You remember the story I told about he little girl in Dearborn whose father was in Iraq? Stopped me cold because it was hard to determine which "side" he may have been on? Sure you do. Well, I'm happy to report that after having another assignment at the same school, walking into the same classroom this afternoon, that same little girl, almost from the moment I walked in the door, was overjoyed. "My dad is back!" were her first words to me. I knew exactly what she meant, and asked her when her father came home. "May 8," she told me. I didn't find out about everything it meant to the way her life was going, but you could tell she was as happy as any child would be to have their father back. Which, I suppose matters most; the story could have turned out a lot differently, and no matter what, that would be sad. On other fronts, I think it's finally dawned on me why I chose not to fight harder than I did for custody while going through my divorce. My father, while not exactly Johnnie Cochoran, or Melvin Belli, for anyone who's older, was an attorney. An attorney who fought tooth and nail for custody that, in retrospect, he probably rightly deserved; and he still lost. Ergo, I think subconsciously I probably figured that if that was the outcome for him, I da*n sure didn't have a prayer, particularly given the state I was in financially, and in other ways at the time this all went down. Is it fair? That really only inspires what I normally say about fairness, which is to say, "fair is for cows, and even they're halfway to hamburger." I still don't doubt that I've made some better decisions in the intervening time, not every one perfect, but not bloody bad. And I continue to have optimism about the future. I'm tired a lot of days, and more stressed out than I think is probably appropriate on a lot of days. But I'm gettin' there.