Category: Fambly

Wherein I tell stories about my clan.

¡Pura Vida!

You may recall that, back in September, I vacated Durham for a week in Costa Rica with my super-friend Shiv (a.k.a. my sister-wife). You’re most likely saying to yourself, “Well, that must’ve been pretty dope,” and if so, YOU ARE A GENIUS AND TOTALLY CORRECT.

Evidence:

  • We stayed at the base of a volcano for a coupla/three nights.
¿See it over there? ¡That’s Arenal!
  • We went to a hot spring spa and sat in 100-degree waterfalls that came off that volcano.
  • There was a parrot named Estefanía who lived at/around our hotel, and
she would harass the workers until they gave her bananas
or “bañañas” as Shiv and I took to calling them for no good reason.
  • All breakfasts included fried plantains. All breakfasts everywhere should include fried plantains.
  • We ziplined over the jungle.
Seriously. Will you look at that.
Shiv=badass (She kept wanting to go upside-down and stuff, and the guides were like, “OK, crazy lady.”)
  • We went on a gorgeous hike.
What.

Also,

  • We met a baby sloth named Cheu, and
he did ET-phone-home finger with Shiv.
He also slothfully scratched his armpit for a long time. It was adorable.
  • We had two fantastic beach days.
Here I’m doing the Handstand Everywhere You Go requisite for people who do CrossFit. (I’m both proud of and embarrassed by this photo because, hey, that’s a pretty good handstand but, Jesús, you could land planes on my thighs.)

(I know. I need to cut that shit out.)

My favorite picture of the trip: Shiv en la bahía.

The only obstacles we had to overcome, other than the torrential rains for the first few days, were the incorrigible scavenger animals. To wit, the raccoons and coatis:

But also one morning, a band of capuchin monkeys terrorized/delighted (tomato/tomahto) the restaurant where we had our breakfast. I had wondered why the waitstaff didn’t put boxes of sugar packets on the tables — you had to ask for them — but it’s because the capuchins are junkie-monkeys. They will run through the restaurant, snatch the sugar packets right off your table (sometimes the whole box), and

scamper up the trees to get their fix.

The funniest part was that if they happened in their caper to grab any packets of artificial sweetener, they would throw them on the ground. (“Pump that garbage in another monkey’s face,” said the capuchins.)

[Side note: I told my 10-year-old niece this story, and she wrote the following poem.

Monkeys Don’t Like Splenda

I was sitting in the restaurant, (I was on vacation,)
I was taking lots of pictures I would send to my relations.
I got a big white envelope; it didn’t say the sender,
All it said upon its face was; MONKEYS DON’T LIKE SPLENDA.

I sat eating bananas, pondering those words,
I was in Costa Rica, but it did seem quite absurd.
Maybe they were picky eaters, or didn’t like the food,
Either way, this or that, I thought it was just rude.

I asked the waitress, bout the note, the manager’s the sender,
Each table gets one, and it’s true, that MONKEYS DON’T LIKE SPLENDA.

Then a monkey raced down and grabbed the sugar packets, 
Dumped the Splenda, dumped the box, and just made quite a racket.
I learned a quite good lesson; that healthy isn’t ALWAYS good,
Cause if monkeys don’t like Splenda, I don’t think that I should! 

I’m not biased or anything, but I’m pretty sure my niece is a genius?

End side note.]

Shiv and I sat on the beach late in the afternoon of our last day. Pieces of the navy blue mountains across the bay, which itself turned slowly from aqua to slate, chipped off and floated skyward. A lone trawler chugged its way toward the open Pacific. The branches of the guayaba tree stirred above us, and every time we stood up to leave, the yaw-kish of the waves hitting the beach lulled us back to our chairs,

while the sun became an ever-tinier pink sliver and disappeared.

The common Costa Rican expression pura vida means a lot of things, including hello and goodbye. If you say it about a person, it means s/he’s good people. But it also translates loosely as “Life is good”.

Which, in Costa Rica, it certainly was.

Pura vida.

Crikey! I Almost Forgot Retrobruxist Friday 11/9/12

Note: For Avid Bruxistists who are resistant to change, I’m giving you a heads-up that this blog will be getting a makeover in the next week or two. Go ahead and do your pre-coping now.

This week in 2009, I got a phone call at in the middle of the night, and I was awake to take it! And it was for the best reason!

(Three years later, and no signs of slowing down. Pretty proud of myself.)

Two years ago, I wrote about a very special date. You remember it. It was very special.

I voted the crap out of this election, but a year ago, I elected to do something else on election day. Something real dumb. I got calls from a producer a few times after that, but I always dodged them. Here’s to making better choices this election cycle.

Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.

A Sense of Place

I’m taking this writing workshop, which is totally dope, but requiring me to read a lot and write a lot, and the blog is being elbowed out, I’m afraid. For the next five Thursdays, at least. I’m having trouble getting to everything, including, you know, my job and grocery shopping. So here’s a piece of homework I did for the class, not the usual stuff I write here, but whatever. We had to “create a sense of place”, that is, think back on a place we used to live and develop it for the reader, using the good ol’ five senses. And it’s a story, of sorts, not one specific visit to my old homestead in Boone but an amalgam.

Anyway.

It’s dark. It’s always dark with the Roman shades down. Mom made them when I was, what?, seven? Designed to be reversible, but by the time I thought about reversing them, the other side was sun-bleached and splotchy. So I just kept the maroon side in. Between them and the dark bead board walls and ceiling, and the navy blue carpet, it can stay dark in here all day in the middle of July.

But it’s not July. It’s December. And I’m the first of the clan back at the old homestead for Christmas. It’s just me (the baby) and Dad.

The fringe of the canopy flutters. The furnace has kicked on again and it’s blowing up through the register at the foot of the bed. In an old house with old insulation, my room and the little bathroom are the only two rooms you can count on being warm. I curl the covers up and burrow down for another minute.

I listen for it, and there it is: the gurgle of Cove Creek. It rained yesterday, a lot. Not so much as after Bruce’s wedding when it spilled over Henson’s Branch Road, and we watched that drowned calf rush by. It didn’t occur to me to think about the farmer’s loss (I was picturing the grieving mother cow) until someone mentioned the word ‘livestock’.

Yesterday’s deluge was enough to double the creek’s usual depth to maybe two feet, probably cutting to half its size the tiny spit of land that juts out into it from the other bank—Dad always called it Nelson’s Peninsula, after Gary Nelson, the archetypal asshole neighbor across the way, a man so scary my brother and I would pick up our Big Wheels and tiptoe them past his stone lair.

The door to my bedroom is ajar—never has closed completely, only to about five inches from flush with the jam, where it screeches—wood on wood—to a halt. I hear Dad shuffling around in the kitchen, doing his damnedest to break another coffee pot I’m sure. That man has a talent.

The bed creaks as I roll off it. It’s a long way to the floor, probably three feet. When I was little, I’d take a running leap and fling myself onto the mattress, pulling my legs up on the double to make sure the monsters under my bed didn’t grab my feet mid-vault.

I pull up the covers in a half-assed attempt at making my bed. I never liked making my bed, though I enjoyed having made it. Sliding into tight sheets; calling out, “Daddyyyyyyyyyy, come tuck me iiiiiiiiiiiinnnnn.” ‘In’ was two sung notes, higher then lower. Dad would come count my covers (sheet, wool blanket, wool blanket, bedspread), kiss me on the forehead, and turn off my light. Until one August after spending the summer at Grandma’s, maybe I was ten, I don’t know. I hurled myself onto the bed, scooted under the covers, and opened my mouth to sing out. And it occurred to me, maybe not. That was the end of Dad tucking me in.

Now I walk into the kitchen, scrubbing at my eyes with the heels of my hands to adjust to that room’s brightness, and yes, of course, Dad’s there in his bathrobe, drinking coffee—he hasn’t yet misplaced today’s mug. He looks pensive as always, shuffling papers on the kitchen table, scribbling with a mostly dry magic marker, surely bought 25 years ago. (How many years will it take him to deplete the remaining art supplies of my childhood?)

The linoleum feels rubbery on my feet, but already a coating of breadcrumbs and dust is attaching itself to the soles. Dad says he sweeps. He says that. He also says he wipes down the counters. “With what? A pork chop?” my brother once asked.

This most recent coffee maker (Dad hasn’t killed it yet! Yay!) huffs like an awakening dragon. The pot is almost brewed, thank goodness. Dad looks up from his “work” (probably a mixture of manuscript notes, loose calendar pages, and articles cut out of the Mountain Times) and sees me. “Hiya, pet,” he says. “Fresh pot of coffee there. Can I make you some oatmeal?” There’s a hopeful note in his voice.

Yes, Dad. I’m 37, but yes. You can make me some oatmeal.

Can You Even Dye My Eyes to Match My Gown?

I totally forgot on Retrobruxist Friday that I was going to implement a new feature to help me get over the idea that I might look repulsive on the internet: Embarrassing Photo of the Week.

Well, I’m here to remedy that situation right now. I was going to take another jacked-up pic of myself with Photo Booth, but! I jogged up to Boone this weekend to visit The Land of Oz with my dad and brother/fam, an annual debacle of a trip about which I will have to write one of these days, and I ended up in the family room, sifting through old photo albums and taking pictures of pictures.

Let me preface this photo by saying that my mom is an excellent seamstress. Growing up, whatever I asked for, she made, including the 7th grade prom dress you’re about to see. She would take me to the fabric store, and we would flop through giant McCall’s and Simplicity pattern books together. I’d point to The Dress, whereupon we would wind through the stacks of bolts until I zeroed in on the exact right fabric.

Some notes about this magnum opus:

  • Yes, that is a double bubble-skirt. Shut up. It was very much the fashion at the time.
  • If you click the photo and see it bigger, you might think that the white fabric has tiny black polka dots on it, but you’d be wrong — those are tiny hearts.
  • No, it’s not the lighting; my legs are indeed seven shades darker than my arms. That’s because I’m wearing dancers’ tights. I didn’t own panty hose, and these were in the days before one went bare-legged to such occasions.
  • Yes, that pony-tail holder is made of the same fabric as the giant bow on my ass. (I told you my mom would do whatever I asked of her.)
  • But most importantly, really, seriously,
look at my hand.

Hahahaha. I can’t believe I didn’t take up modeling.

On a sober note, I’ve always said/thought that I’ve been a fatty since forever. It’s clear from this picture that I was not fat in 7th grade. I really did start putting on weight in 8th grade and gained 50 pounds by the end of my year in Italy, but what’s interesting is, I truly thought of myself at the time as a fat girl.

I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because it was the thing to do for middle school girls. Maybe it’s because I had been binge-eating for so long that I just assumed.

Anyway, back to important things:

(a) This dress is still in the closet upstairs in case anybody wants to borrow it.

(b) Next week: 8th grade prom dress.

Come Fly with Me

Tuesday, right at dismissal, after a shit day at work (because of a co-worker, not because of the kids; the kids are awesome this year), I headed to the airport to pick up my dad. Of course, if I hadn’t been fuming, I might’ve thought to check the flight status online before I left work and seen that it was an hour and a half delayed, but I had been, so I didn’t, and it was.

So I drove home.

An hour later I drove back to the airport, but smart me, I threw Tulip in the car because I thought, “I’ll scoop Dad, and we’ll go straight to Wa’s, where Tulip can patrol the fence and play Leap Frog with the kids.”

I pulled up to the baggage claim and looked for Dad. He wasn’t outside. I peeked in the doors but didn’t see him. A cop on a Segway, who I thought was going to chastise me for walking too far away from my car, instead gave me the phone number for the Airport Information desk and told me they would page him. (Airport Segway cop ftw!) I called, and they were really nice, and they did.

But Dad is more than a little hearing impaired and significantly ADD. I doubted he would hear the page. I waited ten minutes. Tulip was panting in the car. I called again; they paged him again. Nothing.

I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t take Tulip into the airport, but it was hot as the dickens outside, so I couldn’t leave her in the car, even for ten minutes. I called my sister. Had Dad called? No. She said there’s a place upstairs inside called The Meeting Place, and she had always met him there.

Shit.

I drove to the parking deck. Tulip and I walked to the upper level of the terminal. It occurred to me I should just walk in like I owned the joint, pit bull and all, but I chickened out when I got to the doors. The Meeting Place was a hundred yards away. I couldn’t see my dad. After ten minutes of squinting and fretting, a woman who had seen me came out and said, “I’m killing time until my flight. Do you need help?”

I said, “Thank you so much! I think my dad might be sitting over there. Can you hold my dog while I run in and check?”

She said, “Will your dog be OK with that?” I assured her she would, and the woman agreed happily. (Kindness of strangers ftw!) I jogged across the concourse and did a sweep of the waiting area. No Dad.

You’re probably asking yourself why I didn’t just call his cell phone. Well, see, because my dad is bad at technology. His most recent cell phone—and you can extrapolate about previous cell phones from this, his most recent cell phone got packed, in my father’s fashion, in a grocery bag with some other items including a bottle of mouthwash and ended up minty fresh.

But if he was in the airport, why didn’t he just call you? That’s what you’re thinking now. Because another thing my dad is bad at? Remembering phone numbers. Even phone numbers you’ve had since 2005. (Good at: losing carefully scribed lists of phone numbers placed lovingly and repeatedly in his wallet.)

I went back out to the car. And one thing you should know, if you don’t already, about the hourly parking deck at RDU is that the signs that say EXIT and have arrows—ha ha, they’re just kidding! They don’t point to exits. They point to passages that used to lead to exits which are now blocked off by concrete barriers and dividers. But—ha ha—not to exits, silly! After about six thwarted attempts to extricate myself from that goddamn garage, I was about to blow a fucking gasket. I might’ve gotten to third gear on one pass through the deck. It’s possible.

I finally found an EXIT sign that lead to the actual exit, paid a dollar for the pleasure of having parked there, and did another lap through the whole airport (Oh, hello again, Terminal 1! Big Ben! Parliament!) to swing back through the arrivals lane.

My sister called then and said Dad had left a message half an hour prior on her home phone (he had remembered that number!, but the ringer was off because it was nap time), saying he was at the baggage claim. Aw for god dog dog. Tulip was whining. I was losing it. My sister offered to come to the airport. “No!” I said. “He’s got to be twenty feet from me! I just can’t get to him!”

Seething, sweating, panting, cursing.

I took a deep breath and, once more, called Airport Information. Again, the woman was lovely. I asked could she page my dad; the only problem, see?, is he’s mostly deaf and he may not hear it. The woman said, “Can you describe your father? Maybe I can find him for you.” I gave her his specs, and we hung up. She called me back two minutes later: “I have your father standing in front of me. I’m going to walk him out to you now.” Which she did. She even carried his bag. (Airport Information staff ftw!)

Dad got into the car (“No, I didn’t hear any pages”), and we headed to Durham in the middle of rush hour traffic. My nearly-74-year-old dad had been up since 4:30 in the morning, taken two flights with a layover in Philly, and wandered around RDU for an hour and a quarter, wondering if anybody was going to get him. After about six minutes of chit chat, he smiled and said, “Ah, this is the visit I was looking forward to!”

Sweetest old bastard alive ftw.

The Cult

Sometimes people call CrossFit a cult. That’s pretty dumb. I want to say, “Do you know what the definition of cult is?” I guess when people join a group and use a certain lingo or jargon, it has the audacity to make other people uncomfortable, and all of a sudden, it’s a cult.

It’s the jargon. People don’t like jargon. If CrossFitters talk about WODs and AMRAPs and metcons—Well, I don’t understand! Gack! It must be a cult!

Eleven years ago, I took this seminar called the Landmark Forum. If you look online, you’ll find their website, which is pretty cheesy—lots of phrases like “extraordinary life” and “design your future”—and other websites full of bloviating and the cyber-equivalent of people getting red-faced and throwing their hands in the air. Negative stuff.

I personally found the Landmark Forum both eye-rollingly self-helpy… and extremely helpy for myself. Swear to god, I use what I learned that weekend pretty much every day of my life.

But, in essence, the structure of the seminar is to call people on their bullshit six ways from Sunday, and people don’t like that. We like to wallow in our bullshit until we can’t smell it anymore, and then just call it ‘reality’. (Don’t get me wrong: I still have bullshit, but I can often spot it and work through it in a shorter amount of time than I used to.)

Anyway, you’ll see it called a cult, which, again, is super dumb because the corporation (yes, it’s a business—they make that pretty goddamn clear) that puts on the Landmark Forum is like: Here’s our course, and here’s how much it costs, and we have other courses you can take if you like that one. And here’s how much they cost.

As with CrossFit, if someone does the Landmark Forum and comes out talking about rackets or enrollment conversations or “empty and meaningless”, well, he must be getting brainwashed.

But every organization uses jargon. Every organization has vocabulary specific to the industry and acronyms that save time.

At my place of business, we talk about AYP, Gifted Service Provision, and Site-based. You non-teachers tell me what any of that means without looking it up. Kids have 504s, IEPs, and PEPs; they’re labeled EC, AIG, AU, ADD, ODD, and OLT (all right, that last one just means Obnoxious Little Turd).

I bet I wouldn’t understand half the vocabulary my friend, a doctor, uses with her colleagues in a given day. Or you with yours because you’re a lawyer and, to me, tort reform is what I’ve had to do to my fruit dessert recipe since going gluten-free.

Or because you’re an IT guy, and even though my brother-in-law has explained it a million times, I just don’t understand how fax machines work. You put a picture in a phone, and it breaks into ones and zeros and gets reconstituted in another phone two thousand miles away?!

No.

Not possible.

Elves.

Even outside the workplace, organizations use their own lingo. I bet your church does, and your family. There are things in the Scott family lexicon that an outsider would never understand. Tell me, what are ‘wooly bears’? What is something that might be ‘wapsed’, and where might it be ‘wapsed’?

And stuff you might understand, but if you didn’t know us, it’s possible you’d think we were mentally impaired. Like, we say we love our chother because when my sister was little, that’s what she said instead of ‘each other’. If two people speak the same words simultaneously, my siblings and I will certainly say, in a deep southern drawl, “Y’all must have ESPN!” because Mrs. Harris, our sophomore high school English teacher, seriously didn’t know the difference between extra-sensory perception and the highest-rated American TV sports network.

One of my groups of friends has a whole language we call The Worst. We say things like “also too”, use a lot of flat vowels, and waggle our fingers at the sky while proclaiming, “Their body temperature is quite low.” Because all that stuff means something to us.

But we have no charismatic leader; nobody’s driving a wedge between us and our families; we’re not forking over our life savings to the organization; and we certainly don’t think our bat-shit way is the only path to salvation.

So, can we cool it on calling groups cults?

Except Scientology. That shit is a cult.

P.S. If you’re curious, wooly bears are fuzzy footie pajamas that zip from ankle to neck, and something that might be wapsed is a wet towel. Where? On your bedroom floor.

And you’ll get in trouble for that.

 

The Foster Chronicles: Tulip, Week 17

Don’t know who Tulip is? Start here.

Day 1

MI

NI-

POO

DLE

for breakfast playdate!!!

(He pisses—no joke—eleven times in my yard. And that’s only the ones I see. I wonder if it drives Redford crazy when he goes out there and finds this fucking Napoleon has planted his tiny flag all over Redford’s territory.)

As I’m walking out for work, dude drives up in a pick-up asking if I’ve seen his little white dog, and I let him know Mini-Poodle just left. We chat for a minute. His name’s Jorge. I tell him how well my dogs get along with his. He says, “I know, I couldn’t believe it the first time I saw it happen, I was like, ‘Oh my gahd, those are big dogs!'” He apologizes for Mini-Poodle’s trespasses. I tell him not to worry about it. Oh, how my attitude has changed about that little muppet.

Day 2

Gark! So many corrections when we walk! In a 25-minute loop, I correct Violet a dozen times, Redford only twice, and Tulip an average of every sixth step. Not joking. So frustrating. She’s learned other things. Why can’t she learn this?

Probably because I stopped walking in circles. I’m too tired. I’m tired, and I’m in that feel-bad-don’t-sleep-feel-bad cycle, and I’ve never been less inspired to start a new school year, and I don’t want to walk in fucking circles.

I go to the gym. None of my friends are there. Everything ass to knee is still burny, or as we say, Meredith Baxter Burny, from too many back squats on Saturday. And for the first time ever, I turn around and walk out.

Day 3

I’m at work for a long time, so when I get home, we do the 2.5-mile loop which we haven’t done in weeks. Twice the walk, twice the corrections. Tulip’s real bad at this.

Day 4

I keep taking Tulip into the yard on-leash to try to get the dogs to interact, but Redford and Violet are always so hot after our walks that they just stand on the deck waiting to go into the air conditioning.

Day 5

I decide to try the reintroduction before our walk. Redford runs laps around the shed. Tulip really wants to join him. At one point, Tulip approaches Violet, and I realize I’m too terrified. This is never going to happen.

Tulip and I walk circles in the driveway. She actually does pretty well and sits when I tell her to.

Day 6

To raise awareness of Breed-specific Legislation and the harm that it can do, CCB posts on Facebook pictures of all the adopt-a-bulls with the caption “I am Lennox. End BSL.”

A couple people comment on the photo of Tulip that they want to adopt her. I don’t get my hopes up because people say stuff like that all the time. Except that I do get my hopes up. Kind of a lot.

Day 7

We go to Auntie Wa’s house for dinner, and Tulip does this for about 45 minutes:

When we get in the car, she does this all the way home:

We need to go to Auntie Wa’s more often.

Neither of the people who commented on her photo follow up about adoption.

The Foster Chronicles: Tulip, Week 18

Yo Soy El Machete

I needed to borrow my sister’s truck to help a friend transport a grill, so I headed up to her place on 4th of July morning and found Wa, brow knitted, picking up yard waste. A few minutes prior, she told me, she had startled a copperhead who was resting underneath a bush, and it had slithered its way across the yard. And now she couldn’t find it.

And I don’t exactly want to French kiss snakes, but my sister— You know how we all have a thing? Snakes are her thing. Last year, a black snake got into her house, and we agreed she pretty much had PTSD for months afterward.

Now, another snake. She called my brother-in-law who was an hour away with the kids, and he reminded her of the machete in the shed, which she fetched. Then she tiptoed around the perimeter of the yard until she called to me that she had found the snake again.

“Right there,” she said, pointing.

I looked. “Right where?” I said.

“Right there, under the fence.”

I moved closer. “I can’t see it,” I said.

“Under the slat with the hole in it.” I squinted. I turned my head. I leaned in. Oh, shit! Right there. If it was a snake, it’d woulda bit me.

As it were.

At first, I was all, Hat tip on your camo, little man. And then I stepped back and was like, why are my knees all gushy?

About then, Wa’s neighbor came over, and we pointed out the viper. Honest, I was kinda hoping he’d jump in and say, “You ladies go put your feet up inside; I’ll handle this varmint.” But he just kept looking at it… and looking at it… and frowning, and I thought, I’ma have to kill this reptile mydamnself.

The animal poked his slithery head out from under the fence, and for a minute, I felt bad for him. He looked kinda skeered. But then I imagined my nieces and nephew, skipping barefoot to the trampoline, and I was all, Oh hell no, you’re gonna die today, little friend.

The neighbor-man put the shovel on one side of the fence and nudged the snake my way. I took a deep breath, lifted the machete, and went all Game of Thrones on his ass (neck).

I wish I could say I got him in one whack, but my hands were shaking and it took two for sure. And then I whacked him again for making my hands shake. Asshole.

Neighbor-man pulled him out from under the fence, laid him on a paving stone, and gave him a chop with the shovel for good measure. Thanks for nothing, neighbor-man.

For reference, that slab is four foot square.*

Naturally,  I had to let Facebook know. (Click for bigger.)

Twice.

On that one, my old boyfriend from Mexico was all “Huh?” so then I had to brag in Spanish.

So there you go. One of my friends commented that, with this act, I earned a place on her speed-dial. Another told me he was going to call me Machete from now on.

You know, whatever. No big. I kill víboras cobrizas con un machete. It’s what I do.

*Give or take 2.5 feet.

He Hath Been Adorable and Sweet

It’s also important to note that, when we sat in motherfucking DC traffic and then blazed (way out of our way) west to Manassas to take Route 15 south but then I missed the turn-off to stay on 15, not once but twice, and I threw multiple Grand Tanties (traffic & getting lost being two of my tantrum triggers), my dad seemed surprised every time and said, “Oh. I’m just enjoying my time with you.”

It’s possible my dad’s the sweetest old bastard alive.

The End of the Road

As it did last year, the journey with my father and dogs had a second leg. Here’s some of his wisdom from the vacation and the trip back down south.

Dad: (to my brother-in-law) You’re wearing Levi’s. I have Faded Glory. In more ways than one.

…

Dad: (paraphrasing Macbeth to my mother when his sciatic nerve started jangling his toes) Oh, full of scorpions are my boots, dear wife!

…

Dad: (looking into the freezer at the store) What ever happened to strawberry ice cream? Nowadays it’s all “Moose Tracks” and “Bear Turds”.

…

Dad: (coughing a totally normal-sounding cough) I keep hoping this is hay fever and not the end of the road.

…

Dad: I’ll buy whatever you want for dinner. We could go to a half-decent place. Even a decent place.

…

Dad: (as we pass a gas station in Virginia) $2.99 a gallon?!… (holds out his closed hand) That’s worthy of a fist bump.

[If you don’t know him, this one might not be that funny, but my siblings will find it hilarious. Short version: My father has a tremendous loathing for pop culture. (Also, he pronounced every letter in “fist bump”.)]

…

Dad: You never have to fear when you’re traveling with Leighton Scott’s wallet.

[My dad is not a rich man. And he regularly loses his wallet.]

…

Dad: (as we listen to the Cool Classics radio station) When are they going to make some music that sounds different? This all sounds the same… ‘Course it all sounds good when you’re stoned.

…

Dad: I don’t know why I’m doing this. I know where Hartford is. (looks in atlas) Yep, right in the middle of fucking Connecticut.

…

Dad: I have no problems. Even if I worked for the carnival for $45 a week. Until my clothes rotted off. Then I’d be arrested for indecent exposure.

…

Dad: (as I look at the GPS on  my phone) What are you doing? Playing Tetris?

…

Dad: What kind of twerp would buy a Volvo?

Me: Didn’t we have a Volvo?

Dad: Yes, we were that kind of twerp.

…

Dad: (after eating a plate of bacon [“This stuff is great for you!”] and spicy homefries from the Whole Foods buffet) You don’t suppose they sell any healthy Tums in here, do you?

…

My kitchen table, which was admittedly rickety before, collapsed after dad got up from it.

Dad: Well, I’ve done a lot of positive things today. I fed your dogs… I let you sleep in… I did wreck your kitchen table though.

Love you, Dad. Even when you wreck my kitchen table.