the sea and the river

this has been a long week.
and it's still only wednesday.

easter was wonderful! matt and i got home friday evening and got to hang out a little bit with mike paul (HEART!) which was wonderful and then we went back to matt's house and hung out with his mother for a bit before watching legally blonde.. which we chased with a whopping dose of se7en and x-men. we watched a great deal of movies this weekend.. if you couldn't tell. in fact, we watched x-men 2 and fog of war on saturday, both of which were very good, if not a little too dry for late night watching (of course, here i refer to fog of war.. about robert mcnamara.. who some might call an adorable old guy). through watching all these movies, i developed a much more profound respect for two things: david fincher (director for both fight club and se7en) and ridiculous movies when you're in a good mood. legally blonde, a movie that i was not really prepared to enjoy, turned out to be really fun to watch and, while not something that i'll rave about critically, is a film that i will definitely watch again with friends -- if only for the sake of annoying matt.
i also decided that kevin spacey is possibly the best bad guy ever (sorry, ian mckellan, you're great, but serial killers > magnetic dudes).

so, movies aside, we had a great weekend. we got to see my dad and uncle on saturday afternoon for a little while and we got dad some pretty little baby daffodils from the boy scouts. they're adorable! (incidentally, we also got gramma some pretty tulips from the same scouts.. she really loved them. go buy flowers for your loved ones. now!).
my dad is looking a lot worse. he's living now with his mother's husband (so, dad's step-dad, bill, who is actually a really nice guy) and my uncle gus (because gus doesn't want to live in the house that he and his now ex-wife shared). dad can't even say a whole sentence without gasping for air and coughs hard enough to shake the house. i'm so glad that we were able to stop by on saturday, though, because sunday morning we went there for brunch after church (which, frankly, sucked. contemporary services blow) and dad was feeling really lousy. i tried to talk to him but i could barely hear him and i really didn't want to get in his face because i'm sick. blugh!
he's so sweet, though. he got me a great easter gift bag with some salt water taffy from the shore and some pretty pieces of jewelry and a little teddy bear holding a star that says "daughters are angels" .. it's all really adorable, but i can't help but think of how bad he must feel.. he missed my childhood and now he's sort of trying to make up for it, but can barely move without his oxygen tether and physical exhaustion.

i don't even know how to feel anymore... just a lot of regret that we couldn't be a family when i was younger.

all right, i'm cutting this already quite lengthy post short. hopefully, i'll find time to make a happier post later in the week. but, if i don't.. i'm at a conference all weekend -- wish me luck!