Heart Broken

My dad died on the eighth of July. It was a very unexpected and tragic accident at work. I have been spending my time since then trying to take care of my family, particularly my mom and my son. Mom just had to have an emergency surgery, and thank the gods she is healing fast. This is the hardest thing I have ever gone through. My dad was supposed to grow old and crazy and eventually move in with us and drive me crazy with the ‘I told you so’ he should have rightfully delivered when my son became a teenager. This accident was not supposed to happen. I have not written anything because I have nothing to write. Sure life keeps going on, the world keeps turning, but for me I am still trying to find a way to focus on something besides breathing. I still have my sarcastic observations of life and since coming home I have been doing more things then I did before I went back to Arkansas, but I just can not find my spirit. It isn’t dead it just seems to be in retreat for the moment. So I haven’t been writing, but I’m sure that I will again as soon as I can muster the will to do so.

The Fourth

Being a parent is strange sometimes. You find yourself explaining things that you never really thought about explaining before. You know the things we all learn as children and never really put much thought behind who taught us about it since we have known it most of our lives. Well, guess who probably taught us about all of the information that we take for granted? Our parents. This morning while I was fixing breakfast for my son he was telling me about what we are going to do this weekend. While he is going on and on about fireworks and bar-b-ques I notice that he has not mentioned the reason for the celebration at all. So I asked him if he knew why the fourth of July is a holiday in our country. To my amusement he answered, “It’s a holiday this weekend? Wow!” I suppose that in itself not only answered my question but it also summed up the kind of life we give our son. Fireworks + Bar-b-que = Fun Weekend, it does not automatically mean Holiday. Anyway, I digress. So I started to explain to him how our country became a country and how we became a free people. He had some very good and direct questions and I was proud that he really seemed to be grasping the concept of independence. As I went to set his food on the table I noticed he was wearing a troubled expression and so I asked him what he was thinking of. A tip for all future parents…go ahead and ask, but trust me on this, you do not really want to know. The Little Man looked up at me and asked, “Mommy, what was it like working for the king of England?” I mentally cursed the innocence of youth and then explained that we were talking hundreds of years. His response, “Okay, I’ll ask Grandma!” I am sure she’s going to love that one. Happy upcoming Independence Day everyone!

Vivid

My dreams are way to vivid for my own good. What is worse though is that I have an over active imagination. Not like the previous Fish Truck story didn’t give me away on that little secret right? My dreams are also pretty easily influenced, when I’m just riding out the dream, by some event in my life. In last night’s case my dream was influence by this book that I am reading about body snatching aliens that have conquered the human race and the Resident Evil movies. So automatically you would think it is a nightmare, right? Nope. Not this little black duck. It was interesting, I’ll give it that, and definitely more entertaining then other dreams I have had lately but it was not a nightmare. The adrenaline was there, but not the terror. I swear I think there might be a short somewhere in my brain, I do not pause at zombies but the dream where I was abducted from my house and taken to a mall where manikins chased me makes me wake up in a sweat. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Of course that whole dream made me pause with questions, the first, why the hell was I worried about manikins? They are easily broken and I was not that greatly outnumbered. Sure a whole army of zombies I’ll take on with a big crystal candy dish as a weapon, a few living dolls and I run like a track star. Seriously, they need to make help groups for people like me.

We went to see WALL-E last weekend and I can not praise it enough. It is Pixar’s best movie since Finding Nemo. The story is wonderfully heart warming and surprisingly powerful. The animation is not only good but remarkable, especially if you take in to consideration that the movie has no dialogue at all for about half of it and robots have limited facial expressions. That considered, someone deserves a freggin medal for developing characters emotionally binding enough that they almost had me crying. Very few movies have ever been able to make me cry. Seriously, VERY few. When I found myself tearing up over a animated robot I was impressed beyond words. If the tears had actually slipped over the edge I would probably go back and watch it again this weekend. My enjoyment aside though, my son adored it as well. WALL-E is the perfect movie for the entire family and I encourage everyone to go and see it in the theater. After that I am sure that you will choose to own it for yourself once it hits dvd. I know it will be on our shelf.