Ruminating, Aching Brain

Today has turned out to be a sick day for me - with a head so painful the little pills aren't helping, so here I sit with a refreshing ice pack strapped to my skull.  (I'm not actually being facetious, at least not entirely; it feels stuffy in the house, so even apart from managing the pain, an ice pack isn't going amiss on this nice and cozy leather couch.)  The problem with a sick day, for me, is that even when it's my head affected, when I am alone with my thoughts (and the pack), things to write will, unfortunately, inevitably start clamoring.

If only what were clamoring were some resolution to the various work I need/may want to do.

No, thanks to the sweet melancholy of a rainy day, hormones, and the fact that Fathers Day was yesterday, my wee and paltry little brain is turning, turning on that day.

Yesterday was my tenth Fathers Day without one.  My brother, being a father, and I believe busily planning a fun day's hard (berry picking) labor with his kidlets, I think may feel the pangs, but has distractions.

I just get cranky and resentful every year, shouting "I HAVEN'T GOT ONE!!!" at the presumptuous Sears commercials and ever-present exhortations everywhere you go online to BUY A GIFT FOR DAD.  I roll my eyes a lot at the insistent dumbing-down of the name of the holiday to "dads day" - which for no justifiable grammatical reason makes me want to kill puppies anyway.  I get mad, in short, that my dad is gone.

He wouldn't appreciate that much.  It's wasted energy, and I know it going in every year, and it's not like I devolve into psychotic breaks or anything - but there just is no escaping it.  (Hey, other old people out there ... remember when advertising didn't have the capability to follow you around like a seriously desperate ex?) And it sucks, because my dad was a wonderful man.  And it hurts.

Maybe this is the low-grade personal pettiness that had me feeling low all week last week when there was no justification for it.  It felt like a bad week, though nothing really happened to justify my pettishness.  And Saturday was more of the same, just magnified.  I did nothing all day but a few desultory pokes at the opening line for The Ax and the Vase and a whole lot more sleeping than I should publicly admit to.  It was something of a mini depression, and an ugly piece of self-indulgence I recognized even in the midst of it.

One of the very very good/very very bad things about living alone with nonjudgmental animals:  Sometimes, you can indulge in the very excessive extreme ...

So maybe it was odd that, finally, on Fathers Day itself, I got up, got myself somewhat presentable, and took myself out for a while.

Went to go see Iron Man Three.  A good, LONG movie, on a bright, hot Sunday afternoon.  It ate up a very nice chunk of the day indeed; and I got randomly hit on in the lobby.

I didn't sit in the dark remembering all the times I went to movies with dad, just me and my dad, but ... that, apparently, is what today is for.  I may have to drag out that one DVD; he did love a good spy story.  I may have to find myself a copy of Skyfall, the third Craig Bond.  The Craig entries into the series have their frenetic moments, and are seriously loud, but I think dad might quite have enjoyed them.  Certainly Skyfall's many tributes to the classics he'd have had fun with - especially the riff on having a Q aged about fourteen.

Dad and I enjoyed a wide variety of movies together.  He took me to Elizabeth at the little theater near campus, which is now in its final days of survival.  We saw Firefox, of course (see the link at just me and my dad above).  When I was fourteen and in my first flush of Arthurian excitement, he took me to go see Excalibur ... and we agreed before going home and after a couple of extremely embarrassing moments - my first R-rated movie, that was - to tell mom it was so rated because of its violence.  An interesting comment on our culture, and our family's subscription to it, actually:  that exposing a child to violence is more acceptable than the exposure to naughty old sex.

Anyway.

So I went to go see IM3 yesterday.  And came home and watched What You Leave Behind, which provided exactly enough excuse to be gooey without going overboard.  It was probably the right antidote, and as indulgent as this post is, today's dwellings on my dad are more of the "I remember that last Fathers Day" variety, thinking about how all of us were together, the picture of my dad and my little (then) niece holding up sweet rolls I'd baked that morning - from *his* mother's recipe.  Out on the brick patio.  Rotating stints on the hammock.  It was a beautiful day, that one.  And I was so lucky to have him.  I'm so grateful, still, to have all the rest of the family we were that day ... and some more of us.  A little redhead we never knew would come to be.  Some good times.

Pen is in her yard being friendly with our neighbor and generally still quite in love with it.  Gossamer is taking loving care of me, only nibbling on the velcro bits holding my icepack on just a little bit.  There is some light, high up in the grey sky.  And I think I will sleep, this post now having escaped from rattling around in my brain.