What's the Haps?

After two days of dedicating myself exhaustively to finishing compositions of personal notes and anecdotes on over sixty Christmas cards (can I get a hand cramp and an Amen?), I have finally decided to trudge on over to my blog and see what's going on, or "What's the haps?", as Dad used to say. Considering I am on my fourth day of begging my attorneys for work when we are all just ridiculously slow and work-free this time of year, I figured it would be a great time to play catch-up, and maybe throw out a little update on my oh-so-serene life.

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The one-year mark of Daddy's death snuck up on Monday - a day which my sister and I both wisely took off from work. Sam wasn't going to at first because she didn't "want to designate a day to be sad," which is totally understandable and sensible, but she also called me at 10:00 a.m. her time and informed me that she was making her way home. A smart move, I thought, seeing as how this whole thing is new territory for us, and we don't know how to feel minute-to-minute. We talked for about an hour, and felt like we could handle the day and it's looming promise of sadness and loss. I don't even think I started to cry until I was in the shower that night, and I forced myself to swallow my tears with a gulp because opening the floodgates before bed is never a good thing. I think Monday was okay because we both were basket cases in the weeks leading up to it. Just fraying around the edges here and there until slowly becoming completely unravelled.

That happened when we talked on Tuesday of last week during our lunch hours, and discovered that we had both had dreams about Dad on the previous Saturday night that were unbelievably similar in almost every way. Both of us at the beach with Dad, looking out over the glossy ocean where he grew up in California. Both of us talking to him and seeing his body, clothed in his constant uniform of a t-shirt, cut-off sweats, and flip flops, yet not ever seeing his face, immersed in the sunshine. Dad standing to the left of Sam in her dream, and sitting to the left of me in mine. Dad with Sam on a balcony, dispensing advice to her about meaningful things after having already died. Dad with me on a balcony, dispensing advice to me about meaningful things; not dead, but knowing he was going to be. Sam and I revealed even more of the coincidences and just the ultimate bizarreness of it all, not the least of which is the fact that for days afterward, we both had the compulsion to listen to our Gordon Lightfoot CD's obsessively, because Dad sang many Lightfoot songs back when he was performing on the road years ago, and the music reminds us of him.

I didn't necessarily get the sense through those dreams that he was letting us know he was okay, per se, but more - and I know this seems silly - that he knew we were hurting, and missing him, and losing him all over again, every day. Daddy needed to get to his girls. And so, he did.

On Monday I thought for sure I'd get on and post some beautifully poetic and poignant thing about the last year without Dad, or some memory of him, or any one of a hundred million things that pop into my mind about him constantly. But I found that I just didn't have it in me. I couldn't say anything, because there is no way on earth that I possibly know what to say. Not now, not ever.

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Things have been very chill these days. I did end up getting a Christmas bonus, which I was thrilled for, and which we immediately spent on car repairs for the Deathscort. But I don't care; I'm happy. My heat works, my defrost works, my starter has been replaced, the electrical problem has been addressed, and most importantly, I'M BACK ON THE ROAD. With tailights, peeps. Oh yes, with tailights. It's like a Christmas present in and of itself, which works out well considering that, combined with the registration for The Husband's truck, we have absolutely decimated the Christmas present budget, both for ourselves and for anyone else. That's okay, though. He has a good truck, and I have a newly working car, so we are in heaven. Actually, my one beef is that all of my radio stations got hosed because they had to replace the battery (or some such thing; I don't really listen when Scott launches into Car Speak), and so now all of my hard-to-find, even-harder-to-program radio stations are gone. Oh, Jack FM, Jack FM, wherefore art thou, Jack FM??

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We've got friends in town this weekend, so that is going to be pretty fun. Angie flew in from Omaha yesterday, so she and Miles came over last night, and then we'll see them again on Sunday before she flies out. Then tonight, Denise is driving up from New Mexico and staying with us until Sunday afternoon. We don't get much opportunity for people to come visit us, so we are relishing in the chance to see everyone, and for me to channel my inner Martha Stewart-like hostess abilities. Which really consists of tossing some chocolate into a bowl on the coffee table and wedging an air mattress between the chair and the front door. I'm even going to get nuts and replace our shower curtain liner tonight. YES, it is THAT fancy here. Denise and I are going to hit the malls a la Christmas Insanity tomorrow ("Oh, just window shopping and a side of mall pretzel for me, thanks!"), and then I'm going to try to convince her to go ice skating. For the life of me, I can't figure out why Scott doesn't want to tag along.

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Hope all is well out there in the world. The plan is for me to get a post up again sometime before Christmas. But sometimes, inexplicably, plans get ruined. I'm just saying...