Today is fathers day in the united states. If you are a dad or if you are someone who plays the dad role in your family, then happy fathers day.
This year is the first fathers day we’ve had since my father passed away. Jen and Bellana went to the grave with me. I am so grateful to them for that gesture. It means so much. I miss my father quite a bit, and I miss him a little extra today.
Today is my father’s birthday. The first since he passed away last summer. I’m going to be sad today. I think that’s a given. When I was really little we used to watch reruns of Star Trek together (even though it often gave me nightmares). I’m watching Star Trek right now. Just because.
It’s also tax day in the united states. Your income tax return forms are due today. My father had a tax prep business. Tax day falling on his birthday was a sign somehow. These days my brother is a CPA so tax day is a big deal for him too. In that spirit, allow me to wish all accountants and bookkeepers a Happy Tax Day in honor of my father and my brother and also my mother who used to help with Dad’s tax business. Get through today and then you’re free until January. Sort of. I know you’re never truly finished with tax season. There’s always something more to work on.
I missed the big day. I had too many other things going on to notice it. Boston Red Sox pitchers and catchers reported for Spring Training two days ago. Later that night they signed the biggest free agent on the market, Alex Bregman. We have a few new pitchers this year, including one who looks like an ace in the making, and now we have a power hitting infielder with a couple of World Series rings to bolster the lineup.
Know something? The Red Sox might not suck this year. Are they World Series contenders? Maybe, but probably not. Might they make a run at the American League East title? They might. Given that my beloved Bruins are more or less shitting the bed this year after years of excellence (in the regular season, at least), and the Red Sox have been a gigantic suck-fest for the last few years… a reversal of fortune is timely. I wish my dad were still around to see one more good season. He suffered through so many awful Red Sox teams in his life that it would have been nice to go out with a winning team. Okay, now I am equal parts excited for the new season and sad for the past. Shit.
Anyway, I snuck in a photo before I left the house to go to work this morning so that I could make sure I had something for the photo a day challenge. Here it is… it sucks even more than the Bruins.
I feel stupid over how giddy getting film scans back makes me. I am such a doofus. I am such a nerd.
One roll had a sad surprise. It was actually the same roll as the picture above. It wasn’t from Salisbury Beach though.
I took a film camera with me to my father’s for Father’s Day. I took a few really bad pictures and then promptly forgot about the whole thing.
The scans today included four bad pictures of my father. Two just sitting at the dinner table next to my sister. One had a bad light leak. Where did that come from? The other two were him seated with my niece and three nephews surrounding him. Again, one had a light leak. How? In five rolls of film shot with my Nikon FG-20 there were a total of three photos with light leaks. Or was it four. Whatever, very few. How? How did that happen.
Anyway, back on topic. Those picture of my father are probably the last pictures I ever took of him. Seeing them made my happy and sad at the same time. I miss my dad.
I warned you that the pictures were terrible.
I brought this home from my father’s apartment over the weekend. Having it makes me sad and makes me happy at the same time. You could say I am conflicted.
It’s a radio, a CD player, a cassette player (believe it or not), and a turn table all in one. I miss my dad. Also, to make matters worse, today is my mother’s birthday. I miss my mom too. I really don’t like feeling this way.
Today has been an okay work day for a last day before a vacation kind of day. I still have one hour and 42 minutes to go before said vacation, but I will get there.
I’m starting to sort of chomp at the bit though.
Today has been busy without being stressful. I have had a lot of things to do but none of them have been high pressure or high profile or anything like that. Just a bunch of administrative type things. The customers have been quiet so I have been able to focus on things that need to get done. I am thankful for that.
The Great Pink Floyd Reverse Order Playlist is now back to Animals from 1977. Great record with some absolutely outstanding guitar playing from David Gilmour.
Endless River – Complete
Division Bell – Complete
A Momentary Lapse of Reason – Complete
The Final Cut – Complete
The Wall – Complete
Animals – Currently playing track two, “Dogs”
Wish You Were Here – Up next
Dark Side of the Moon – On double deck but I probably won’t get to it today.
What else should I mention for the benefit of some future version of me looking back at Friday the 13th of September 2024 out of some sense of boredom or a this-day-in-history kinda thing?
The weather at the ocean for the next week looks excellent, according to the long range forecast I just checked. I think a sunrise photo session is a given. I hope to finish off a couple of rolls of film while I’m at it. I still have three rolls from Disney back in May that I have to get developed. I’d really like to spend a day in Boston if I can, but who knows if that will work out.
I am also going to my Dad’s place tomorrow morning to fill up a few boxes with books to donate to the public library in Tewksbury. They are having a donation drive tomorrow and they can have whatever they want from Dad’s book stash. If there is anything they won’t take (why?) I will bring them to Goodwill or something.
Those things, plus some music, plus spending a ton of time hanging out with the love of my life, plus helping the kids out with something next weekend… I think I have my staycation pretty much planned. 86 minutes to go until it starts.
This is a photo of my father’s wedding ring. I guess he wanted me to have it.
I tried it on. It fits me.
My sister in law started a shared Google Photo Album where we can all add pictures of my father. One of my brother’s friends is going to make a slide show out of them that we will have running at the wake on Thursday.
I was looking through the album and I had a weird moment where my memory and reality sort of broke apart from each other. There was a picture of me from a couple of years before I had my weight loss surgery. I wasn’t even close to the 450 pounds I weighed when I finally decided to go under the knife, but I was probably 380 pounds or so. I was huge, though not quite as huge as I would eventually get.
Seeing that picture didn’t phase me in the least. I kept scrolling through the album and I eventually got to a photo from earlier this year. Father’s Day, to be precise. There was a picture of my father with my brother, my sister, and some other guy. I did a double take. The other guy was me. I didn’t recognize myself. It was the same me that I see in the morning now. It was post-surgery, 215-220 pound me. The current me. The new normal, real me. I didn’t recognize me.
I did recognize the dangerously overweight me as if it were the “real” me.
That didn’t bother me quite as much as being asked about my mother while talking about my father’s funeral did (as mentioned in a post from earlier today), but it disturbed me a bit.
Like… who am I? Who is the “real” me? Do I even know? Will I ever know?
Ordering funeral flowers
Sad.
Is ramblings the right word? Should I have called this masterpiece of literary genius “Friday Mumblings” instead? We may never know.
Has anyone else found that they have become chemically depended on GPS apps while driving anywhere? We have a meeting scheduled for 4:00 today at the funeral home to start going over the arrangements. I know where this place is. I grew up less than a mile from it (Google maps tells me it is 0.8 miles from the house I grew up in) and I could probably find it with my eyes closed in the middle of a blizzard. Why then did I just email the address to myself so that I can plug it into a GPS app on my phone when I head over there in about 80 minutes? Why can’t I just… ya know… go? Why do I need a bunch of satellites in orbit of the Earth to tell me when the next turn is coming up? What did I do to my brain?
A year and a half ago, when my mother passed away, we had a similar meeting with the funeral director booked and we all went into it without the faintest clue of what we were in store for. Now? Today? We know exactly what’s coming and somehow that makes this whole experience more depressing. It’s a little less stressful and a lot less intimidating, but it is so much more depressing. Of all the things to be pro’s at… yeah, this shouldn’t be one of them.
Complete and total change of subject… When the forth and final season of The Umbrella Academy came out a couple of weeks ago I jumped right into it. It was only six episodes (the previous three seasons were all 10 each) and as I was watching the fifth episode I declared to myself (and no one else because why would anyone else care) that when I finished the finale I was going to immediately go back and watch the whole series from start to finish.
I did exactly that, and I finished it yesterday. Just in time for new seasons of Rings of Power and Only Murders in the Building to launch. I watched the first episode of each show (there are two more Rings of Power episodes available and I’ll get to them shortly). While I was waiting for Rings of Power to come back I started reading The Silmarillion and woah babie, is that puppy a slog. I’m on chapter 19 and so far the entire book has been 100% exposition. It’s like a textbook only less interesting. I know at some point it’s going to tie into the Lord of the Rings at least a little bit, but good heavens is it tough to get through. Maybe had Tolkien lived to finish it himself it might have been more readable… then again, maybe not. Yikes.
I’ll tell you what though, Rings of Power is making me want to grab the third Lord of the Rings book and read the appendixes. I’m sure I’ve made it through them at least once before, but maybe I should pay closer attention. It’s tough to read through a couple of hundred (or however long the appendix is) pages of a book that come after the book ended, but you gotta do what you gotta do.
What else should I write about before my lunch break ends and I get back to work for an hour before leaving early to go to the funeral home? I don’t know. Retail therapy… that might be a thing. All of the sadness and stress of the last few weeks. It’s possible that some new camera gear, or a new guitar, or a trip to Manhattan or the mountains might be the only things that can straighten me out. Just a thought, you know? The punchline to this joke is that I am not joking. I’m being serious. Oh well… it will be okay. We’ll get through this together. My father would not have wanted any of us to be all sad. He’d want us to focus on the good rather than stress over the bad. Although having said that, he was an Olympic level, world class worrier himself so… yeah. I love you, dad.
Inside the Red Head's Head 