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Today is my father’s birthday.
He would have been 62.
He died in 1983 at the age of 35 from ALS – Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
I turned 35 two weeks ago, myself, and as I drank my coffee this morning, I pondered the various things that he had accomplished by the same age in his own life – a successful career, two daughters, a healthy and very loving marriage and a wonderful home in Cape Breton in the community he grew up in, with lots of friends and family nearby. I found myself feeling very small and sheepish and very, very lonely for him. I wondered to myself if he was looking down at me and what he would make of all of the silly misadventures that have brought me thus far in my own life. I like to think that he would have a chuckle and tell me to ‘keep on truckin’!’. Which is of course what The Saucy Milliner always endeavors to do.
I have many memories of my dad - aside from being very handsome with great chops, he was a very tall and very strong man. That is partly what kept him alive more than twice as long as the average 2 years that people survive with this terrible neurodegenerative disease. I remember sitting in a cardboard box and him pulling me around the house in it whilst I pretended it was the General Lee. I remember being taught that eating ketchup on toast is really quite delicious and that drinking out of the milk carton is OK as long as mom doesn’t find out. I remember him showing me how to eject an 8 track out and put a new one in on the dashboard of his Mac Truck cab. I remember riding on his Norton Commando with him and thinking that one day, when I was big enough, I would have to get a motorcycle of my own. I remember frequently fishing off of the old army bridge just down the road – up until the night it collapsed under the weight of a passing truck ( well, it really wasn’t supposed to last longer than the war…). I remember watching ‘Chips’ in bed with him, when he started getting more sick, as well as watching Star Trek, Three’s Company and Little House on the Prairie. I remember turning the pages of the bible for him when his arms had atrophied to the point that he could no longer move them and when he finally lost the use of his voice, he had to beckon me to do so with gurgles and moans. I remember frequent trips to the hospital in the back of the ambulance when things were bad and I remember my last visit with him there. I remember the night he died and my mom coming home and telling me that ‘Daddy was with the angels now and no longer in any pain’ and I remember visiting him at the funeral home to say goodbye. I remember someone at the service singing Amazing Grace, his favorite song. 
35.
I’m 35 and I am only just finding my career path. Again. I am only just feeling like I am making ties in my community and my family are 3,000 miles away. I rent an apartment I can barely afford and I can only dream of being lucky enough of finding a man who loves and appreciates me the way my father loved my mother.
And the Norton? Nope. (But I do have an Invisible Jet)
“Keep on truckin’, Kelly.”
“OK, daddy. I will. I want to make you proud.”
I reach out and turn the page…
..Exodus 20:12
Today I want to share two hats from my collection in honor of my dad’s birthday, as they were his. The first is an American made suede Cowboy hat by Henschel. My dad got this hat when he and his twin brother, my Uncle James (whose birthday it also, incidently, is) and my mom and some of their friends and family went down to Florida on a road trip after they found out he was sick. It’s a size small! I can’t believe that for my dad’s size, that he wore a small, but there it is. It barely fits me! The second hat is from when he was a driver for Coca Cola Canada. It’s very vintage and very cool. These hats mean the world to me and I am happy to be able to feature them as the first hats in my Hat of the Week entry.
I really could write heaps about how cool and how amazing my dad was, but alas, I must get to my day job.
Just wanted to wish you a happy birthday, daddy.
Hope you are rippin’ it up, Caper style, wherever you are and that you are still rocking the very cool Wolverine chops.
I love you.
 Before Wolverine....there was my dad. Check out those awesome chops.
I woke up this morning with a craving for, among other things, fish and chips.
I had the day off work and thought it would be fun to take a stroll for some battered brunch down to GO Fish on False Creek near Granville Island. Go Fish’s venue is a tiny little blue hut right at the Fisherman’s Wharf and there is always a massive line up outside of it. The last time I ate here, which was last summer with my Aunt Carla and Uncle Peter, we got nasty attitude from the girl who was calling out the orders and I had not been back since. While the service left a poor taste in my mouth, the haddock did not, so I decided it was time to give them another chance.
It was almost noon and my stomach was roaring. I called up my friend Yolanda. A sleepy voice on the other line answered. “Hello?”
“Are you up yet?”
“Ughhh…”
“Yolanda, it’s almost noon! What time did you go to bed?”, I asked, getting hungrier by the second.
“I think it was four…”.
Yolanda is a night owl. I am not. “OK, listen, you wanna go to Go FIsh? We could split a double order of the haddock. Or cod even, maybe. I’m easy. Oh, and could you bring Belinda? I haven’t seen her in a while.”
Belinda is Yolanda’s puppet. When we hang with Belinda, fun adventures ensue. I hadn’t really seen her since Christmas Eve. Belinda showed up with a bottle of Captain Morgan’s Spiced rum and the last thing I remember before things got really blurry for me, was Belinda passing out on the kitchen floor in a puddle of her own vomit. It wasn’t pretty. But aside from that, it was a pretty fun night.
I changed into a suitable frock and slathered on the SPF 30. I got a terrible burn at the Kits pool several weeks ago, that my legs were still peeling from. Not classy. I knew that I probably should have put on a my sensible Stetson panama hat, the sun was already blazing, but I opted for a cute, sisal, pink, mini beret instead. I haven’t been out of the house much in the past month, and I wanted to feel summery and girly and not the disheveled hermit that I have become as of late. I grabbed my shades and made my way to False Creek leaving a trail smelling of coconut and anticipation in my wake.
By the time Yolanda and Belinda met me at Go Fish, the line up was already snaking around the corner. We decided on each getting our own order of cod. The notion of sharing just made my hungry belly far too angry. An hour and three more sunscreen applications later we finally got to the order window. I could feel my stomach starting to eat itself, I was so hungry. The woman who was taking orders looked familiar. I wondered if she was the same lady as last summer. I approached with caution and the biggest smile I could muster, without looking too insincere.
“Hello! I would like to order one piece of cod, chips and extra coleslaw please, and may I also have a San Pellegrino? The orange flavor one. Thank you.” I beamed at her.
She wrote everything down on her order pad and I handed her my money. She barely glanced at me. There must have been about 5 people in that hot little grease-filled hut. They gingerly danced around each other, preparing orders and wiping their brows. How they all didn’t suffer from massive 3rd degree grease burns is beyond me. The floor looked slippery and dangerous and I knew that it wasn’t the sort of work environment that my clumsiness would take for more than five minutes before I found myself face down in the broiler. EEE!
It took at least another 20 mins for us to get our food which was delivered to us sans attitude. I loaded up my chips with malt vinegar, grabbed a wedge of lemon and we made our way over to a patch on the Sea Wall where we made our little camp.
“Did you bring her?”
Yolanda produced a very tired looking Belinda out of her bag. I was delighted to see her. Belinda doesn’t really say much and her expression never really changes. She is in a perpetual state of happiness, though Yolanda seems to think she looks more like she is silently screaming. In any case, seeing Belinda always puts a smile on my face. I happily tucked into my food. First up: the coleslaw. Fail!!! Why did I order an extra helping of this horse shit? It tasted like a can of crushed ass. What the…? This was NOT the same coleslaw that I had last summer. I was so disappointed. I set it aside and hoped that the cod would redeem the vileness that had infiltrated my taste buds. It was mediocre. A little too much batter and not enough fish for my liking. The chips, albeit a bit cold, were nice and tastey, though. On the whole, the meal was welcome, because I was soooo hungry, but not a memorable one, in terms of taste. No matter, fish and chips are not a craving I rarely get more than once a year and that may be because when I lived in Scotland, I ate it almost every day. Now THERE were some good fish and chips…yum.
 Under the Bridge The three of us went for a walk around Granville Island to work off our greasy meals. Aside from molesting some heirloom tomatoes in the Public Market, Belinda was quite well-behaved. This is the first time we hung out with her where she didn’t get banned from any of the venues we visited for disorderly conduct of any sort. I think she must have been suffering a hangover, as she seemed rather quiet, but it was nice to spend some time with her. And Yolanda.
Despite the multiple applications of SPF 30, I did end up getting a slight tan line and I can feel that I have developed at least 23 new freckle on my face and 7 on my back. Not a terrible price to pay for a delightful afternoon in the sun getting greased up on Granville Island.
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Belinda touching the tomatoes she fully did not intend to buy.
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Today was The Saucy Milliner’s birthday. Oddly enough, it was mine, too.
I have spent much of the past two weeks in bed for reasons which a lady never gets into in a public forum such as this and The Saucy Milliner does endeavor to be a lady at least 80% of the time (anything more and she would have to call herself ‘The Mundane Milliner) but suffice it to say, she is even more desperate than ever to find a working Flux Capacitor (see bio). My employer very graciously gave me this day off some time ago, in support of my potential efforts at celebrating this special day, though I woke up this morning feeling like doing the exact polar opposite of that. I woke up with my heart, my head and every muscle and hair on my body commanding me to just lie still another day in bed and watch the light change in my room as the sun moved across the sky.
So I willfully obeyed.
For exactly 13 mins, anyway.
That is when something unusual happened.
From my bed, which faces my beautiful leaded bay window, I watched as a giant falcon landed in my Tim Burton tree which grows directly outside of it. I call it my Tim Burton Tree because it looks all gnarly and Beetlejuicey in the winter when it is barren, save for the odd stubborn leaf which refuses to fall from it in autumn and clings on or dear life, much in the same way a Kitsilano Cylon clutches her overpriced designer coffee whilst walking her rat-dog up 4th in her Lululemon (though it’s debatable she’s ever done a single yoga session). I digress. I love my Tim Burton Tree – you see, I do not have curtains and it fills up my window with green, leafy goodness, permitting me to prance around in my skivvies sans giving the neighbors a free show and this morning I was sharing my tree with a giant falcon.
It was incredible.
I slowly slid out of my bed. I did not want to make any sudden movements for fear that the falcon would fly away. I walked over to the window and upon a closer look, could see that the falcon had something in it’s talons. My stomach took a sudden lurch when I realized it was a dead pigeon. Gross. The falcon wedged the pigeon in between some branches and didn’t waste any time tucking into it’s breakfast. Feathers started flying everywhere. It was quite the sight. I couldn’t look away. Soon, the falcon was through the feathery layers and started in on the bloody, fleshy bits. I grabbed my camera and thought to myself, ” I hope you take what you don’t eat with you! Oh, and please also take that black squirrel that hangs about and looks like it has the mange.”. The last thing I wanted was a rotting pigeon, corpsifying up my beloved tree and attracting flies. We don’t really use screens here in Vancouver (true story), and that would mean having to keep my shutters closed, which was out of the question – I love my cross breeze as much as I love my tree! So clean up after yourself, falcon!
All was well. After an hour of munching and hanging out, the falcon vanished along with any leftovers there may have been, leaving only a smattering of feathers on the ground below, which the breeze swept away soon enough.
All of this action outside of my window, as gruesome as it was, raised my spirits. I decided to take a walk to the beach and treat myself to one of the designer coffees that the Kits Cylons favor. It was, after all, only 7:45 am in the morning, perhaps it was just what I needed to help shake the funk that had been holding me captive for the previous two weeks. I grabbed my debit card and slipped on my old, worn out Keens and grubby sweatshirt. I tucked the rats nest that my hair had become, for lack of motivation to wash it, into my ’24 Day 6′ cap*** and plodded out the front door towards Higher Grounds coffee shop up on Broadway for some fancy coffee brewed by someone not me. I am the current Mayor of Higher Grounds on a social geo tagging game called Foursquare. I like to ‘Check In’ every few days in an effort at maintaining that mayorship. I don’t know why. It’s my latest social media gaming compulsion, I guess and for a reason I can’t explain, this title is important to me. 
7:53 am – I check in to the coffee shop, grab my extra large coffee and made my way to the beach.
As the caffeine quickly permeated my bloodstream and the sun started climbing a bit higher in the sky, what was a seemingly impossible thought only a short hour previous, occurred to me – that perhaps, just perhaps, I might find myself in a mood to celebrate my birthday after all. My plodding became more of a proper walk and by the time I reached the beach and found a bench to sit upon, I felt the first vague sense of pleasure that I had in what seemed like forever. Truth be told, it’s hard to not feel pleasure when on sits on a bench at Kits beach early in the morning. Looking out at Stanley Park whilst listening to the waves gently roll in and smelling the ocean air mixed with the faint smell of chlorine from the Kits Pool is really quite lovely and one of the reasons I live in this city and in particular this neighborhood. In that moment, on the bench, I felt blessed.
Then my iPhone rang.
The Raiders of the Lost Ark theme broke the serenity of the moment and rather startled me, in fact, as I forgot that my phone was in my kangaroo pouch. That phone call made my morning. A friend from the States was calling me with my first of the three happy birthday calls I would get today. I was so happy! I have taken my facebook profile down for some time ago and I really didn’t expect anyone to realize it was my birthday except for my sister and my mom and maybe one other person, so hearing from this friend was a surprise and true delight. A fellow Browncoat, you see… After the call I knew I needed to harness this surge of positive energy. I decided that a small celebration with my other friends was something I was ready to contemplate.
I have just come home from said Celebration with the aforementioned friends. It was a most delightful evening at our old haunt, The Gerrard (a Mayorship which I covet) and I am so happy I decided to let them share today with me, in the end. There were presents and hats and CAKE from the lovely Nisreen, who works in the bar and always remembers my name. She’s adorable. The Saucy Milliner wore a fabulous vintage Irish Linen die-cut lace frock with a gorgeous vintage slip (thank you, Beverlee), Chie Mihara heels (a birthday present from Auntie C last summer) and of course one of her own stunning cocktail creations. And myself? Well, I wore a smile and rosy cheeks.  Of course, the latter may be due to the Manhattans – the first alcohol to pass my lips in several months. MMMmmmManhattans.
And so here I find myself another year older. Certainly not another year wiser, for I am still the same Silly Girl who thinks far too much with her heart than her head for her own good…only with a few more noticeable lines around my eyes. My dearest friends and pals – thank you for reminding me of the abundance of love that I have in my life. I am surrounded by blessings of all sorts and I shall endeavor to remind myself of that daily. I love you all.
K
***Re: Wearing a BB Cap. The Saucy Milliner does not endorse wearing BB Caps. Ever. Unless it is an extreme emergency, such as the vile and wretched state of my hair this morning.
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