company

I got up from the table today, finally able to put my book down, finally, because I'd finished it. The last two pages had me crying- crying fat tears, and then I realized that I wasn't home alone. the girls are out of school for MLK day, so I wiped away my tears and decided I'd better tend to them before they ransack the fridge, emptying a new jar of pickles, pack of yogurts, or trying to pour juice into cups, leaving a sticky orange trail as they have before when I was previously a hostage of a good book.
The book was Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Two thumbs and all the other finger and toes up. I stumbled through in the beginning, not used to dark of it, but you know how it is when you get so involved, you just want to get to the outcome...
I'm to have company this week. My father called to wish me happy birthday (two weeks early) he's coming down, he said. What day? I don't know, he said. (LOL, can you tell I've been reading CMcC?) There's the part of me that is anxious about it- I haven't seen him in a couple years, and back then I played host to the large male equivalent of Debbie Downer,
Get me some Ice Water! You call this ice water? I stood peeling mangoes, biting my tongue. I could peel a mango twice as fast, he shouts, and there'd be twice as much mango left!
My mind says, "Then why don't you" but my mouth says nothing.
I know I'm coming across ungrateful, maybe ruthless. I'm venting. There was a time my mother sat in the hospital with me, just born, pleading that my father sign my birth certificate.
He told her it didn't matter, I was a girl, I'd get married anyway. I never lived with this man, and my mother, too afraid too ask for child support, raised me off of Denney's tips. And we were happy, life was good, it was enough.
How could you have such bad judgement? I asked her this week. This guy is coming over, claiming he's my father. I have to cater to him, to be kind. Why did you choose him to be my father?
My mother, in her New Age Reincarnation fashion, says what I knew was coming.
"Why did you choose him to be your father? Because you chose him long before I did."
And my response, easy, same as always,
"I didn't choose him to be my father. I chose you. You to be both my mother and father." because it was enough.

Yikes. Am I getting too deep here?

So I'll be catering to my father one day this week, who knows which one. Not Steve Bell, my imaginary father, but the real deal. The love and lightness in the air will turn stagnant and abrasive, abrasive like cracked heels on satin, and I'll lie awake thinking what I can do better, what I can do that won't be picked apart.

I filled the bird feeders with sunflower seeds, it was all I had, then a little titmouse flew up on the balcony, his beak black like the sunflower shell, making him look like he had a tiny duck bill.
He cocked his little head, as to say, What are you doing in there? Flew away again to a nearby tree, scraping the shell on the bark to crack it open. A redheaded woodpecker on the feeder, doing the same.
I read a thing about the writer's strike, but I haven't noticed it yet. Mostly I only watch the Sundance channel, and everything off of the TiVo list. Better, because a one hour show becomes 35 minutes when you fastforward the commercials. The only downside is that you never know what new movies are coming out.
The writers want more money I guess. They are getting canned because the season won't open in time? Is writing what they love? How does that feel, to do something you love and get paid insane amounts of money for it? I've a feeling for that money, anyone could write a pilot. (Come over. Give me a page length & a week. Hee hee.)
The writers are lucky, they are folks like me and you, in the right place, at the right time. They maybe ordered a sandwich next to someone who knew someone else. Sometimes I watch tv and think the well's run dry. (Not you, Larry David, you're well runneth over!)
I'm not in the right place, at the right time- for that. I'm in the right place for me. And I hear my girls laughing, the little one's face covered with lilac lip gloss. Funny. I mailed out another manuscript.
I showered. I spit in the shower. Is that disgusting? And then, after I spit, I thought about my nephew once saying that if you pee in the shower it will cure athlete's foot. His friend told him that.
I did not pee. But I did wonder if you tell someone that, does it mean you've done it? Did his saying that mean he pees in the shower? But it can't, because that would mean that I, too, am a shower pee-er for writing it down, and I'm not. Because I'd tell ya. :)
I'm going to go put the clothes in the dryer, maybe eat a piece of cheese. The dogs are barking. I hope there's no one here. Deep breath.
I've been missing you all. Love, love, love, love love, kat