And my exciting news for this month...

Is that my dad came for a surpise visit yesterday! I love my dad so incredibly much. He is my idol, I suppose you could say, as he is proof that anyone can change themselves. He was an abusive man in his youth, not a nice father and very controlling of my mother. He was consumed by anger and lashed out at anyone and everything who got in his way. I have some pretty unpleasant memories as a child with him in them. He kicked me out of his house at 14 years old, and we did not speak, write, talk, ANYTHING for three years. Then, at 17, about 10 days before Christmas and on my own with no family to speak of (long story but the rest of my family is WORSE and I avoid them), I took the risk of calling him. Collect call, at that! But I was 17 and broke, and had no long distance, so the only way to get ahold of him was to call collect, and I was fully expecting him to hang up when he heard my name.

Instead, he not only accepted the charges, but after we said, "hello", his next words were, "I love you." It was enough that I almost cried, as I knew then that we were both willing to move on and put the past behind us, and that he was as anxious as I to rebuild some semblance of a relationship.

He has done much changing in all these years, and a big part of that is owed to him finding and following buddhism. He is a wonderful human being now, and I really admire how far he has come in his personal growth. I don't see him very often, and didn't even know he was coming here, but it was a wonderful surprise! He got here just before 11am and stayed until around 4pm, which was actually a long visit for us. I almost cried when he left, but it is how it is. I'll try to get some pics on here. My camera wasn't working at first, (thanks to my 2 year old getting his mitts on it the day before) and I really thought Xander had broken it, but thankfully Jeff got it working again.