Kind of a burner Sunday

I got this friend from way back on the grounds, you know, Smacks Peel. He got his wife all in the family way recently and I offered up the old Smuckles support style in throwing the baby shower. We had a good five dozen over this afternoon, prowling the cold cuts I ordered from Lucchesi's while slapping their brats on the head and wiping noses, etc. I put out a mean spread, even trying my hand at making tomato roses with the vegetable peeler (like Chinese dudes do). I have to say it turned out pretty well.

Smacks is a real kind guy with a good heart and he got this idea into his head that a fun shower game would be if the dudes had to wear this heavy backpack on their fronts, filled with water bottles, and run a timed course. First the dude would don the backpack on his front side, then tie his untied shoe, then run up a flight of stairs and down again, then eat either a pickle or a prune and show his tongue when it was done. After the stopwatch stopped he would choose a hand-written card from a deck and it would either add or subtract seconds from his time ("Constipation! +20 Seconds!"). (The cards had pregnant lady problems on them.)

I had originally recused myself from the event since I was hosting the shower, but you know as these things go I was pretty quickly goaded into participating. Bad thing was, I had asked Conchita to get me up way too early to start organizing the shower and I had been in a pretty ucky way from the night before. I guess I cracked my first Chimay around 9am, just easing into the day, you know. By the time the crew cheered me into the Pregnancy Simulator apparatus I was pretty far gone and thin on the inside. I was wheezing as I tied the shoe, and barely stood up again to run for the stairs. When I did run for the stairs I felt like someone was pressure-shooting Whip-Its into my ears. Fortunately no one was following me so when I got halfway up the stairs I fell into a heap and barfed kind of a light mealy substance.

After a short bit I heard someone coming to check on me so I sort of weakly scrambled up the stairs and hid in the laundry room.

I was passed out in there until just a few hours ago, and when I looked around it seemed that everyone from the shower had left. Fine, good. There was even this huge pile of gift wrap in the middle of the living room that I guess Conchita will have to clean up. Anyhow, I ought to e-mail Smacks in a few and see how it went. I'm guessing I didn't win, but you never know.