the toughest.

Oof, I am the worst blog mama.  Again, it has to do with the whole summer thing.  Today, for instance, I was incredibly busy eating blueberries and doing yoga.  I have a story, though, which at least one of you is already sick of.  (Sorry!) 

My dad is some tough shit in some ways and a delicate flower in others.  He's from the prairies, where it gets incredibly cold in the winter.  He played all the manly man sports: football, rugby, hockey.  He works at a pre-cast company in some sort of capacity, where I think he mainly hurts himself and yells at people, all while doing complex mathematics.  All tough shit stuff.  I am kind of afraid to delve into the delicate flower side, which sort of proves its existence.

Anyways.  Yesterday he some how managed to fall over into a rose bush, which is itself kind of funny.  (Okay, not really.  A bit.)  His first reaction was to yell out "I'm fine!" and his second was to get the gardener (female, wealthy, flower enthusiast) to drive him to emerg.  In his bare feet and bathing suit bottoms.  The problem?  He had four inches of rose bush cane driven into his forearm.  The very end, which was in fact splintered off from the main chunk, was just poking out of a dime-sized hole.  Ew, amiright?

His first line to the triage nurse was "I brought you roses, but you'll have to dig for them."

He learned everything about everyone in ER.  The only person home from hospital who tells you the life history of everyone he met rather than how he's doing when you ask him.  My dad is the king of chatty.  The undisputed fucking ruler of the kingdom of chatty.

The doctor spent a while picking out bits of rose bush and was pretty happy with the job when he looked back in and realized that the piece he'd taken out was only the beginning.  Hello, excavation.

Dad got some crazy painkillers and a big arm bandage.  He looks like he tried to kill himself with a fireplace poker.  Still loopy from the drugs, I imagine, he left the hospital and walked home in his barefeet instead of calling one of us for a ride.  Crazy bastard.

One time my dad told me that I'm the child that reminds him most of himself.  Gulp. "Not Spencer?" I squeaked, thinking of my enormous younger brother who quotes my dad ad nauseum.  Nope.  Apparently I, like him, have delicate flowerness and a bad temper.  Okay, true.

You know, dads are all crazy, each in their own unique and embarrassing way.  Mine?  Totally embarrassing sometimes, but also the fucking toughest.  I like to think that's an aspect of his personality that I got too - the capacity to look at some disgusting injury and think ah, shit ... and then lay the greatest line ever down on the triage nurse.  I think that sort of calmness and wittiness in the face of something a bit horrible is a really valuable trait.

So thanks, Dad.  You're tough shit, and maybe I will be one day too.

 

summertime.

I haven't posted in weeks!  I feel like such a bad blog mama.  Truth is, when summer rolls around, I become allergic to my computer.  I prefer to dive into books on the deck than sit inside, mindlessly scrolling through endless online shopping sites and gossip blogs.  Summer is for yoga outside, for sprinting into the lake, for scandalizing strangers while cycling in a skirt.

I barely have a real job right now.  In fact, I'm on a payroll for about eight hours a week as I show students around UBC's Okanagan campus and do administrative work for my boss.  The rest of the time, I'm basically acting as my mom's personal assistant.  I bike around and buy fresh produce from local fruit stands, stuffing beets and carrots and cherries into my backpack greedily.  I do errands with my grandma, carrying bottles of local cider to the car for her and giggling about how disorganized we both are.  I'm re-doing the deck, too, in a project that reminds me of a summer I spent scraping and painting a very wealthy man's enormous, enormous, enormous deck, stairs, railings, and dock with my best friend.

I'm happy.  I'm probably spending too much time in the sun, but I usually remember to wear sunscreen.  My friends and I wander downtown, drink homemade ice tea, laugh about all the boys we know (or wish we knew).  We all wear stacks of bracelets and too-short cutoffs, even on days when the sky is cloudy and grey.  Summer is togetherness, is beaming sunshine on my shoulders and forearms, is the thoughtfulness of novels and crosswords instead of my computer screen.  On a perfect July night, I sometimes feel like I might live forever.

photo cred: nicole!