4:27 p.m. - 2004-01-16
Something Curmudgeonly This Way Comes.
My father is coming the 40 miles North to view me in my natural habitat for the first time since ...1996?

Yes.

He's Sean Connery's age (and demeanor), doesn't drive, and has a vicious dog to walk 9 times a day, and so has let me come to him every 3-4 weeks since the days of skipping town to attend university in the great an' powerful medium-sized metropolis I now call home.

So I'm unusually nervous, despite the fact that my father is not terribly neat, nor particularly judgemental (and I might laugh at him were he terribly judgemental, because he is an old scoundrel).

I got up this morning after only one virtuous press of the snooze button and ran around at random in the cold grey stillness; trimmed and watered my plants (and roommate Viv's), loaded and unloaded the dishwasher (note to self: Viv becoming lazy and no-account) jettisoned the recycling, stuffed a vial of St. John's Wort into a drawer, kicked a box of Trojans box under the bed on one side and a pair of broken handcuffs under the bedskirt opposite. 

I haven't used the handcuffs for smutty reasons (I'd actually been cleaning out my jewelry box) but it doesn't much look that way when they're sitting casually on the floor by the bed like Mr. Hyde's party favors.

This afternoon I will cut out of work early to wash and hide the martini glasses, vacuum the carpet, hang a picture and take two paper bags of shoes to the thrift store. (It occurs to me that shoes are smutty, if you like them as much as I do).

And then I'll go downtown to collect him and try to show him a good time...take him for some Pho, go to the movies, show him my bachelorette apartment and juggle my ethics over whether I can allow him to get me a late Christmas present or not, now that he's got a little money, sort of.

In his old age, he is trying very hard to build traditions and leave me things and make an impression, and it is hard not to let him.

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