broken record

i was so excited to hear that anne rice was giving up christianity. honestly, i read probably way too much anne rice as a teenage girl, and found her conversion in the late 1990s upsetting, and her writing afterward boring. i liked that she was awesome and crazy and atheist, i liked that she was a different kind of writer and made vampires dangerous and overtly sexy. her books scared and thrilled me, and to this day i don't really take other vampires seriously (i think mr. sparkle-pants vampire is kind of a sappy dope). i heard she was renouncing catholicism and i thought "yay! we get anne rice back!" then i heard an interview she did on NPR and realized, "no, she's just splitting hairs about dogma." so sad.

i drove my pop's truck today. i have never driven a vehicle so large, and when my father was alive, the very idea of me driving his truck would have given him a small stroke. that truck was his baby, it was the first car he ever bought brand new, and when i was learning how to drive a stick shift, the notion of my learning it in his car wasn't even broached. being behind the wheel this afternoon felt awesome, and also left me feeling kind of guilty and giddy. it's got a crazy powerful engine, and is so tall; i felt like such a badass driving it. all i could think was, "man, i wish i could call him and tell him i drove his truck and didn't hit anything or do too badly." i felt ridiculously proud of myself, and wanted him to know that i wasn't even that nervous. my palms were sweaty, but not that sweaty. i hope i don't sound too much like a broken record, but i miss my pop. not because i'm a daddy's girl, or we had some fairy tale relationship, either. there were years upon years when we couldn't even be in the same room together; times when all we did was fight and i wished i had any other man on earth as my father. we didn't have an easy relationship. i couldn't even tell him i loved him over the phone, which is odd considering i end every other phone conversation earth with that. "i'd like a large pepperoni and mushroom pizza, thanks, i love you!" even at our best we were prickly. i loved him, though. when i got older and got to know him better, i found i actually really liked him. nights like tonight i'd do just about anything to have one more complicated day with him.