Best of times, worst of times

It has probably not been apparent these past several years of blog postings, but the Hero and Princess appreciate simple moments. As in, they are easily amused. One indication of this is that they often pick up phrases they hear, and for several weeks they might use one to such an extent as to catapult it to The New York Times List of Most-Used Phrases, were there such a thing.

Our current obsession comes courtesy of the very clever author of a children's chapter book titled The Tale of Two Guinea Pigs. It follows the antics and tribulations of two guinea pigs named Teddy and Pip as they cope with the absence of their owner, Amelia, and the person who is—according to the pigs—so woefully taking care of them in her stead.

(Here we should disclose that our sole knowledge of this book comes from a few tidbits hurled our way by relatives familiar with the book. Any misrepresentation of the book or its characters, therefore, while unintended, is quite possible but NOT our fault.)

The pigs’ approval of their substitute caretaker appears to hinge mainly on whether she a) allows them to do what they wish and b) gives them yummy food that is EXACTLY what their real caretaker usually gives them. Their disapproval stems from the substitute caretaker performing c) none of the above.

When things are going their way, they do not say, “Things are good!” Rather, they chorus, “IT IS BEST OF TIMES!”

And when things are not so rosy, they do not say, “Things are not so rosy.” They gather up their furry selves and capitalize their disgruntlement with all their might: “IT IS WORST OF TIMES!”

You can see where this is going. The Hero and Princess, charmed by these fictional guinea pigs—she by the adorableness of anthropomorphism and capitalized speech, and he by the shedding of unnecessary words—have adopted these phrases and look for every possible excuse to use them:

When they manage to hang on to the video game football flag and amble over the goal line without an interception: “BEST OF TIMES!”

When the Hero is caught in the crosshairs of the Princess’s hair spray: “WORST OF TIMES!”

When the Princess finds herself .07 miles from home and totally out of beverages in the car: “WORST OF TIMES!"

When they hit snooze for the 37th time and roll over yet again: “BEST OF TIMES!”

IF they are awake enough.

So thank you, Teddy and Pip. Once the charm of these phrases wear off, we might just have to read the rest of your book to find more. We're sure it will be BEST OF TIMES!

A short note of thanks

The Princess intended a more extensive post this week, but has been sidetracked by Easter menu planning. She has time only to share a short note of thanks to the iPhone auto-correct feature, which during the course of recording her grocery list informed her that she and her guests will be having a keg of lamb for Easter dinner. 

Our video game vision

It may seem as if all the Princess and Hero have been doing lately is playing video games, but this is NOT true. They have also been thinking of making video games. And earning lots of money from them. And retiring early to Hawaii where they can snorkel and paddle board every day if they want, and maybe after several years learn to stand up on a paddle board for more than three seconds at a time.

At least, this is what the Hero has been thinking. The Princess mostly ponders, How can I strangle the creator of Does Not Commute and get away with it?

Our latest idea for a video game grew out of an integral part of our (mostly my) life: beverages. I am the Pied Piper of beverages: I may go forth out of the house with one, and come home bearing several dozen more, all in various states of consumption. As if I might, while completing my errands around a town I know quite well, get very, very lost, and drive very, very far into a forsaken desert land where liquids have never been heard of, and wither away, parched, before a drop of bottled water can be air-dropped to me.

Thus I am never, ever without several somethings to drink nearby. (Car makers, you can never put too many cupholders in your vehicles. Please remember this.)

So as the Hero and I envision it, the goal of our proposed video game would be to complete one’s daily errands while collecting the highest possible number of beverages in one’s vehicle (or perhaps a grocery cart--there could be different versions). Going to Target? Make sure to stop by the in-store coffee shop and pick up a latte, or (even better, AND) get a slushie.

There would be opportunities to collect bonuses, one of which would be earning more cupholders so you can buy even more drinks.

Players would also win points if, at the end their errands, they completely cleaned out the car of beverages. Conversely, they would face severe penalties for leaving beverages behind in a vehicle. Like, maybe swarms of ants come and drink the beverages and attract a bunch of giant anteaters, who eat the ants, all the cupholders, and the car. Or maybe the penalty is that the driver gets transported into the Does Not Commute game and is forced to fall off a bridge at 95 miles an hour, over and over again. (Not that this has EVER happened to the Princess.)

So that is the vision. We realize that our retirement to Hawaii as a result of creating and selling video games might not be imminent. But if we do get there, we’ll arrive with plenty of beverages.

Commuter games

The Hero may not have video games invading his dreams, as the Princess has experienced recently, but it turns out that he is not immune to their influence. On his first day driving to work after a snowstorm some weeks ago, he termed the drive Does Not Commute, after one of our favorite* games.

In this game, you, as the driver, are given a script that might say, for example, “Mrs. Jones is late for work again, and she has a big presentation at nine.” You, Mrs. Jones, are expected to navigate your way to work in the time allotted and in one piece. This is fairly easy in the beginning. As you progress to new scripts and more challenging drives, however, your former selves—such as Mrs. Jones—are also on the road, often right where your present self also happens to be, or wants to be, and, well, you can see the difficulty.

In addition, your speed is determined entirely by the type of vehicle you happen to be in at the moment. Driving a lumbering ice cream truck? No problem navigating turns. Driving a speeding motorcycle? Good luck making a 90-degree turn successfully. Or any turn.

The game provides helpful arrows showing you possible routes to reach your destination, some of which require great leaps over bodies of water and, in our judgment, great leaps of stupidity. We have, accidentally, leaped off bridges over roads. Sometimes we've even landed back on the road. This is all accidental, as is arriving at your destination in a timely manner.

So when the Hero drove to work after the snowstorm, he had his own script to follow. It went something like this.

Okay, bridge coming up...icy patches like to hide there. There’s one! Avert! Good job.

A car’s coming straight at you! Swerve, swerve! Get into another lane!

Uh oh, your lane is disappearing into a snowbank. Find another one!

Hey, you need to refuel. Uh, oh, the lines are too long. No time to wait; gotta keep going and wait for another one.

Look out for the snowplow!

Okay, you're almost there...one last turn into the parking garage...oh, no, the gate’s down! Abort turn! Keep going!

Bus bearing down!

Stray kitten in the road!

Slush on the windshield!

Almost out of gas! Park NOW!

No, not on the sidewalk! See the tree? Sidewalk. Get off.

Screech. Sure, this counts as parking! Who cares if you're facing the wrong way and are sticking out a bit. Okay, a lot. Better fix that.

Almost to work! Just walk 38 blocks to the building! Good luck! And remember to watch out for buses…!

On second thought, maybe making great leaps over large bodies of water is a piece of cake.

________

*Favorite in the same way you might have a certain tooth you like to get pulled over and over again.

In which we try another video game

As we noted in the last post, one video game in particular has been invading the a Princess’s dreams at night, so it is probably wise to move on to something different for a while. Something maybe where we stay anchored to the ground instead of launching into the air.

We tried the flag football game, and for the first 17 games or so, the play was pretty predictable. We would race to the middle of the field, pick up the flag, and immediately it would be stolen by the opposition—a burly guy who apparently lost his razor decades ago—who would lumber to the goal line with it, with us in hot but fruitless pursuit, as we could never make our characters run fast enough to catch him. Instead of the game intruding on our dreams, our dreams invaded the game—that seemingly universal dream where you can't make yourself go anywhere fast.

Two against one, and we still never won. This could have something to do with the fact that the one or two times the Princess did miraculously take possession of the flag and attempt to run with it, she sort of forgot that she should run in the opposite direction of Burly Man. But enough about that.

Finally we (meaning the Hero) devised a new strategy: he would go for the flag, and I would play defense and lure Burly Man away with a nice shiny new razor. Failing that, knock him down. This worked quite well, and in the following rounds we were rewarded with several new opponents all at the same time.

Soon, events were happening so quickly that I learned to just hover my finger over the button that picks things up, so that when I came in contact with the flag I was at the ready and could grab it and run. But this at-the-ready business can sometimes backfire, as I realized when I suddenly heard the Hero say, “Hey, put me down. Put me down!”

Oops. Mistaking one’s teammate for the flag is somewhat embarrassing. I felt like a neighbor's dog proudly bringing back the stick for another throw and realizing, “Wrong stick! Wrong stick!”

It is also embarrassing to mistake one’s teammate for oneself. On numerous occasions I rather astounded myself at the brilliant moves I was making against ninja enemies in another game. I did allow myself one teeny-tiny doubt about these brilliant moves, because they seemed only marginally connected to what I was actually doing with the controller, but who was I to argue with brilliance?

In the midst of my self-congratulation I would notice—usually when the Hero would say, “Hey, where are you?”—my real self off in a corner somewhere, pointlessly going around and around like a windup toy in a very tiny shoebox.

It should be noted that the Hero, too, on occasion has tried frantically to move me around, thinking I am him.* Finally, in another brilliant move, we (meaning the Hero) figured out how to change the color of what we are wearing so we can tell ourselves apart.

So watch out, Burly Man. We know what we're doing now. Maybe. If only I could get out of this shoebox...

_______

*Luckily, this confusion is generally not a problem in real life.

The Christmas gift that keeps on giving

The Princess is in the air on her way to what is supposed to be Hawaii, but nothing seems right. The plane hops from mountain top to mountain top. Planes aren't supposed to do that, are they? And where is the Hero?

Now the Princess is whipping along a road at super incredible speed in some kind of personal vehicle over which she seems to have little control, when suddenly a huge chasm opens in front of her. Her vehicle leaps off the end of the cliff and

Another restful sleep hijacked by video-game-induced dreams. The Princess wonders if the Hero also suffers from this. Nope, he cheerfully tells her later when she inquires.

Darn video games.

The Hero got a new game system for Christmas (“A box is coming with my name on it but you should wrap it up for me for Christmas”). I say it is his because although I play too, I can only do so when he gives me the controller and says “Okay, start.” The first level of any game has nothing to do with getting past gatekeepers or avoiding falling gnomes. The first level—which I have yet to master—is turning on the remote. No, make that figuring out which combination of our five remotes will magically unlock the mystery of starting the game system. Five.

After that, well, bring on the falling gnomes.

The harrowing dreams come from a game wherein you hurtle down a path—I use that word loosely—in pursuit of a goal. For most players, this goal is 1st place across the finish line and leaving their competitors in the dust. For me, the goal is a little more prosaic: to not be so traumatized by those jumps across the chasms that I dream about them later that night.

So far, even such a prosaic goal has eluded me.

I have, however, progressed to trying out my special powers in this game.  These are very useful things. A character might be able to, for example, instantly encase himself in a bubble shield that protects him from other competitors, or from flying chickens (of which there seem to be a great deal in this particular game). Or attach a rocket booster to the car and blow through every obstacle.

My defining special power in one game was: flowers. When you deploy the special flower feature, a plume of lovely flowers goes out from the car and a sweet little tune plays for several seconds. As far as I could tell, this special power rated pretty negatively on the usefulness scale.

However, eventually I discovered that in a stressful situation—such as being chased by dinosaurs who live to devour flower-emitting vehicles—deploying the flower power was extremely soothing, what with that catchy little tune and bright, cheery buds flying around. Ahhh, my own virtual Prozac.

And I started to be proud of my flower power.

And then I discovered an even better use for it, the one no doubt intended by the developers all along. When the Hero was behind me, the flowers streaming from my vehicle would stick to his windshield, thus causing a few moments of mayhem where he couldn’t see the road. Ah ha!

Unfortunately for me, the Hero is hardly ever behind me in this game. Or in any others. Luckily, there is still the Prozac effect.

All dressed up—and don't want to go anywhere

During our recent snowstorm we witnessed a few regrettable acts of indignities involving pets. Now, we realize that most pet owners love their animals dearly, but some may be lacking a little in perspective. Here is an incident we witnessed when neighbors began to gather outside to try to find their vehicles after the blizzard (“Are you SURE you parked the car right here? ‘Cuz I only see a tree here”), from the point of view of the pet whose dignity was compromised. If we could get inside the thoughts of this pet—we’ll call him Tiny Dog—I think we'd find something like this:

We're going outside? Finally. Yay!

Wait, what are those?

PLEASE don't put little snow boots on me. Do you know what happens to dogs who wear little snow boots in public? Nooooo...

Fine, fine, I’ll wear the little snow boots. But...don't take me outside in them, okay?

Okay, not a bad idea to go outside after being cooped up all these hours, if you get my meaning...and hey, maybe none of the other dogs will see me.

Wait, what's that? Why are you pointing your phone at me? No, no pictures in these little snow boots—!

[Snap.]

Fine, take a picture. But DO NOT post it on Facebook. Sure, YOUR friends will think it's cute. I'll be the laughingstock of...hey, why are you pushing all those buttons on the phone? What are you DOING?

You posted it, didn't you. Oh, I am so toast. I will never be able to hold my head up again.

Hey, what's this? NOW what are you doing?

Of course. There is a hat. Ya know, I'm okay with the hat. Just pull it down a little more, would you, please? Annnnd a little more.

I can't see a thing. Perfect. Snap away.