The Crash Test Dummy Lub Club

It's official! I'm a big girl now. I have come face to face with all of my Utah ghosts and they are not half as scary as they were when I bolted 20 years ago. In fact they're all kinda old and wrinkly now.

Bless their hearts.

Even my guilt ghost was too tired to smack me around when, after telling the story I shared in my last post about my dad's death, my twins threw their hands in the air and cried:

"YOU COULD HAVE SAVED HIM!"

They're eleven, what do they know?

Of course the thought has crossed my mind on occasion (over and over), but I couldn't have saved my dad, I know that.

That being said, if I had only listened to that darn nagging voice prodding me all day long to get to my dad's apartment at least I would have had one final memory. You get me? One concrete image suspended from the rafters in my brain rather than this blank curious space.

But I don't think the Universe wanted me to jump into the nearest phone booth and throw on my red cape, I think it was just trying to give me a heads up.

Hey, girlfriend, time is ticking. Chop chop--it's now or never. You can either do this the hard way or the harder way . . . Just saying.

The Universe is thoughtful that way.

Of course I would have preferred to be the witness rather than the one arriving late on the scene.

"Officer, he was wearing his red flannel button-down shirt and eating a bowl of bottled peaches. He had his Old Testament tapes playing reel to reel and Charles Dickens was cracked open and dog eared on the kitchen table. Great Expectations, I think. Or David Copperfield."

Instead I've had to piece the whole scene together from his autopsy and his journals and little wisps of memory.

But that's the way it went down, and even though it took me longer to get closure, I've learned me a lesson or two from the harder way, so it's all good in the hood.

I'm in Utah again, and the air felt strikingly familiar, but I didn't feel any pain on Saturday. I only felt a softness, not unlike lub or gratitude or the peenya kowlada Jamba Juice my hub surprised me with.

"You shouldn't have!" I said.

"No worries," he said.

"No really, you shouldn't have. Do you know how much sugar these smoothies contain? Why didn't you just blend up 14 bowls of fruit loops and pour that down my pie hole? Actually, this is a 32 oz Jamba Juice so that's 28 bowls of fruit loops."

That was just about the time he poked my eyes out.

I don't begrudge him though because sometimes I see better when I'm blind.

In short, I smiled and giggled a lot over the weekend. I even said ba dum bum every time I drove past another tie dyed silly goose leaving the Festival of Colors at the Krishna temple on my way to my son's basketball game.

Who says Utah's not diversified?

But anyways . . .

Much mahalo for all of your kindness and moral support in my comment box over the weekend. You guys are da bomb! I didn't get a chance to reply to each of your comments because I was so preoccupied with moving forward, but I've been thinking . . . it's time for my dad to be initiated into the Crash Test Dummy club, don't you think? I mean, no one I lub gets off easy, right? And everyone knows my primary lub language is words of aggravation, right?

So allow me to finally raise my glass and dish out some good ole' fashioned lub, CTD style, to my dad.

Welcome to the lub club, daddy-o! This joke's on me.

............................................................

Remember Somewhere in Time?

I was just at the right age to see that movie, over and over, with great romantic enthusiasm.

Remember this particular photo, snapped of Jane Seymour gazing at Christopher Reeve before he was rushed back to the present by a 1980 penny?

What was she looking at? Why that particular expression?

That's what poor Christopher Reeves couldn't figure out.

He would have given a thousand pennies for her thoughts. (Too bad for him he picked the 1980 penny.)

I totally get Chris Reeve because I would give a thousand 1980 pennies for my dad's thoughts in this photo.

Seriously!

Raise your hand if, when I posted this photo on Friday, you thought what the what was her dad thinking about?

Me too!

This photo was taken right before my baptism while my best friend Mary was vacuuming our living room floor. But there's nothing baptismal about the look on his face, if you get my drift.

I never thought about it before I read Twhylight, but . . . do you think my dad could have been . . . a . . . Cullen?

Pinky swear I didn't use any vampire photo manipulation on this shot. Alls I did was zoom in.


But if my dad was a Cullen . . . then that means . . .

Hey, look at my new cute signature. Thanks to Tiffany at The Crew for this sweet gift! I lub it!