Warning: Emotionally introspective entry ahead. Read at your peril.

I had the most marvelous converstion with my dad last night. It's become sort of a habit for me to stay up at nights when I'm home and talk with him after my mom and my sister have gone to bed. Anyway, last night we went through his old high school yearbook. He told me about two of his old teachers: W.H. Nelson and Robert Treuer. From what he's told me of them, they (particularly Mr. Nelson) absolutely fascinate me. I've read through my dad's yearbook now and it sort of makes me wish that I'd known him when he was that age. Two things really stick out to me: Mr. Nelson's message for him and a poem that my dad wrote on the inside back cover. It would be too much of a breech of privacy if I were to print either of them here, but they make me wonder who my father was when he was about my age. I talked to him about it a little last night, about his friends and classmates and teachers, but there's so much more that I want to know but that I know that he wouldn't remember.

Here's another interesting question... I want to know if my dad was ever really happy. The poem in his yearbook seems so melancholy, and I suppose the high school warrants that sort of attitude for the most part. But so many of the things that my mom has told me about my dad, and so much of what I know about him now, is sad. He's been hurt a lot, and I know that he's depressed and has been for years, certainly off and on from when I was 10 years old, and according to my mom, even before that. The scary thing for me (and this seems very self-centered) is, I see the same sort of thing reflected in myself. I know how miserable I was from about 6th grade on until I started school this year. I don't know if i'm looking for patterns where there aren't any, but it does concern me. I can't get specific on here, for all sorts of reasons. But for anyone who knows me and is reading this, it's not a problem for me personally right now. I am happy with who I am and where I live, and I feel like I'm going somewhere. I guess what I'm trying to do in this course of inquiry is to get close to the people and things that I mostly ignored when I was so mired in my own head that I couldn't see past myself. And if it ever happens again, I want to know something about the source so that it might encourage me to get help instead of being miserable for a prolonged period.

I don't know if that made any sense.

Anyway, I'm headed home in the morning. Gonna drive for four hours, get home, watch the Super Bowl, do homework, and get sleep. Lotsa sleep. Sleep is a wonderful thing. Possibly go to church tomorrow too. You never know.

Oh, yeah... my sweet sister and her lovely one-act cast took third place today at subsections and they're going on to sections tomorrow. So I'm real proud of her right now. Go, lil sis! You rock!

Well, after all that emotional talk, I'm spent. Very sleepy. I will sleep well tonight, despite having taken a long, kitten-interrupted nap this afternoon. So, I'ma gonna go to bed. Peace and love be with you all!