The Great Shopkin War

I actually posted the first part of this on FB but my kids took the play in such a funny direction that I felt the need to add on. Since this is my online journal, it will be easier for me to get back to this spot someday then to pick up the hashtag skill.

It is not my favorite thing to play Shopkins with the kids but they are so happy when I do. Since the monsoons have hit, I have agreed, hoping to keep peace as a tradeoff. My normal character is Crescent D'or. He is married to Madame Cheesecake, who is both beautiful and brave. This is Lauren's character. She shoots thunder with her bow and arrow and destroys it dead in its tracks. I am being summoned, they noticed I snuck off. Bon jour!

Chapter two in the Shopkin story: Once summoned back to my Kingdom by the royal subjects, things had gone bad. A family of Littlest Pet shop characters was trying to move into the strawberry house. My fair queen cheesecake doesn't always like to share and tried her hardest to oust the LPS group out of town. I told her I was king and I believe in diversity. She did not like it, but when I threatened to make her read the rest of the afternoon, she saw reason.

Then there was the terrible toilet problem. With so many families moving to our town, no one had a butt butler but those of us residing in our castle. :) Peasants were showing up left and right just to take a pee. I asked one LPS cat why she didn't just go outside like other cats. She informed me in no uncertain terms that she is just as civilized as I am. Fare enough, but our poor shopkin toilet was becoming overworked. I found myself having to issue a toilet decree. Before I could act on it, my queen and daughter were kidnaped by the evil talking purple jellybean. There was a huge jellybean hunt and 100's of square feet were covered in the search. In the end, the scoundrel was captured in a remote closet on the outskirts of our world. When he was caught, he was quickly executed by our henchman Lauren who chose death by stomach acid for the treacherous candy.

With the wife and kid safe, I went back to the toilet issue. Where the devil was I too find 10 or so toilets on the fly. Lucky for me, there was a landfill on counter island where another culture had left the remains of hundreds of plastic eggs. I had my peasants karate chop the eggs in two and use the smaller halves as decorative toilets in their homes. Ou'la, problem solved. I went to the top of Mt. Couch to meditate on my successful day. While I was there I met a fatherless family. I asked sadly what happened to the father. Apparently the father had been killed in the Great Shopkin War. Helen, the main talker for this family was very helpful in giving me the details. Apparently the War was against the Squinkies. An inferior race we fought to extinction on shopping isles everywhere. I felt a chill. Could Winter be coming? Yes, at the moment we were victorious, but what murderous toy could come along and replace us. Perhaps I needed to spend more time with the LPS guys, they have been around for decades. Good thing I did not let the Queen run them out of town, they could be our ticket to survival!

And with that, I retired the kingdom to the kids because lets face it, they can deal with murderous toys and toilet issues. I am the only one who can deliver chicken nuggets and mac and cheese to hungary empire builders.

The Joy of Laughter

I generally write happy stuff. Mostly because I have a very happy life, surrounded by happy, funny people. Of them all, my Dad's best friend has to be the happiest of the happy. The funniest of the funny. In the 30 some odd years of knowing the man, I have never seen him sour. When he laughs, he crinkles his nose and his entire face gets in on the act. He has the most scraggly beard I have ever seen. Something only an intellectual tinker could get away with. And Satish is certainly that. He tinkers with everything from watches to his own hair. He has much better luck with the watches than the hair.

He is the only person I have ever met who is cheaper than my father. I once saw him with the worst hair cut I have ever seen on anyone ever. He laughed good-heartedly when telling how his wife had forbid him from ever taking scissors to his own hair again. The result appeared to be the mange. Truly, it was terrible.

I use to humor my Dad and get up at the ass crack of dawn and drive from Mansfield to Dallas to the Saturday sale. It was this weird computer sale under a bridge where people sold all kinds of computer parts and hand crafted machines. Satish would stand there bargaining things down to ridiculously low prices. I think they discovered some place with a $2.00 breakfast after they had obtained all the pieces parts two middle age engineers could get for $20.

Several years ago Satish was in charge of pet sitting his neighbor's bird, Goburt. It was one of those weird stories that only happens to Satish, but somehow he ended up with this illegal exotic bird. The neighbor disappeared, the house flooded, there was a difficult process in trying to get the bird out of a flooding house with no electricity, and vanished owners. As it turns out, Goburt is the coolest bird. The kids have grown up going to visit him. They know never to trust him with a finger but they will bounce up and down at each other, making clicking noises back and forth. He does amazing imitations. Particularly of Satish's voice. He has his laugh down pat. Probably because Satish laughs all the time. It is a sound Goburt knows by heart. It is a sound we all know by heart.  

It is that sound and that crinkled nose and scraggly beard I will miss most. Satish died yesterday. He died in the most brilliant way possible. His whole family with him saying their good byes, surrounded by love. Today the news has been rippling out to all of us who loved him. It is not really a surprise. He had been ill for a long time but I think selfishly we kept wanting him to hold on a little longer, a little longer. I am glad Satish ended up with Goburt. Satish has a brand new baby Granddaughter and young Grandson. With any luck they will grow up listening to Goburt, perfectly imitating their Grandfather's amazing laugh.