There are several events I was really hoping and planning on attending tonight, but I got sick last week and had to have several of my cafe and cocktail shifts covered. So this week I'm pretty much obligated to cover for anyone who covered for me last week. I'll sadly miss The Half Brothers show at Conor Byrne in Ballard (at 9pm for 5 dollars) and The Cave Singers show at the Crocodile (for free). Please, dear friends, attend a show in my stead and tell me about it afterward. But not tonight, I'm working a double. And not tomomorrow, I have to work the morning rush after I close the bar. Tell me about it on Sunday.
Mom and I spent seven hours sitting around in the hospital today doing the hospital thing. Waiting for nothing to happen. After 4 vials of blood and an ultrasound with a big black marker X on her side, we waited for 4 hours to be told to go home. (Best kind of hospital trip, by the way. Hooray for a squishy liver!)
The older I get, the more I consider my parents. I hear my mother and father blending together in the words I choose for greetings, the words I choose for deaths and births and curse and other bits. "You Folks Take Care" could be a wedding photograph.
"Ooh, Dangit!" I cried aloud and tucked my cut thumb into my palm and 'Dangit!' I thought as my congested ears turned me into my mom on the phone. It doesn't help that I speak to myself using my own name. (as in 'Dangit, Sonya. You sound just like your mother.' Sometimes I add 'she said to herself' at the end. Nuts!)
But something I only recently realized that I had in common with my parents is their fruity love of nature. My father used to drive extra slow down old logging slash roads with his head out the window, smiling at the trees. "Lookit that, Sonie. That's a Red Fir. See how the branches turn up and the bark is all broken? Thats how you tell it." He'd bring his head back in and lace his arm through the steering wheel and tilt his chin so it nearly touched the windshield, grin a mile wide. "Alright. Now you find one."
Mom came in early yesterday to stay the night. We took a walk through the neighborhood because spring is underway in Seattle, and the trees are in bloom. "Oh Sonya!" mom cried "Isn't it breathtaking? Look at the variety of life!"
I had to laugh, because it's just the sort of lovey dopey thing I hear myself say, and also hear my woodsy dad and farmy mom say all the time. "You're right, mom. Biology is miraculous"