I sold some furniture yesterday and my Dad helped me to deliver it. I found out why he was less than thrilled about the baby news, too. He had no problems "lecturing" me in the car during the whole trip. I developed toxemia/pre-eclampsia with my son and they had to induce my labor five weeks early. He was in the NICU for five days. Dad said he didn't understand why I would want to go through this again since "it almost killed me last time." That is not true. It COULD have, but my OB was very closely monitoring me. And that is something that is way more common with young mothers, anyway.

But, it gets better. He called me an old hag and said that I was too old to be having babies and that if I wanted to get pregnant that I should have "gotten healthy" first by losing more weight. I am way healthier now than at any other point in my life, despite the extra pounds...

Yes, that is the emotional environment I grew up in. It took me lots of years to learn how to forgive and love that man.

Bottom line is, he made me feel sad--however briefly. Well, he didn't "force" me to be sad; I allowed him to have that power over me for a couple of hours. Bad Cindy! I love my Dad, but his ignorance is almost appalling, at times. And, there is no "educating" him unless you are a talk radio personality. Truth be told, I laughed when he called me an old hag. THAT was funny. And it made him mad when I laughed at him.

Soooooooo...on a happier note. We got all of the Christmas decorations out and that is how we will be spending the majority of the day. My digital camera and I are not playing well together. I am too damned stubborn to read the manual, yet, because I, being the super-human-genius that I am, should be able to figure this out! I can take pictures of people and the cat, but not like pictures of a flower or my house. It just turns off. Sweet! I love a good challenge. I WILL take a picture of my Christmas tree TODAY! Without reading the manual...