Love this song.

melbatoasted:

While talking, Zellerific and I realized we only have a month left in Guelph. We seriously have shit to do before we leave. Let’s make us a list:

Shit To Do In Guelph Before We Leave:

• Go to W Sushi. Seriously regret wearing restricting pants afterwards.
• Photoshoot in the Arboretum. Anything in the Arboretum.
• Go to the Albion at least one more time on a Thursday night. 
• One last trip to dirty dirty Palace. But we love you Palace. And your cheap drinks.
• Eat at Creelman one last time
• Go to the Boathouse - and rent a canoe for the afternoon!
• Have some late night Pierres, and for that matter, have some late night Salsateria. 
• Wander aimlessly around the art at the MacStew one last time.
• Paint the cannon. 
• Create an inspirational, vaguely internet referenced flyer, and plaster it around Campus
• sit in the middle of Winegard Walk and make a painting.
• Get a photo with our Gryphon mascot.

To be continued…

(If you think of anymore, or want to join in fellow Gryphons, let us know!)

Can you think of other must-dos?

More suggested To-Do’s:

• Dress the Bear at the MacStew
• run into the beloved Robert Munsch around town
• Open mic night (you could not get me drunk enough Sarah!)
• play some frisbee on Johnston Green

Anymore suggestions fellow Gryphons? 

melbatoasted:

Spring means sunshine!

Dance With Somebody -Whitney Houston (Remix)

Because today, it’s definitely needed.

(via melbatoasted)

I decided to tumblr search dead beat dad. It was interesting.

I myself have a dead beat dad. He left two days into my second year of University. Up until the VERY LAST second - he pretended like everything was A-OK - living in this giant lie he had built up.

He had an affair - with an older woman - a retired kindergarten teacher. A teacher. I still can’t get over that. She taught your children! The summer before he left I suspected something. He got really…weird. He used to be nice to my sister and I. Suddenly he got really angry and super defensive when I asked him the most basic and irrelevant of questions. He started to care about his appearance a little too much. He suddenly put a password on the desktop computer we would all use - so I couldn’t get into it. He “worked” really late nights, almost every night. He started keeping extra shirts in the car. He commuted 45 minutes away to work - and plays the guitar religiously. He had created a bunch of friends, and used to play gigs with them where he worked. He stopped inviting my mom to their gigs.

You are probably all like ‘well duh those are obvious signs’. But when they happen gradually, you don’t think about it. His work is an American company that was downsizing, and when he kept saying he was working late, we believed him. I mean if he’s trying to keep his job, or if the company is having problems, wouldn’t you be working later? And isn’t it horrible to accuse him of an affair if he’s just working hard?

Then one weekend when I was home he went out to the corner of the house - the one that wasn’t in view - with fewer windows - to have a conversation. I didn’t catch much - only it ending with ‘I love you.’ He never says I love you. Not to anybody. He comes back in the house - I casually ask him who he was talking with - he says ‘grandma’. Bullshit. Warning signs are going off.

It seems this whole time my sister had built up more evidence - and she was calling him on it - with words and without. And he knew it. And damn was he being mean to her. Those occasional times he would get angry at me for no reason? That was ten fold with her. She found receipts of a separate bank account in the town he worked, and walked in on him making a big romantic style birthday card for his kindergarten teacher.

I didn’t know she had more evidence, or that her and my father might have had angry words at eachother. I was working a lot, and generally seeing my boyfriend a lot that summer. My mom didn’t like my boyfriend - he’s brown, and comes from a muslim family, and she didn’t like that. So I was kind of absentee from the house.

One day - I don’t remember how - I think it came up spurr of the moment without my sister or I discussing it previously - it came up over dinner about his weird movements. I brought up what I had notice, my sister backed me up. My sister was hung ho - and wanted to confront him - my mom and I were a bit more cautious. Well really, she was plain in denial - but we both agreed that accusing him of an affair when he really was just working hard would be a terrible thing.

My mom got her yearly tests done. As an older woman - that involved cancer screening. A few weeks before I had to go back to University I found out that she had polyps in her colon. My grandparents died of colon cancer. The doctors did further tests - and found out that the growths were both cancerous, and a lot more dangerous than they originally had thought. They were hoping they could get most of it out with surgery - but chemotherapy might be involved - and this was big news. She was freaked out. She had fucking cancer. And it was worse than the doctors thought. Her parents died of this cancer. He told her to stop being dramatic.

I left to go back to University -and my sister back to hers. Moving me in to my new house with my new roommates was awkward. We had to drive a moving van - which only my dad could do - but my mom wasn’t confident in driving to my University town - she is not a confident driver, and didn’t know the route. He didn’t give a fuck and told her to drive the car or not come at all. Moving in was awkward, and he was stark and cold. While eating lunch in my new living room (take out, a glorious meal) my mother expressed concern with finding her way back home. He said it didn’t fucking matter to him if she didn’t make it back. This was in front of my new roommate and her mother.

She ended up half way back, lost, in a parking lot of a church, crying, and calling his cell phone asking for help - she didn’t know where she was or where to go from there. He didn’t give a fuck.

Previous to this he had been sleeping in a separate bed sometimes, and one night he even packed a bag. This was just previous to moving me in. But he never actually left with that bag, and that was only one night. He continued to lie and act his way up until the day.

The day. They woke up as usual. He even made her coffee and toast. He made her breakfast that day, I kid you not. Wished her a good day at work - she left. He didn’t. He got a moving van, drove it to the house - and moved all the spare furniture from the guest bedroom into the van. He took her good silverware, and wedding plates, all his guitar and recording equipment, the computer, his CD collection, all of that. He left the family photos. He moved to his town of work. He already had an apartment set up and everything. It only occurs to me now, more than two years later, that he couldn’t have moved that furniture by himself. I ask myself - who helped him? It actually disgusts me. Who the fuck helped him? Was it her? Was his “girlfriend” in my fucking family home? What LIES did he tell whoever helped him?

After moving all the stuff to the other town, he waited until my mom got home from work. She had the groceries in her hand when he stopped her in the driveway. He said ‘I am leaving you. Don’t make a scene.’

Got in his car, and left. Left her alone. Pretended up until the very last minute, and then left her devastated, alone, in the drive way of our family home, with the groceries she bought for them in hand.

I look back and realize there were other signs - his recording equipment and other belongings started disappearing - he told us he was selling them. We got weird calls from Real Estate Agents saying ‘so you want to sell your house!’ - he had taken pictures of all the rooms in the house a few weeks previous. He had obviously been in contact with some agents getting estimates on the house.

It’s my second year of University - I am a frosh week volunteer - I am up from 5:30 am until past midnight - cheering - leading events - helping move people into residences. I am exhausted. The first free night I get - my roommates and I make food, we have fun. I get upstairs to half a dozen missed phone calls, and texts from my sister ‘call me asap, its important’. I get a phone call from my dad.

A phone call. He decided to tell me my whole life was turned upside down in a phone call. He says ‘I have left your mother, don’t freak out.’ I can’t hear, or breathe, and my poor roommates know something is wrong when I wail and collapse. My boyfriend is called. My roommates decide it’s a good time to give us some space and go buy some liquor.

The rest of the night is a hazy blur of Irish Car Bombs, Vodka shots, and eating cookie dough raw from the container. I will admit - as a 19 year old - I spent the night hugging my teddy bear.

Luckily my boyfriend had his family car in town (he had just moved in to his new apartment) and he drove me home the next day.

My mom was just stunned. She looked like a ghost. We don’t have much family on her side in Canada, only her sister. The rest are in Holland, and both her parents are dead. My aunt has three children - from (then) the age of 9-14. The middle child is mentally handicap. She had to leave her children at home to drive up to our house. My mom was in so much shock - she couldn’t remember my aunts telephone number - she couldn’t speak. She just kept repeating my dads name. And “Gone”. My aunt initially thought he had died.

My mom had been verbally beaten down my dad for a long time. Although she wasn’t a saint - I won’t forget the first four years of my relationship where she pretended my boyfriend didn’t exist - all because his skin colour was different, she didn’t deserve what she went through. By the way - that second day - when he drove me home, she apologized, and asked for his forgiveness. She said she had been stupid - and asked if he could forgive her. I think she had wanted to say something months earlier - but didn’t know how. He was stunned, and knew she was at breaking point, and so without question accepted her apology for years of racism and ostracism.

She wanted to kill herself. The man she had made a life with, had two children with, had spent more than 30 years with, and sacrificed many a things for, had up and left her in a day. He had never once tried to discuss where their marriage went wrong, or getting couples counselling, or tried to work things out. He just up and left with a different woman.

She wanted to kill herself for a long time. There were nights I literally had the phone in my hand to call the hospital, and the helplines. Some nights she still wants to kill herself.

Luckily her major surgery that Christmas went well - although it meant that she couldn’t really move, or walk, or work for a couple months. By some amazing stroke of luck - she didn’t have to have chemo.

She has since gone back to the church - and has found some strength in the support the people there provide. She joined yoga classes, book clubs, womens discussion groups, and running groups. She ran a marathon for the first time at the age of 55. She has gone to rock concerts with me, and has girls nights at the bar with her female friends. My mother has done more in the past couple years than she had done in almost 30 years as a married woman. I am happy for her in that respect, but see how she suffers, and no matter how strong she is, how much that strength doesn’t matter sometimes.

Initially I didn’t want to burn any bridges with my father. I tried my hardest to stay neutral. If he wasn’t happy in the marriage - who was I to tell him he had to stay? I did not approve of the way in which he left, or the fact that he never tried to work things our, or the fact that he had an affair. He never acknowledged the fact that he had an affair. He tried to pretend that she didn’t exist. I knew all about her.

He would occasionally come into town and take me out to dinner. He payed my tuition for the first year, but only as long as I kept talking to him. His family was difficult.

He didn’t tell his mother that he had left, so the second day after he left, my mom got a phone call from Grandma, talking about the weather, and her current quilt. That was when my mother had to tell his mother that her son had left the family, and left her, had an affair, and was asking for a divorce.

My grandma kept calling for a couple more weeks - but I think out of politeness mostly. After that she never called. None of his family did. He came to the house in the first week - at request of my sister and mother - try and talk. It ended in yelling and screaming. My sister burnt her bridges. She called him every mean word in the english language - and although it wasn’t my way to do it - I am proud at her courage. She really spoke her mind, and her anger at him. He had been an ass hole at her for a while, and he had cowardly snuck his behind out of this failed relationship, leaving nothing behind but destruction, pain and anguish. He refused to acknowledge my sister after that.

We don’t get phone calls on Christmas, or our birthdays, from him or his family. We did get Christmas cards from my Grandma, and my one (out of two) Uncles that Christmas. Unfortunately my uncle didn’t mail his, so we didn’t get it until the very NEXT Christmas - one of the last times I saw my dad - in November, he had visited my Grandmother and brought the cards back for us.

Haven’t heard from any of them since. I literally ran into my cousin this summer at a Comicbook convention. He awkwardly chalked it down to the fact that they don’t want to ‘get involved’. I said that any acknowledgement that we existed was better than none. He shrugged.

I did wish them Happy Birthdays on facebook - my cousins. They didn’t wish me one back. I tried to see my dad for dinners, but he wouldn’t go out of his way to talk to me, not even a text message. I waited for him to make some effort, he did not. Months started building up between the times we talked. If we did talk or see eachother, it was about the weather, or how the pasta I ordered for dinner tasted.

After he left it emerged that he took my mothers 50 thousand dollar inheritance from her parents. That money was meant to help pay for mine, and my sisters education. My dad had paid for 5 years of my sisters education, and he was supposed to help pay for mine. God knows he can afford it.

He spent all of that money. And his income. We had to go to the bank in the first few days to find out what had happened to all the money in the bank accounts. He had handled all the banking online, my mother was oblivious. There we found statements showing what he had been up to - dinners out every night, big expense items at Walmart, and Home Depot. No doubt out to dinner with his girlfriend, and buying items for both her new house, and his new apartment.

He has since stopped giving me money to help pay for University, although he is legally obligated, as that was part of the understanding, as he paid for my sisters. The divorce proceedings have gotten very nasty. He takes it to a whole new level - trying to rub her nose in the dirt as much as possible. It’s downright nasty. I tried to stay neutral for so long. Please believe me when I say that. But his cruelness just got too much to handle. I stopped talking to him. Only recently did I un-add him on facebook. Technology has a lovely way of complicating things.

His recent response to me unadding him on facebook? A text message saying ‘You have to talk to me sometime.’

I was 19 when he left. I know that seems adult like, but I have never felt more lost, and more child like then that day. He is the adult. He is supposed to be responsible, and mature. He is supposed to make an effort.

He doesn’t. He pretends my sister doesn’t exist. We haven’t had acknowledgement that either of us are his daughters in almost more than a year. He spelled our names wrong on his version of the legal documents for the divorce. Seriously, he doesn’t even know how to properly spell our names apparently.

In messages to old high school friends he finds on facebook, he skims over the past 30 years of his life - skipping straight from high school to the now. The now with his girlfriend. He pretends that 30 years - with two children - didn’t exist.

He didn’t just give us up - he stopped talking to his old friends. Friends he’s had since he was a teenager-  just replaced with his new ones, in his new town, with his new work. A job he recently got fired from.

The divorce proceedings continue to be nasty. I don’t even want to get into it.

To my dad:

It hurts me that you don’t want to put in the effort to talk to me. I am your flesh and blood. I am not a god -fearing woman, but heaven forbid - when you leave this earth - the only true thing you will have left behind is your children. Your precious money - which you so eagerly spend on your girlfriend, and HER children, not to help support your own - will not go with you. Though I doubt heaven is a place you will end up. I have taken out a pitiful amount of debt that the government will give me - my mother and I are scraping by to make ends. You used to love your family, and your father. Yet when you left - you also left all the videos of him behind. You left the antique family photos behind. We dumped the old tapes of him playing out on the curb. I have seen more spine in JELLYFISH than I have in your family. They pretend like we don’t exist. I thought they were adults. It’s good to see they won’t reach out - even after I have extended a hand or two. I am the child in this situation. What will it take? I gave you a chance, I gave you several, but now I am burning these bridges. My mother is a hundred times stronger, and a thousand times a better person than you will ever be. I am ashamed that you are my father. Tell me- how many years of our happy family were a lie? All 30 of them? You pretend we don’t exist - so they definitely feel like a lie. Do you think that replacing our mother with HER will benefit you? You can try and replace us with her children - but when you get older, and more decrepit - they won’t give two shits about you. Did you tell her the truth? About you being a dead beat? About cheating on your wife? Do your friends all know what you did? If I have children I will raise them a hell of a lot better than you. I will make sure every single day that they are loved. I will put in effort. Will you regret never knowing your grandchildren, and not being there at our weddings? I think your father would roll over in his grave if he knew what you had done. I have made my decision, and I choose her. You, and your actions, made me choose. I didn’t want to, but what am I to do? Will your girlfriend - and probably soon to be - new wife - stick with you knowing that you have been disloyal in past? Will she regret it - when you see something you like better than her - and leave her too? This is where I am supposed to say I hope it never happens, because I don’t want somebody to go through that pain, but I would be lying, and I was told not to lie. Did she enjoy stealing you away from our family? Did she think “I don’t have a husband, so it is fine to take somebody elses”? What did you tell her - what is truth - and what is lie? Do you enjoy your knew skinny blonde step children? Two daughters and a son right? Martha. Jessica. Mac. And look - a dog and a cat too. What a perfect family. They aren’t yours. Do her kids know what a little shit you truly are? Don’t they EVER ask questions about your kids? They must know you have some. Doesn’t she ever wonder why she’s never met us?

How wonderful it feels to have a father who doesn’t support you emotionally, or financially, or even fucking care if you exist. If you truly didn’t have money - I wouldn’t be asking you for support, and as it is - I don’t want your money. I hope you emotionally suffer a million times over for the pain you have caused us.

I will never forgive you.

Nearness Of You - Norah Jones

Cry Me A River - Diana Krall

kavalsviri:

Ain’t No Sunshine- Bill Withers

The Weight - Gillian Welch, David Rawlings & The Old Crow Medicine Show

They’re like the new MGMT. Either way I’m really liking this song!