CherkyB, Eco-Warrior

Boy, when you try to be an environmentalist, it always ends up backfiring.

Take today, for instance. I rushed home from work so that I could taxi HannahC over to her swimming lesson on time, and I was greeted by my loving wife, The Mrs., with, "HannahC is still getting ready. She's had a bit of a day." In the C household, that means there have been some disciplinary problems during the day. The Mrs. then went upstairs to try to hurry things along, and I heard a continuous stream of snarls and squeals, which is how HannahC communicates her displeasure when she is angry.

Apparently, being a homeschooler, she hasn't picked up the proper vocabulary of invectives yet. Odd. I'll have to work on that.

Upon her eventual arrival in the kitchen, she looked at me, put one hand on her hip, pointed at me, and said, "Daddy, I am the maddest that's possible at you!"

"Why?"

"You threw your cigarette butt right in the lawn!"

My immediate reaction was to desire to paraphrase Ratatouille, which is odd because it is an eminently forgettable moovie. "What you need is a little perspective. That's it. You need some fresh, clear, well seasoned perspective."

Then, I thought about how I could explain to her how I don't smoke cigarettes, and what she found was the stub of a wonderful Arturo Fuente cigar, something normally out of my price range. But I knew she knew this (well, the cigar vs. cigarette part, probably not the Arturo Fuente part) and had just misspoken.

Faced with these two alternative retorts, I chose neither. Instead, I stuffed my mouth full of Cheetos puffs, as I had been snacking when she showed up. See, that's the wonderful thing about being a man - I can realize someone had a bad day and just let sleeping dogs lie. I don't have to turn every goddamned little thing into a confrontation.

Plus I really like Cheetos.

The interesting thing here is that it is all Ellie's fault that HannahC is mad at me. See, a couple weeks prior to our visit out there, she got all excited about me meeting her boyfriend, a fellow known around these parts as, "The Locksmith," but whom she refers to on her blog as, "D_," as she likes to cop the style of classical French novelists like Dumas and de Sade. In one of the many IM conversations we had about her excitement for me meeting The Locksmith, she said, "D_ wants to smoke cigars with you."

I believe now that she just made that up. However, at the time I assumed that this was true, so I started quizzing her on what kind of cigars he smoked and where the local cigar shops were in Barfalo. Being a woman, she didn't have any answers at all, but it was easy enough for me to find a local shop not too far from my parents' house by using this really cool thing called google maps. So I got it into my head that I'd need to set aside an hour for cigar smoking while on my vacation. You wouldn't think that'd be such a difficult thing, but you've never vacationed in Barfalo with two families warring over your time.

At some point, I figured we were having a big barbecue on Mothers' Day, and it'd be a great time to stooge out by the grill while cooking. So I went off to the local shop on Saturday morning and got a couple of Fuentes. Special occasion, so I splurged.

Then, of course, multiple things transpired to destroy the cigar-smoking experience. First, being Barfalo, it poured. It was beautiful almost the entire week we were there, right up to about an hour before grilling time. Then it decided to pour. On top of that, The Locksmith decided he had to "work" that night and didn't come to the BBQ. And then, of course, I had forgotten about Ellie's couple-days-later follow-up to my queries about The Locksmith's cigar preferences which went like this, "D_ doesn't smoke cigars. He chews tobacco," which, of course, made me wonder whether he wanted to smoke cigars with me in the first place or if it was all made up to feed some sort of bizarre desire in Ellie that her Future Husband, RIP, get along smashingly with her brother-in-law who lives 1500 miles away the one or two days every 3-4 years they would ever see each other.

At any rate, I ended up bringing the cigars home with me unsmoked. I slapped them in the humidor as soon as we got home, as 5 days in a baggie can't possibly be good for them. (The first three days were in Barfalo, where the humidity never got below 85%, so the baggie actually kept them dry rather than keeping them moist.)

Saturday night came around, and like clockwork The Mrs. declared she wasn't feeling well (lest I get any ideas) and went to bed at 9pm. I took it as an opportunity to sit in the hot tub, finish off a bottle of wine, and stooge. All you married guys know what I'm talking about. You spend a lot of time recreating a wonderful evening with your wife, only she's not there so you substitute alcohol and tobacco...

After about an hour of stooging pleasure, I left the stub in my gigantic Partagás cigar ashtray to be disposed of later. On Sunday, I disposed of it by composting it in the lawn. It is, after all, nothing but a bunch of rolled-up, dried leaves. No chemicals, no paper. Nothing but leaves.

And this is the thanks I get for my environmental consideration.