La to the middle is falling

Deep down, in a place I rarely admit openly and freely, I'm a bit of a daddy's girl. I don't gush about it, because my dad has a streak of the crazy in him. Scratch that- he is crazy. There was a time when I lived my life in constant fear that I would adopt my father's unstable tendencies. Now, I just accept that I have been saddled with many of my father's quirks. But if I turn out half as likeable as him (which I'm currently not unfortunately), all will work out. My dad is not of the serious Indian father varietal. He's the sort of person that will tell you a completely humiliating story at his own expense. He doesn't mind if you're laughing at him- because you're laughing, and that is ultimately the point for him. Generally, I do not pour it on regarding my father because he is the definition of an imperfect man. He's made a lot of insane missteps. But then again, I cannot love a person if I do not see their flaws.

But I do not feel like belaboring his faults today. My father loves music, and is almost completely neutral in regards to anything else. Nice clothes, fancy cars, gourmet food? Eh. He'll thank you for them, because my father is a sucker for any show of affection, but you're likely to find most of this stuff languishing away untouched by him. Not that I've ever gotten him a fancy car, bad Indian daughter that I am. My brother and I had a long and drawn out negotiation about Father's Day this year. My brother is of the mind that, since my father doesn't really care about anything, there's no point in getting him anything in particular. This is a convenient rationalization because my brother is a lazy a**. So, once I came up with the idea of getting my father an iPod, and told him I would take care of buying it, my brother shrugged and gave in. Frustration, thy name is younger sibling.

Two days a week, my father has this crappy commute where he drives for over four hours in one direction. So even though I had heard bad things about the reliability of iTrip, I figured it was worth a shot. My father received these presents, and this morning, I got an email from him, an excerpt of which I'm inclined to put up here (note that I have not corrected any grammar- if you wonder why my writing is so sh*tty, now you can see why):

I set up the ipod to use in car fm radio station last night and was thrilled to see how it works wireless! What a science invention ! Now, don't need to carry all CDs in car and just one ipod that does everything for me wherever I go.

As if this is not hilarious enough as it reads, now consider the fact that my father has worked in the tech industry all his life. I think I'm going to run around saying "What a science invention!" everywhere I go for the next week. Also, I love my dad for exactly this kind of childlike enthusiasm about a relatively small thing.

On the other end of the spectrum, yesterday, I went to a birthday dinner that was a wee on the awkward side. It was one of those dinners where people are placed together who know a lot about each other even though they've never met. Sort of a Seinfeldian "Worlds colliding!" type of situation. And so there's a constant inner dialogue of Am I supposed to know that about this person? Will I embarrass SP if I say that?- which gets to be rather exhausting. Of course, I handled it like your average healthy person: by drinking a half a bottle of Gewurtzraminer. Of course, it was a good bottle, which made it even more deplorable that I was drinking it like water, I suppose. Ah well, glad to see I was not the only one throwing them back last night.

The inner monologue from that dinner also included some words of advice for my well-meaning, but often ridiculously misguided friends:

• If a guy says he just wants to be friends with you, this means that he is not and never will be interested in you. You can probably coerce him into dating you, but that story will not have a happy ending. If there are any guys that are still reading this blog, please confirm this for me. My brother agreed with this assessment, but an N of 1 is not really good science.
• Do not recycle relationships. It's a rare thing indeed to meet a married couple who recount their courtship with tales of "so then, we broke up because he wasn't ready to settle down, and then we got back together a year later because he still hadn't found anyone better than me. And then we got married!" Life is not a romantic comedy, people.
• There's a fine line between showing affection for a guy's dog and making it painfully obvious that you've got a bad case of baby fever.

I'm just saying. Except I didn't. Some times I think the only reason I still have any friends is that I manage to bite my tongue for 9 out of 10 things that pop into my head. One real quote did come out of my mouth last night though. My friend was bemoaning that she had no one to take home, and I said, "Hey, there's always someone to take home. There is a dude that stands on the corner of my street who would be more than happy to come home with you, I'm sure." Just goes to show that occasionally, one of those inappropriate remarks slips through the filtering mechanism.