Random thoughts... - by Tocky
Tocky on 17/2/2022 at 20:09
I mean who the hell comes into your house, smears their shit everywhere, then complains about the smell? It takes a truly obtuse asshole. I get along with nearly anyone so if it is me telling you what a ball sucker you are then you best look into a mirror and figure out whose balls you are sucking.
Ruin my damn day with your BS.
Tocky on 4/4/2022 at 04:52
Here is a stick Richard left me that he never finished. He made a mistake in his carving and it is Hickory and hard as hell once it cures so he never went back to it. I have a Dremel so I finished it for him. Not very detailed but I gave it what it was trying to be and thus I don't think it was wrong. Also Lana wanted a ball on top so I took the one with the scorpion in it held by metal skeleton hand and drilled a hole for it to sit atop. Later I used hot glue to seat it better and made the top like it was a candle melting off the sides. I may shellac it.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/zUnCdbf.jpg
Tocky on 23/4/2022 at 23:17
I have made a fabulous stick. Nobody has made a more fabulous one. Just the other day I was having tea with the queen and showed her my stick. She blushed and admitted to having nothing comparable. I proclaim it the Bedazzler! I will only use it for knighting worthy people and never shall I whack anyone atop the head with it unless absolutely necessary.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/hXFrEOK.jpgInline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/2y4y7Y5.jpgI never did show the rest of my vacation pictures. Maybe next time.
Tocky on 7/5/2022 at 05:43
The real reason for fabulous. She has inherited my crazy I think. I have most of my canes for walks with the kids just like I have my hat collection for them. I have everything from London Bobby to east German military. Seriously, marching band with huge plume to sombrero. Pirate to ship captain. Pith helmet to Nazi helmet. Top hat to bowler. Chef to knight helm. They can be anything. I don't think I've done so bad. Almost as good as my dad in my own way.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/Vx7YrU3.jpgMothers day tomorrow. Go see her and love her. She wiped your ass. That is love.
Tocky on 19/6/2022 at 23:18
I have a parlor trick for you. My grand Lana told it to me and we had fun with it at the fathers day gathering. It takes two people and she chose me to be the assistant. It's called Black Magic. One person leaves the room while the others choose an object in the room. Any object or any person or article of clothing or pet or anything really. It doesn't matter if it's big or small. Then when the person comes back into the room their assistant calls out the names of objects and asks if it is the chosen object. No order, no hand signals, no eye movements, no tells of any kind, and yet the "magician/medium" can always guess when the object has been named. The hilarity comes from the guesses as to how it's done. The funny part is the secret is really simple and they try to make it complicated. Really simple. It's in the name even.
Happy fathers day guys. I had to go put flowers on the grave of mine. I hope you don't have to. And if you do I hope it works out better than this at least.
[video=youtube_share;GOpFSBhGjuU]https://youtu.be/GOpFSBhGjuU[/video]
Tocky on 20/7/2022 at 04:10
We buried my cousin Bonnie Gail yesterday. Uncle Bill used to call her Kit Bunk. I have no idea. He had a weird nickname for us all. The last time I saw her was at a funeral. I forget which one. They all run together when you get my age. I'll never forget the story she told of my dad when he died. Just one of those things that stick in a kids mind she said. My dad was bush hogging on the old place one spring and went over a rabbits warren. Bunnies everywhere. Dad caught one and put it in her hands. Sheer delight for a little girl to hold a bunny. Just a little thing the size of her little palm. She wanted to keep him. Dad said she could but if she did it likely wouldn't live. But if she put him down he could go home to his mother and be with his brothers and sisters. She put him down. That was quintessential dad. Able to talk a little girl out of a bunny with tenderness. I was grateful for that story.
Bonnie was big. She had been since her teens and if anyone had a hormone problem it was her. She just kept getting bigger. It didn't stop her from meeting a man and sharing their lives together though. Her husband was inconsolable and I don't think he heard anything but the tone of the words of sympathy. His eyes were wet and his hands cold and he nodded as if to say he knows. He looked so old. I wish I could have spoken to him longer but there was a line and my mom doesn't need to be on her feet long. They came to ask if I would be a pall bearer. Of course it's always my honor to do one last thing for someone I care for. I think we were all a little worried though because it was an extra wide casket such as I had never seen and Bonnie must have been near six hundred pounds.
We got her in the hearse with no trouble. I think everyone was putting a full effort into being careful. No hands released until absolutely necessary. After we arrived I saw that we would have to take her maybe fifty feet. Oddly she seemed light. Lighter than my wife's stepdad and he was only half as big. I guessed all the strapping lads were making it easy on the old guy so I lifted harder. We had no trouble setting her on the lowering straps either but I noticed they had iron pipes to roll along the side braces. They weren't taking any chances. It was a nice service. One of her favorite church singers sang Amazing Grace. He had a beautiful voice.
Funerals linger with a melancholy and this evening I'm looking for things to lift my spirits so I watched a Bill Burr comedy show on Netflix. He was at Red Rocks talking about doing mushrooms and getting into a funk of feeling unloved and abandoned and realized it was how he felt growing up. It was then I thought of the bunny story again and knew how lucky I am. Some have a past to overcome. I am just the total of the people who were good to me and there have been so many.
rachel on 20/7/2022 at 10:25
I'm coming back to France on Saturday, for the first time since my dad passed. By coincidence, it will be five months to the day. I don't know how I'm gonna react. Living abroad, I'm used to not seeing him, but when I'm there... He won't be anymore.
Five months ago, I was passing Huesca down the Spanish Pyrenees, on my way to the Pourtalet pass, like I often do to go home. Up there, at the border, I stopped. The peaks were covered in snow. The sky was a light grey, with only a few golden sun rays touching the slopes below. I saw a group of hikers leave the shelter there, and walk along the river to get back to their cars. It was all very peaceful, and the view was magnificent. I stopped, because for a moment, I couldn't continue. I was overwhelmed by emotion. Because as I watched this beautiful view, these mountains that my father loved so much, the thought came to me that, in a way, I was saying goodbye to them on his behalf. Even then... while lately we were preparing ourselves for the inevitable, we did not know that our own, terrible farewell would come so fast. I arrived home. My father passed the next day.
I didn't know how to say goodbye, and I still don't. Life is such that, by my character, and by his, I didn't open up that much to my dad, nor him to me. But underneath that surface, the heart was there. Love.
I miss my dad terribly.
In a few weeks, we will gather at the edge of a lake he loved, and spread his ashes, and he will be resting in his beloved Pyrenees.
And I'll see him every time I pass that Pourtalet road.
Thirith on 20/7/2022 at 11:11
I'm so sorry about your loss, rachel. My dad died a little over two months ago, and since we were never a very close family, there's something abstract to him not being there any more. I can only imagine what it's like to have such a loss and to feel that absence as acutely and concretely when you return and he's just not there.
Your dad does sound like an amazing man, the kind of person who deserves a memorial the size of the Pyrenees. Take care.
rachel on 20/7/2022 at 13:14
Thank you Thirith, and my condolences to you too. <3 It's kinda surreal at times, but what else can we do but go on...