Mr. Brightside

If you are looking for me over the next three days, you will have to drive to Denver to find me. I will be hobnobbing with booksellers and a variety of authors at the Mountains and Plains Book Trade Show. Under normal circumstances, this post would be about how I have lost fifty-nine pounds IN SWEAT from all the fretting I've been doing due to my necessity to create some buzz about my book to people who will ALSO be approached by other authors infinitely more experienced and approachable wanting to create buzz about THEIR books. I would also normally be discussing my sudden inability to make my hair lie flat where I want it to lie flat. And my desperate desire for someone to quickly teach me how to not stutter when it matters, to not ramble, to not get lost in my audience's potential blue dangly earrings. That sort of thing.

Instead, I will talk about my father. He had surgery a week ago, and has had complications. So now I'm fretting over that instead.

"It's nothing!" he tries to assure me. "I just had surgery! And I'm not a young man anymore, Mija! These things take time! I don't need to go to the doctor! I need someone to fix my dinner!" It's easy to write this stuff off when he sounds so NORMAL. But I have to remember that my dad invented The Downplay, and so if he's asking for someone to make him dinner, there's a good chance he hasn't eaten in two days.

My dad. He calls me at least once a week to compare weather. He's in Las Cruces, New Mexico. It never ceases to amaze him that it can be 29 degrees here and 88 degrees there, a mere 500 miles between us. He has easily read 10,000 books in his lifetime, many of them more than once. And he forwards more email than anyone I've ever known. He introduced me to this poem when I was in college and he in prison. I carry it with me everywhere. Through the years he's introduced me to the tarot cards, conspiracy theories, alien abduction websites, and Linda Ronstadt's rendition of Spanish favorites. He tells a compelling story. And there's no contest when it comes to delivering a joke. As a kid, I loved it when he had friends over to party. I could lie in bed awake for hours scared shitless listening to his stories about THE BALL OF FIRE on the highway, or The Night The Entire Sky Lit Up Like in Close Encounters, the bellowing laughter of his friends upon hearing about how he would scare my mom after they'd gone to the theater to watch The Exorcist. Even she would have to admit that his imitation of her screaming was priceless. Nobody got tired of hearing him go on and on, least of all me.

It's he and my sister's birthday today. Dad, I'd just like to say that I'm glad you have agreed to see your doctor. Thank you for that. I had myself convinced that all this surgery business was really bad timing. I've changed my mind. This surgery business has given me the gift of perspective. Suddenly this trade show (and, by proxy, my fretting) feels a little trivial. Just a little. I could put it out of my mind completely had I inherited your speech/joke/story delivery skills. Those damn blue dangly earrings, though. And the stutter. God how I HATE the stutter.

A quick Gas Challenge update: On the one hand, Allan screwed things up by filling my tank with gas when it wasn't completely empty. On the OTHER hand, he changed my oil. That improves efficiency, no? So all is forgiven on the gas-filling front. Let's see, the soccermom carpool thing hasn't panned out yet. But I DID do some efficient shopping. All in all, I'd say I get a B-. Will report more sometime after the trade show (which incidentally is throwing a big ol' monkeywrench into the gas saving scheme).