'days seem merry and bright'

i felt misleading leaving my last post up for nearly a week, like it implied i am really in a bad place right now.  i'm not.  in fact, the bottled-up emotions that flooded out in that post allowed me a really intense, cathartic cry that i didn't know i was storing up, and afterwards i felt so much better.  yet another reason to make time to post.

my dad, at present, is overseas visiting 1) his motherland and 2) my relatives on my mother's side.  when he and my grandparents fled latvia during the war, they left behind three estates later siezed and consequentially later sold by the government.  over the last ten years my father has been working to recoup some sort of financial restitution for this , and of late it seemed some kind of compensation to my family would be forthcoming.  there were embassy meetings and translators and lawyers (oh my!) and my dad had hoped to take care of the final documentation in person on this trip, timed specifically to make things happen before a seemingly arbitrarily-set government deadline this month.  daddy called from germany on saturday to check and report that yet another document from the US is needed and that it is supposed to be hand-delivered to the approrpriate latvian officials.  BS bureaucracy abounds on both sides of the pond, and i'm not quite sure how this particular saga will end.

anyway.  on saturday, i drove to northern VA to 1) pick up my own christmas decorations and 2) decorate my father's house.  it was a bit of struggle to reach the decision to do the latter, as in the past my father has implied that decorating the house for the holidays himself is saddening and that of he and i were to do it together, it would still be depressing as it was one of my mom's big things.  however, excluding the first christmas just one week after her death, this is the first christmas daddy will be at home and not travelling during the holidays, and a completely non-christmassed house is something that makes him blue, also.  so for an hour or two saturday i was heaving dusty boxes and running around with extension cords and wiping away a few tears reading my mom's carefully labelled boxes.  i didn't put the tree up, but did a bunch of other smaller things and hope that i am doing the right thing to help my dad navigate this emotional landmine.