Runnin’ down the road in the Rocket 88, Friday afternoon, dodging traffic on Redlands Blvd, my dad in the passenger seat, I was acutely aware of the one-hour-left window rapidly closing. Not a scene from the new (or any) Fast & Furious. The Rocket, a ’92 Honda Accord, will never, has never, can definitely not now ever go over 55 MPH without shaking like a rocket ship approaching lift-off. The name references that along with a dose of ironic. Keeping to 50, using my blinker to change lanes, I was only channeling my inner Vin Diesel in order to get us to the art supply store on time to buy a couple of frames so we could submit my dad’s collages in the Redlands Art Association’s Multi-Media Mini show. He’s been an active participant in this annual event for the last decade or so, getting in every year except maybe two and also scoring a couple of honorable mention prizes. We were prepared for this day: Weeks earlier, he’d picked out the collages he wanted to submit, we’d filled out the paperwork, and made the appointment with the gallery for the intake. Except it turned out, we had failed to dot an i or cross one of the t’s. How to frame the work. Wire hangers only (not the Mommie Dearest–movie sort but rather the picture wire, stretch-along-the-back sort). My dad’s current frames with the sawtooth, the hook, the easel stand, were all wrong. It said so clearly on the instructions. Picture wire only. Baaaahhhh.

Instructions. By day I’m a copy editor. I adore the job. Words words words. How they play, roll, generally sing and scream out what they want to say when joined together seamlessly with all their attendant and correct grammar and punctuation. That’s a thing I love to do. There’s an attention to detail you’d think would carry over into the reading of step-by-step, how-to, get-it-right instruction thingies (official word). Nope. I am not a girl who reads instructions. Shout out to Ikea. Yet I am a girl obsessed with preparation. You might think these functional qualities—preparations, instructions—would go hand in hand. In my case, you’d be wrong. Preparation for me comes from a whole other set of instincts (perchance neurosis? The need to not rock boats by always being prepared, that kind of thing). During my teaching days, I would do dry runs to schools when I had a residency coming up so I’d know exactly how long it would take in order to avoid stress. As a journalist, when I had an interview with a band, I was early about 98.8% of the time, which frankly was absurd because 98.9% of the time my interview subject was late. Usually very extremely late. If I’d read the instruction manual on being a music journalist (specifically rock’n’roll), I would have seen the many steps that lay out clearly how 2) clock time is not real-time, 3) it is extremely uncool to show up when expected, 4) always add on at the minimum 48 minutes to any arranged arrival time, 5) make an entrance by arriving very very late, 6) know that you are important enough that everyone will wait for you, 7) never apologize. The other important item included in the box of How To Be a Musician (all genres) is the Super-Ego-I’m-Worth-It activation switch, which when set to on means the person waiting will be thrilled beyond measure to see you.

So it was that I, an adjacent accessory to the rock musician, would find myself ridiculously early (read: on time) for most interviews, then sit solo in restaurants, hotel lobbies, conference rooms, green rooms, tiny backstage areas where people who were doing the good work of preparing for the show would step around me and get on with it. This was all before hand-held devices could keep me distracted so I would alternate between going over my notes while becoming increasingly nervous that my questions were not probing enough and fairly sure the interview subject(s) would never show up and I’d get fired for not getting the story and meeting my deadline. (I’ve been a master catastrophizer for, er, ever?) Once, waiting at a restaurant for the lead singer of a late-eighties metal band, I did a shot of tequila to calm my nerves, then maybe I did another or so. By the time he got there, the basic workings of my tape recorder had become a challenge. This was not a good look and while it would be great to tell you that I produced a fantastic gonzo-style rip-roaring piece filled with night-on-the-town, stream-of-consciousness tidbits, that would be a lie. The piece never ran. It’s possible I never even wrote it. I think I was surprised exactly once by a band who showed up at the appointed time: Alice in Chains. They would have been A#1 on my list of late-arrival, possible no-shows but instead, they were early (like legit early) to a restaurant in Seattle where I was interviewing them for a roundup of bands on the rise. They were at the tip of their rockstar iceberg, which would soon begin to melt as their singer slid into the excesses outlined in the rock manual’s fine print (may cause addiction, loneliness, mental health issues). (Side note: I consider myself lucky to have never been challenged in the way a fellow journalist was during an assignment to interview Prince at Paisley Park where he spent days waiting for the savant to call him into the studio, then when summoned, stepped into a room lit only by candles and given the instructions that no tape recorder or writing implements of any kind would be allowed.)

In the end, it seems clear that sometimes you just have to give up control. Move from one place to the next and accept what can get done within reason. Oh, and keep some humor around it to avoid explosions of la tête. Yet because I’ve been tempered in the fire of whatever it takes, whether from fear of failure or a we’ve come this far, can’t stop now mentality, when faced with the challenge of getting the right blasted frames for my dad’s artwork, We. Would. Get. It. Done.

Of course, if I’d read the instructions a bit better, we wouldn’t have been racing toward Joann’s craft supply store. Bless Joann’s for being there and also shout-out to the lovely fellow artist who witnessed my borderline breakdown at the gallery when we were told the frames were wrong and stepped up to tell me exactly where to go and how to make it right. I’m gonna be honest here: With my dad’s current cognitive state swinging him between “What are we doing now?” and “If I’d known we were doing this, I would have told you about the frames” along with, “Let’s forget it. I don’t need to be in this show” all piped in from the passenger seat, I felt as close to a Steve Martin, John Candy buddy flick as I might ever experience. Yet, I was determined to make this happen. We had an hour and after a couple of wrong turns (jeez.uz. mapping in Cali mini-malls is a challenge. Turn right, then left, then pivot to your upside down and do a backbend next to the Taco Bell). ANyhoo, I dashed into Joanns, found the frame section, learned more about the various backing choices than a girl might ever need to know. Discovered that there is in fact a shortage of the type I was looking for. Managed to find the last two in various sizes, grabbed some picture wire, paid, flew to the car, drove back to the gallery. Discovered one of the frames was TOOOOO BIIIIIG (it’s a mini show with strict size regulations), managed to frame the one that size-qualified, received wonderful support from the intake staff, and left with 15 minutes to spare to find my dad calm as could be in the car waiting, where he’d been tasked throughout the entire adventure with making sure no one attempted any funny business with the Rocket. “Is it martini time?” he asked. Yes, in fact, it was.

As we drove (slowly) around the corner to a red-booth, old-school joint where I’d hoped we’d find a quiet table in the dimly lit restaurant (spoiler alert: no), I didn’t have the heart to tell him only one of his pieces had been submitted due to frame-size issues. Instead, I wanted to let the relief that we’d accomplished one-half of the thing we’d set out to do resonate for a minute. And he wasn’t unappreciative. “Wow, you’ve been working your tail off,” he said as we settled into a table outside near a giant heat lamp and ordered drinks and dinner. Even by half, we’d made it: One piece in the art show, one table with a martini. Both things close enough to where we’d been aiming.

My dad reflected on the adrenaline events of the last little while. He actually had a gleam in his eyes. It was a day, he said, that he hadn’t expected. A zip in the fabric of his hours. Totally true and in reflection filled with our own version of the buddy adventure comedy: The Baron and the Rocket. Or Spencers on the Loose. Or maybe Frames, Hangs, and Automobiles: Adventures in the Art of (Not) Reading the Instructions.