the Dalaverse

Augggggh ::tears hair out:: So. Frustrating.

Traditional post-"Gilmore Girls" (now actually post-"Veronica Mars") call from home

Dad: So I started back at work yesterday.
Me: Yeah? How was it?
Dad: Well, my blood pressure shot up, and I got pretty tired, so I'm just going to work half days for a little while.
Me: Good. That's good.
Dad: Yeah, I figure I'll go back full-time on Friday.
Me: Um, WTF? How does it do you any good for just two days?
Dad: The doctor said it was okay.
Me: ::breathes slowly::
Dad: The good news is, I got done the stuff I was worried about that's due in March.
Me: What? What were you worried about? When were you worried? You're not supposed to worry --
Dad: I'm not, I just said.
Me: But you were worried and that's bad. You can't tell me this kind of stuff when I'm a hundred miles away, Dad.
Dad: ANYWAY...

(later)
Dad: We had spaghetti last night. Your mom made the [low-fat, from the American Heart Association cookbook] tomato sauce and then I put some mushrooms and some spices in it.
Me: Nothing bad though, right?
Dad: No, I can't cheat yet.
Me: DADDY.
Dad: The nutritionist said --
Me: I don't CARE what the nutritionist said. You're not even close to being anywhere near able to think about cheating on your diet.
Dad: I'm pretty close.
Me: GAHHHHHHH.


I understand that this is hard for the man who used to salt his fruit. I do. But Jesus fucking Christ, I hate not being there. I hate sitting here, freaking out and completely useless.

My parents smoked through all of my childhood. Everybody in our family did, but none of my friends' parents. I cried once when we did D.A.R.E in elementary school because they show you those pictures of blackened lungs and tracheotomy patients and the statistics and basically tell you all smokers die horrible horrible deaths. Which basically meant, "You, in the pink glasses, your mom and dad are going to die very soon." In fifth grade, I held a protest for about a day. I carried food up to my room, stuffed a towel under the door, and put a sign up proclaiming that I wasn't coming back out into the secondhand smoke ever and I hoped they were happy when I was left orphaned. They finally quit when I was twelve, cold turkey.

Point. A couple of years later, we were staying at a beach house with a bunch of aunts and cousins and whatnot from Dad's side of the family, and I caught my mom taking a drag from somebody cigarette. On the drive home I bitched her out as only a self-righteous fourteen-year-old girl can do, and she laughed it off and said Dad had had five over the course of the week. They assured me that it wasn't like they were starting up again. I still had nightmares about it -- real, honest to god, wake-up-in-a-cold-sweat nightmares.

This is so very much worse.

I want to go home.

And now I need a cry. Which dovetails nicely with the plan to sit all the way through "Titanic" this weekend. Perhaps I'll take "Edward Scissorhands" and "Seabiscuit" along for good measure.