Days pass and you're still not here

Yesterday passed without a lot of fanfare but quite a bit of bitching on my part about unrelated to the date things.
My father has been gone for three years. Which sounds somehow like it's a really long time and also like it's the shortest time ever. Funny.

I remember spending the first year he was gone looking for a ~sign~ or something. Some people are haunted, some people find a crapton of pennies, something, y'know, that they hold up as "proof" that their loved one is still around, either saying hello or goodbye. I never did find my sign.

Sometimes he shows up in my dreams. I can still hear his voice usually, and sometimes in the dream I know he's gone and sometimes I don't. I'm not sure which is worse, but neither is awful because it's still nice to have him pop up.

I don't think anyone outside the immediate family remembered but that's ... well, I was going to say okay but it really isn't okay. It's understandable though, and that is okay.


There were three portions to yesterday.

• Cleaning Widget's room. Never let a twelve year old boy have his own room when you rent unless you obsessively check up on him when he's at school. Seriously, I haven't the words.


• Watching Daria and drinking Kahlua laced milkshakes with the cat. Before the sunset, it also involved admiring the pretty grey-green light that happens at twilight on rainy days.


• Hanging out with Cass who stopped by after her husband got off work. She brought her Sonali and Kanani as well as Addy.

She'd called me Sunday night after she and Jess made it back to town safely. I ignored the first call as I was trying to fall asleep and I figured nothing good came of a call after nine, forgetting that I keep night owl hours so the "no good" hour is significantly later for me. When she called back ten minutes later, I answered.

Turned out that she still hadn't opened Addy at that point and just couldn't wait any longer and since I'd missed seeing her pick Addy out and wouldn't be there to see her open Addy, maybe I'd like to hear it instead. Which sounds a little odd to some people, I'm sure, but she's been talking about Addy for the longest time. I honestly expected her to buy Addy by now but things kept coming up, I suppose.

She went through her bag of goodies, letting me know what she'd bought. Some I followed and some eluded me due to cell service always being iffy around me. Then she got to Addy's accessories which were the last thing before Addy and she started tearing up as she opened Addy and you could hear it in her voice. And I started to tear up, too. She sounded so happy and so like a little kid in the, "She's mine? I can keep her?" way.

There is definitely something to be said for delayed gratification.