My dad's girlfriend

Writing the title of the post was the first time I ever wrote it or really said it. It's certainly a mixed up feeling when I think about K, his girlfriend. She is definitely very special, and a very nice woman...she loves music, is a retired teacher (although she still substitute teaches from time to time), is from the United church so quite similar to my our presbyterian beliefs, loves to cook, plays the piano and even composes music...and on and on. My dad smiles when he talks about his time with her, and he talks on the phone with her every day, sees her several times a week, exchanges emails frequently. What's so wrong about this picture? Nothing really...

And yet it's still a bit unsettling. It's two years after my mom died, although it can certainly feel less than that pretty often. I guess I came up with this notion, however romantic or unromantic you want to make it, that my dad would not meet anyone else in that sense again. That if I didn't get married that I would simply stay at home and take care of him as he grew older (easier because I have my work in the basement). I suppose that could still happen...but...

He's even talked marriage. Now, he just met this woman this summer. June I do believe, they sang in a short musical production together.

Today he came downstairs when I was cleaning and showed me that he had switched his wedding ring over to his right hand (actually quite an accomplishment because his wedding ring used to not be able to come off his finger because he had gained so much weight since his wedding day almost 30 years ago). I didn't exactly see that one coming, especially because I didn't think it could come off yet (he has gone back to Weight Watchers and has been losing weight again, but I didn't know it had worked that much yet).

Do I want my dad to be happy? Of course. Is there anything wrong with K? Nothing unless it's that she likes to feed us a little bit too much and occasionally uses slightly stronger language! But it is unsettling at the same time.

I will close on a totally different subject-asking for prayers for the family of Joey Keller, a nine-year-old medullablastoma patient who passed away this weekend after approximately two years battling this devastating brain and spinal cancer. So many children and families that I follow need support and prayers right now, but Joey's death really hit me because I had followed his story from almost the beginning-so almost two years. My heart is also hurting for Ariel Gariano, a relapsed rhabdomyosarcoma patient who is very, very ill and her family, the family of Vinny DiGerolamo as he faces a new relapse of rhabdomyosarcoma, Ella Mason and her family as she faces a possible relapse of PNET in both the brain and spinal cord and Kylie Taylor and her family as she waits in the CICU of Primary Children's Medical Center for a heart transplant. She is a fighter, and despite my dream the other night of her getting a heart transplant and doing very well and even having children of her own, she desperately needs a heart SOON.

I entered, unfortunately, into what I think was a stress-induced depression veil sometime between 6 and 7pm tonight and am trying to break out of it. At 7:30 I was practically in tears because it was only 7:30 but I was feeling so tired that I wished it was a socially-respectable time for a 22-year-old woman to go to bed. I know that was a combination of physical and mental tiredness responses, but it gets so frustrating. I never really see these depression waves coming, it just comes BANG and is hard to get back from. Evenings can be bad, especially seeing as they start just after 4pm now when it gets dark. The joys of living past the 49th parallel...in just a couple of weeks, we will have only 8 hours of daylight a day, if that. At 8am, it is still almost dark, and it gets dark just after 4pm now. We have thankfully gotten more sunlight recently. I'm a true prairie girl and I am not used to an entire month where there basically was NO sunlight. An hour here or there just a handful of times, and sometimes while I was in class just wasn't enough. I may find clouds nice too, but I do better work in sunlight.

Time to go and work. I'm not going to say try, because that won't help this depression veil. I'm going to say that I WILL. Do or Do not, there is no try. I'm not a star wars fan but I do think that that quote by Yoda is quite good.