blame the bougainvilla

I came here to talk about the fence!

I uploaded photos, sorted them in the order of the story I wanted to tell, drafted witty comments, and elicited the help of my kids to send photo updates to prepare a documentation of the fence project that is currently taking over our lives.

I left a space for the photo I wanted to use to demonstrate the illustrious beauty of the bougainvilla.

I've got an external hard drive that is mostly dedicated to photo storage, and whenever my phone or camera is getting bogged down with images I plug it in and back those sucker up to the hard drive. It's capacity is vast, I don't think I could ever fill it even with the impressive quantity of food and drink pictures I relentlessly save. (why? WHY?)  But if you know me at all you know that I've never taken the time to include any semblence of classification or organization in that hard drive. It's just a series of random folders called 'camera dump,' insert date.

On Thursday evening after spending a couple of wine fueled hours in the beauty magician's chair after work, I came home and set to work finding that bougainvilla photo to complete my fence post.

I wasn't having much luck with recent years, so I clicked through to those adorable early attempts I HAD made at organization, and I sought out visit/family member themes because I am forever making people pose in front of the damn bougainvilla.

I was waylaid, though. That one spot where I landed after a million folder and subfolder and file clicks just so happened to deposite me back to 7/29/08, when, to quote my wise and wonderful mother, we still had our innoncence. We still had dad. They still had Jidoo.

They still had Jidoo

It took my breath away.

He's been on my mind, of course. With our summer CT tripped just days away I'm always tansported, usually back to the bullshit that was 2010, then the poignant summers that have followed, thick with nostalgia and loss. But in July of 2008, we still had our damn innoncence.

He was making a speech as emcee of the cannonball contest awards

I love this so much. Mom is *cracking up* at her man

And we got to just reach out and touch him, crack up at him, be with him.

It's just dad, being dad. (and mark being an assbag)

We still had him. 

 

Mom still had him. Look at them!

They needed more time. 

The stupid fucking fence isn't finished anyway, I'll show you next week. But the lumber, the sawdust, the power tools, the measurements and precision and whistling around here these days? It's no wonder he came and bumped that bougainvilla.

We really miss you, Dad.