to say: I'm exhausted. I spent a good deal of Saturday afternoon after the game just sort of zoning out sitting by the pond while the others fished, waiting for my 15th wind to kick in; today I actually felt less mentally sound after 7 hours of sleep than I did on the days I only had 4. I found myself in what might have been viewed as an anti-social mood; it's not that I didn't want to visit with people, it's that my brain just didn’t seem to be able to compose itself well enough to carry on a normal conversation with anyone over the age of 8 for lengthy periods of time; I'm afraid I was far from the most scintillating conversationalist for Pooh and Coronela on the ride home. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the loyal blog monkeys among the group were experiencing thoughts of "Oh, crap, what set off Cap'n Touchy this time?" at some point today due to my odd sleep-deprived state of mind. And if the phrasing of the following sentence prompts you to wonder if that means that there were some group members who weren't loyal blog monkeys, well, that brings us to the next point:

(3) The answers to Friday’s burning questions are, in reverse order, "yes" and "no." Apparently, when I sent out the mass email about CoIM, The Eskimo's got lost in cyberspace (I just double-checked to make sure that he was on the Send list), because while he was aware of my Infinite Monkey Press page, the blog's existence was a total surprise. And now, skirting the edges of the "no blogging zone" agreement, and not getting into any of the specific details of the resultant covnersation, let me just say that I discovered this weekend that the definition of "everyone" in the "everyone knows you don't like The Eskimo" statement was not nearly as all-inclusive as the phrase "everyone" should be; I now feel like a gigantic ass for having posted all of that without ever having discussed it with him; y'know the “no blogging zone” request is making more sense by the minute, isn't it? So, um, yeah . . . sorry about that, my Eskimo friend; please keep in mind, I was young, stupid, socially backward, and mentally unstable back then, and at least one of those isn't true any more.

So, that was my experience at the G'ovich house in a highly censored nutshell; even with today's oddly disassociative mental state (which a 45 minute drive home alone trying to compose this post in my head and lots of caffeine have temporarily eliminated), I had a really good time; lots of nostalgia, lots of interesting conversations, lots of Eeeeeeeeevil entertainment, lots of bullying 7 and 8 year old children; does life get any better than that?