A Daddy's Girl

UPDATE:

All your well wishes, thoughts and prayers worked miracles. My dad got through his surgery with a wonderful prognosis - it's NOT cancer, it's some kind of an infection that caused scar tissue but infections can be cured.

I am still in Alabama and still celebrating my release. Just found out the bookstore here already sold out. Woo hoo! (Of course, they may have only ordered four but, hey, they've sold out.)

Thanks, guys!

-Crime Scene Christie

Today is the day Divorced, Desperate and Delicious hits the stands. Am I thrilled, excited, dancing on clouds? You bet your bottom dollar I am. But I’m not dancing on Texas clouds. Today, I’m in Gadsden, Alabama, my ol’ stomping grounds, spending some time with my dear ol’ dad. We’ll probably open a bottle of Red Vino and celebrate large.

And here comes a confession: I’m a daddy’s girl, and a 100% full-fledged daddy’s girl at that. As the only girl in the family, I’m special. I’m also cuter than cute, and smart as a whip.

Don’t believe me? Just ask my daddy. He’ll tell you. You see . . . I am a daddy’s girl because without a doubt I am the apple of my daddy’s eye.

I can honestly say that I don’t think there’s anything I could ask my dad for that he wouldn’t bend over backwards to deliver. I can imagine calling him up and my saying… “Dad, there’s no popcorn in Houston. I want popcorn.”

I can hear his answer, “Do you want the real buttered kind or that light crap you always eat?” Then he’d fill his truck with popcorn and drive it all the way to Houston to deliver my heart’s desire, even if it was the light crappy kind.

Yup, he has a big heart, but he’s a tough ol’ dude, too. A southern, barrel-chested hardworking, contractor/plumber with calloused hands to show for his years of work. His work ethic was instilled in me. Which is why I never cop to writer’s block. I mean…not once have I heard him say… “I can’t plumb today. I have plumbers block.”

I’m sure there were days he plumbed better than others, like I write better than others, but he always showed up and so do I. Of course, he hasn’t quit working. Seventy-one years old, and he says as long as there’s stopped-up crappers, he has “crap” to do. (You might guess that I inherited my creative language from him.)

Yup…it’s perfect that I’m here on my release day, because according to my dad, my language isn’t the only thing I got from him. He claims he deserves at least half my royalties because I inherited my art of making up stuff, or as he calls it, “bullshiting”, from him. All I can say is . . . well, he is a contractor.

Another thing I inherited from my old man is his sense of humor. His knack of seeing the lighter side of life, of laughing and joking, even during a crisis. I can honestly tell you that when you get us together, we’re dangerous. We’ve practically gotten thrown out of restaurants because we couldn’t stop laughing. Once he literally had me thrown out of his hospital room, because he’d had surgery and he couldn’t look at me without laughing and it hurt to laugh.

I remember the time after his open heart surgery that he lay in the hospital bed and looked up at me with his stubborn, I’m-a-tough-guy expression and said, “Christie, you have to be a man to go through this surgery.” Then his tough-guy expression faded and he said, “And I ain’t no man. Get that nurse’s ass in here and make her give me some pain meds!”

And when we got him home, we laughed our way through his recovery. I remember they’d given him a heart-shaped pillow to hug when he coughed and when he did cough he’d get me to come over and hold the pillow to his chest so it wouldn’t hurt so much. But according to him, it still hurt like hell had just taken a nip out of his butt.

There was this one time, he had a coughing spell. He sat on the sofa, I stood beside him holding his pillow to his chest while he hacked and moaned. When he finally stopped, exhausted, he looked up at me. His eyes shined with emotional mist. “Baby,” he said and his voice shook a little.

Right then, I sort of knew what he was going to say and my own eyes grew misty. And standing there, holding his heart-shaped pillow to his chest, I awaited my, “I-love-you and can’t-thank-you-enough for being here” speech. Hey, we all want to be appreciated, right?

Then in his shaky voice, he continued, “I gotta tell you. You really need a breath mint.”

Yup. That’s my dad. Never a dull moment. And always a lot of laughter.

So I’m here to celebrate my release date with the man from whom I inherited a lot of my best and maybe wackiest qualities. Then tomorrow, we’re going into the hospital to have a mass removed that they found on his lung. We’re thinking positive, that everything is going to be fine, and we’re gonna laugh our way through another recovery. I truly believe that, too. But if you get a minute, send some positive vibes our way. This Daddy’s Girl can use all the support she can get.

Thanks….

Crime Scene Christie

P.S. If you get a chance, please come visit me at the BookEnds' blog today - http://bookendslitagency.blogspot.com/. Tomorrow jump over to Fresh Fiction’s blog where I’m the guest blogger: http://freshfiction.com/blog/ I promise you, this one will only make you laugh and maybe. . . fan yourself a bit. Yup…it’s hot. Oh…there’s also a contest. So go check it out.