Truths and Half Truths

You What ...?

This morning, I got up at 8:30 to make breakfast for our three remaining guests.  My wife's sisters and a brother-in-law were all that remained of a steady stream of guests that started Wednesday, July 5.

Since guests began arriving, first in a trickle but soon after in one huge clump, we have had, at our comfy little farm house, the following events:

2 medium-sized parties.
1 giant party with live music and full-on BBQ
2 sit-down dinners for 12 or more
1 buffet dinner for 12 or more
2 sit down dinners for 8
2 sit-down breakfasts
8 informal gatherings and at least that many "Let's just stop at our place for a beer and figure out what happens next ... "

Average number of houseguests on a given night:  4
Number of bottles of wine consumed:  49
Number of empty bottles of liquor to be recycled:  12
Number of cases of beer/coolers to be recycled:  19
Number of kegs of beer consumed:  2

Number of lobsters consumed:  55
Number of 5 pound bags of mussels consumed:  6
Number of bags of chips/snacks consumed:  24
Number of burgers slapped on the grille:  52
Number of hot dogs/sausages consumed:  35
Number of quarts of strawberries consumed:  9

It has been energizing and tiring, rewarding and frustrating, heart-warming and exasperating.  I love both my family and my wife's family, and I adore our dear friends, but I think anybody reading this will understand that this morning, I was not saddened at the thought of finally having the house back and having nothing to do but clean in blissful silence.

So, you know, it wasn't one of the highlights of the week this morning at 9:30 when my sister-in-law checked their tickets and said "Oh, shit.  We don't leave at 11:35!  We leave at 9:35!  We missed our goddamn flight!".

Give me a fair judge and a compassionate jury and no court in the country would convict me.

Update:

They finally got away late this morning (coincidentally and not ironically, thank you Alanis Morrisette, at 11:35).  There is quiet in the land.

I want to reiterate that I do love my sisters-in-law.  But I think even they would be unsurprised to hear that there was a certain degree of relief when they boarded their flight.

So, to add to the tally above:

Number of fresh new bumps in the crawl space:  0

 

The Wedding Album

... is on the right.  Enjoy.  I did.

So, It Went OK, I Guess ...

Still inundated by family, still being hosts, but since you're curious, yeah, it went just fine ...

She wasn't too terribly homely ...

People said we didn't look all that bad coming down the aisle together ...

And (note the footwear) she was able to maintain her grace and elegance throughout the evening, even when the dance started ...

I will, at some point, get a raft of pictures up and onto an album on the sidebar.  But not today.  Today I am still surrounded by family and friends, there is still beer in the keg, there are still stories to be told, and the celebration continues.  I'll be back when I can ...

This Vehicle Stops For Real Life

While I'm enjoying telling the story of my mom and dad and how they came together, I need to pause for a bit as present day love takes precedence over the past.  To be more specific:

    My daughter is getting married this weekend.

    OK, let me try that again: (ahem) My daughter is getting married this weekend.

    Nope.  Still not registering.  I can say the words, I can write them out, I can sing them, shout them from the rooftop, or tap them out in Morse Code but they still don’t seem to be catching hold in my brain.

My daughter?  Is getting married?  This weekend?

    Even with the different punctuation, it’s more than my brain can handle.

    For one thing, it is physically impossible for me to have a daughter who is old enough to be getting married.  That would make me ... well, old.  And I’m a lot of things, but old?  No way.

    Besides, it is patently ridiculous to suggest that a young girl I can clearly remember having to gently push across the threshold of her nursery school on the first day could be considered of marriageable age.  I mean, we do have laws in this country.

    Okay, she’s not in nursery school any more, obviously, but it was just a few months ago that I dropped her off for her first day of middle school.  She didn’t want to take the bus and I was up early in the morning anyway, so what the hell.  As I dropped her off, I expected her to leap out of the still-rolling car to avoid the humiliation of actually being seen with her father because “ ... Omigod he is sooooo embarrassing!”

    Instead, she leaned over and gave me a kiss.  Right there, in the car, in front of all her friends.  And it occurs to me even as I write this that never once has she ever bailed out of giving me a kiss goodbye, no matter what she was doing or how many cool friends were around, waiting to tease her.  There’s incontrovertible evidence that she’s a little girl, right there.

    The point I am making is,  these memories are far too clear for them to be more than a quarter of a century old.  They must be far more recent.  Ergo, I couldn't possibly have a daughter getting married this weekend.  Thank you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. 

    I will now go and weep the bitter tears of a father for whom everything is happening just a bit too quickly.

    When she was a baby, I thought we'd never get that damn kid out of diapers.  Then she was barely walking when all of a sudden whoooosh it was her first day of kindergarten.  But elementary school dragged on and on until I realized she'd somehow made it into junior high when I wasn't looking.

    It was only a week or so later that I was helping her pick her high school electives - and then of course she had to decide what her major was going to be in University and  that was only a month ago.  So don't even try to tell me she's getting married.  Not buyin'.

Maybe it's just a dream.  That's it.  I'll wake up and she'll be bringing in a handful of dandelions to put in a vase for Mom.  Or she'll be rushing out the front door to find the bird that hit the picture window, and making a little nest in a Kleenex box and bringing the damn thing in to me and asking me to make it better. 

Or maybe I'll wake up to find her climbing that stupid tree that I've told her to stay out of a million times, then calling me outside to see how high she's gotten and making my knees go weak when I look up at her.

Well ... I can still look up at her, but now she's standing right beside me.  And my knees still go weak, but ... well, she's always had that effect on me anyway. 

And this weekend, unless someone fixes the tear in the Space/Time Continuum, she’ll take me by the arm and support me as I walk her down the aisle because I know my knees will be too weak for that.

I need to go and lay down, close my eyes, get some perspective on all this.  But now I'm afraid to do that. 

I mean, you can see why. 

Look what happened the last time I closed my eyes for a bit.

                     *****************************************************************

So, I promise to come back to the story.  I'm just not sure whether I'll be able to do much this weekend.  You'll be the first to know.

Faith

Today, I was over at my daughter's new house helping out with the settling in process.  Part of that is - of course - changing things that are not quite to your taste.  So, for example, if you are staring at an ornate fake crystal chandelier, and aren't expecting Liberace to drop by, you might want to replace it with something a little more subdued.  And for that, you might call Dad, if Dad is the kind of guy who has, over the years, learned how to do stuff like replace electrical fixtures.

I actually don't mind doing stuff like that.  I know my way around circuits and such, but I am  - let's be honest - a bit lazy.  So, I went down into her basement and opened the circuit box and saw that none of the circuits had been labelled (how hard is that to do?  For Chrisssake, it takes like one second with a Sharpie.  Jaysus). 

Well, my options were 1) spend a half hour flicking circuits over and having a person upstairs yell "Nope, that was the hall!  Nope, that was the back bedroom!".; or 2) Go back upstairs and just be really careful when I replaced the fixture.

I chose 2.

I was on a ladder, wrapping the lead from the new fixture around the hot wires, when my older daughter said "Did you shut the power off?"

I mumbled something about the switch being off, of course, what am I, crazy?  (Which is totally NOT the same thing.  The switch can be off, but you touch two hot leads, you'll end up on your ass across the room going "Whoa ... anybody else smell burnt toast?")

My younger daughter immediately sniffed out my ruse.  She said to her Mom, "Could you get your cell phone out?"

"OK, what do you need?"

"I need you to dial 9 and 1, and we'll just wait for Dad to come off the ladder at 100 MPH before you punch the other 1."

"Fine, Christ, I'll go figure out the damn circuit breakers."

And More Passages ...

... this time with my older daughter, Erin.  Erin is having an exciting year, what with this last May and this happening in July. 

(side note:  I love that my daughter has registered for gifts at Canadian Tire .  It removes any doubt as to her DNA.  For her entire life, she has seen me dash to the mailbox and pore over the weekly flyers like some perv leafing through the latest issue of Jugs 'n' Booties, which, if it isn't a title for a girlie magazine it totally should be.  In latter years when the new flyer has arrived, the girls have taken to rolling their eyes and saying "Oh, don't even bother trying to talk to him - he's all wrapped up in his tool porn." )

But before all the matrimonial goodness, Erin and (I have to get better at doing this:) my *coughfutureson-in-lawcough* are moving from their apartment in the centre of the city out to a house they bought in the country.  A house that is approximately 1/4 of a mile from where I'm sitting.  (Coincidence?  Erin swears it is.  OK.)

And that big event is today.

So, today I hop in a rented van and go with them to supervise the move into their first new home.  (What?  Of course I'll supervise.  When I was in my 20s, I would help friends move.  I have done my time.  I am a Mover Emeritus.  They're lucky to have my advice.  They're young and their backs are strong.  I'm the brains of this operation.)

They just pulled up and we're waiting for her sister to get changed from her pyjamas and be ready to go.  I don't remember ever seeing Erin this excited.  If it seems extra bright in your part of the world, you can thank the spill-off from this tiny Island, where Erin's face is pretty much lighting things up.

Remember the most excited you've ever been?  Yeah, triple it.

Passages ...

This past Saturday, Allison Susan Ling graduated from the University of Prince Edward Island.  The Chancellor conferred upon her the degree of Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in English " ... with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto.".   

(This, she claims, entitles her to correct other peoples' spelling and grammar.  I hope she does not become too drunk with that power - people who are always correcting other peoples' spelling and grammar quickly become tiresome.)

As you can see from the picture, it was a day of sober contemplation and quiet reflection for Allison.

Incidently, as long as I'm in full-on proud braggart mode, let me just mention that she was presented with the W.B.Yeats Award, which is given each year to an English major or honours student with a minimum grade average of 80% who has contributed significantly to the intellectual and social life of the Department.  The award, of course is named for a famous poetry guy, Yeats (in some countries, this is pronounced "Keats"). 

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

-  W.B. Yeats