Hot air doubloons

I said I'd finish the travelogue of my adventures in Louisiana, but I lied! Bwahahhahhahhaa!!!

I will tell you this much - as of Sunday 11/27/05 I am inheriting 18 binders full of doubloons when my dad dies. See, now, somehow my father ended up with The Doubloon Collection*. It's Fuck-only-knows how many years and parades worth of doubloons, all catalogued and organized into coin-collection type binders. Eighteen binders. Did I mention there are 18 (eighteen) of the things? Yeah - there are. Anyway, the current joke is that whichever (it's a word, fuck you) child annoys my dad the most gets The Doubloons when he dies.**

"Laura! You bitch! You live 500 miles way and yet managed to annoy your ailing father enough to inherit The Doubloons?? Jeezus!!"

Don't blame me - blame my mom. See, according to my dad, while he and my mom were married (30 damn years ago) she would assert that the HerLastNames came over on the Mayflower, thus she was of pure pilgrim stock or some such shit.

Now, as we all know, Thanksgiving is a celebration of the pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock, dying off in droves during that first winter and then planning a large dinner between the survivors and the Indians, from whom they had managed to swindle a bunch of food, thus creating a meal that bears pretty much NO resemblance to what we eat now. But, I, as usual, digress in fabulous run-on, over comma'ed fashion.

My dad, for the past (at least) 5 years has said, "next year, I'm going to a damn restaurant." This is all due to my dad not really wanting a house full of people, the fact that my grandmother insists on baking a turkey,*** despite the fact that none of us really like it, and the fact that as he's gotten older my dad has turned into a cranky old man. A cranky old man with one wicked sense of humor who wil totally kick your ass at Scrabble,**** but a cranky old man nonetheless.

Ok, now - work with me here. Dad is annoyed by Thanksgiving, but we celebrate it anyway because of those stupid pilgrims, my mom's family came over on the Mayflower, thus Thanksgiving is my fault and TADA!! I get The Doubloons*5&6.

I tried to convince him to send them directly to my mom and just leave me the hell out of it, but he was not to be swayed. Fucker*7.

On re-reading this, I'm not sure the writing of the Doubloon Incident is as funny as it was while we were kidding around about it. Very few private jokes are. But that's OK. I got to spend almost 4 full days with my dad, a lot of it just hanging out and watching the tube. It was fucking great, man. He's got a rather dark sense of humor and makes a lot of jokes about his death and his illness and if you didn't know him better, you'd think he was taking the whole Cancer Thing awfully lightly. He's not - that's just how he (and I) deal with the difficult - through thoroughly inappropriate jokes. I didn't get to spend a lot of time with my dad as a kid, so now I cherish*8 the time I do get to spend with him. I'm jealous of the relationship my little brothers have with him, but I'll take what I have now - an interesting sort of friendship. I know that he has regrets about things that happened during my childhood and so do I and well...y'know - water under the bridge, etc etc. I'll take what I have now and savor it.


*Yes, these fucking things get the capital treatment.
**Lest you think my family thrives on the macabre - first off, we kind of do and we all have sort of twisted senses of humor. Second, a few months ago (it was when I called him for Father's Day, to be exact) my dad let me know that he was writing up his will and hey - did I want anything in particular?? So the subject of his death is something that we've all sort of learned to deal with and view as inevitable in our own way. My dad's way is to threaten his children with the looming inheritance of albatross-like possessions. Hey man - whatever keeps him laughing, right??
***My dad has been frying his Thanksgiving and Christmas turkeys (and other miscellaneous objects) for about 20 years now - waaaay before it got trendy and they sold special kits for it and all that hooha. So HA! Cajuns are trendsetters!! Kiss my (coon) ass!!!! But yeah, due to the presence of the fried turkey and my grandmother's stubbornness in all matters poultry, we end up with 2 turkeys for,like, 6 people. It's madness. And?? She makes stewed corn, which, I...just..I ..aug!!
****I only have the reports of other people who've played him and my own knowledge that my dad is one of the absolute smartest people I've ever met. I have never actually played Scrabble with my dad and I live with the fear that I will never get the chance. Dammit - next trip down there, we're playing Scrabble instead of cards. Y'all remind me please.
*5 I actually have no idea who wil end up with The Doubloons. There's a really good chance that when my dad dies, Stepmom will gesture to the bookcase where they sit and say "so, uh - y'all want those??" But to tell the truth? If I end up with them? I will laugh and laugh and laugh at the reading of his will, and then take them home and put them on a recently cleared shelf.
*6 I totally stole the multiple footnote format and the *5, etc thing from flea, who rocks.
*7 Yes, I just called my dad a fucker. I probably wouldn't call him a fucker to his face, because while my family curses like truck drivers in training, the F-bomb happens really, REALLY rarely. I still remember the first time my dad told me a (pretty lame) joke involving the F-word. It was then that I knew I was officially an adult. But - I would (and have) call him a jerk, an asshole and "0h, you big dork!!" Heh.
*8 I typed "cher" and stopped myself, wondering if that word was too precious, too cloying. But then I realized that I'd been sort of just typing for a while by then, not really thinking about what was coming out on the screen and "cherish" had just jumped out there with the rest of the text. So - it stayed.