#this is kind of a draft of softys design?? i wanna make her even more princessy without infringing too much on her design

[mechcity-skyline]

@d-buggers-org HEY SO LIKE WHAT IF I HIT YOUR LOVECORE DESIGNS WITH THE RPG BLAST HUH?!

[brokenmusicboxwolfe]

Here is another of the unfinished drafts I’m sharing rather than deleting.

This one involves me rambling on about my father. I never finished it, but it still conveys something of our relatonship. Geez, I miss him.

I apologize to @tattersoc for the loooong delay, but look at it this way: at least you are getting a reply unlike almost everyone that has commented since!

On a post about the grief I feel around Valentine's Day because of it’s connection to my father’s death...

tattersoc said:                                                                                                                            I lost my dad on feb 12th, and though I of course can’t begin to understand how you feel (all grief is unique), I hope at some point there is a balance of joy & pain. Mind yourself 

Thank you. I appreciate that.

I hope I didn’t leave the impression I am wallowing in grief. It sort of lurks in the background, but I don’t feel it most of the time.

Grief is a funny thing. In a way I should be “used” to it. That’s one of things about having been one of only two children in an extended family that was mostly my grandparents’ generation. I can’t actually remember the first time someone I love died. But, as you say, grief is always a different experince each time. 

Pop was a huge part of my life. Father. Best friend. Boss. He was a remarkable person. 

He was incredibly smart, with a brain I half joked was my external hard drive. Wanna know how to figure volume of a cylinder? Distance to the moon? The geologic properties of garnets? Details of the Civil War ship the USS Monitor? How to estimate the height of a tree? The life cycle of river herring? Just ask Pop.  He had an astonishing breadth of interests and a curiosity about everything. 

But it wasn’t just what locals dismissed as “book learnin’”. He had the hands on skills to do just about anything. He could build or repair anything you asked. Besides the obvious fiberglassing, boat building, tank construction, etc you’d assume from the desciption,  he could do construction, carpentry, electrical wiring, plumbing, mechanics of all kinds. He could cut down trees, run them through our little lumbermill, and then build you a house with them. His idea of fun was to design sterling engines and building his own submarine. When the mechanic couldn’t figure out what was wrong with our car, Pop would and fix it himself. 

Things he made himself not only worked, but tend to be nearly indestructible. He built our main doghouse in 1964, and I only had to make the first minor repair last month after all these years of heavy use. A kayak he built actually righted  our pickup when it was flipped on it’s side in a wreck. It punched a hole in the truck, but wasn’t even scratched. 

Pop also cared deeply about the world and social causes. He was on the boards of the NC Coastal Federation and tons of other groups. He went from volunteering his scientific knowledge at the schools to being chairman of the county school board. I teased him a bit about running for office, but the truth is he did a lot of good. He ended up mayor of the town until his illness, and hilariously he got elected once when he did NOT run through write in votes he hadn’t wanted! He worked his ass off to help out, always caring about the marginalized and trying to achieve a fairness in rigged systems. 

He was an absolute softy and a romantic (you should have heard him urging characters in movies to hug or kiss), adored by animals (cats used to ride on his shoulders like fur pieces while he worked in the shop) and great with kids, but still would go into “Hulk smash!” rages of frustration at inanimate objects. Those freakouts were oddly endearing as long as you remembered to duck. If you had been there to see him jumping up and down on a flashlight, and when he looked up with a glare at those watching, you had tried to run off whils laughing so hard you could barely breathe, you might get what it was like. He won’t hurt you (a hug being the best way to calm him) but best keep anything fragile out of reach! LOL

Pop and I had a very special working relationship I didn’t realize was so unusual at the time. See, it would work like this...

Imagine the two of us trying to move a tank the size of a truck out of the shop. Pulleys, makeshift rollers and long boards as pry bars in place. 

Pop: I’ll just...(starts moving it)

Me: Stop! There isn’t space if..

Pop: Damn it, just go when I say...

Me: Will you listen to me! You can’t..

Pop: (prying and shoving)

Me: You fucking son of a bitch will you stop and listen!!!

Pop: Goddamn it!!!! Lift your part!  It will fit! (Prying) 

Me: (slugs him in shoulder)

Pop: (slugs me in shoulder)

Me: (pulling him over to my side) This is in the way! I have to go first!

Pop: (utterly calm again) Okay. You go first and tell me when it’s clear.

And we are both back to work, joking and moving the tank. 

Now you could reverse this. It didn’t matter which of us would end up right, or even if neither was and we had to figure out something else. The process was the same. We’d yell at each other, curse at each other, use mild physical force with each other, and it was all fine. It was all about getting the job done and our individual bullheaded passion to achieve the goal. But no matter how heated, or loud, we got, there was never the slightest ill feelings. No one’s feelings are hurt, no grudges held. Everything fine.

See, it was about the job, not scoring points. It wasn’t personal. I guess we were so confident in our love we weren’t going to be offended. We got and respected each other. It seemed a perfectly normal way to work, freely expressing ourselves without any censoring.

Turns out this is NOT normal. Who knew! My cousin once saw us at work and was horrified, and begged us not to “be so angry”. We both turned to her, confused. We weren’t angry at each other.  We were “just working”. 

I guess it runs in the family. Famously a farmer once heard my father and grandfather working in the shop, yelling and cursing at each other. The farmer fled to the far side of the farm, utterly convinced he was about to witness a murder! Everyone in the family found this hilarious, saying no two people loved each other more and they would never dream of hurting each other.

The draw back is....I don’t know how to work with others.