Palm...springs?

I arrived home from work today to find this waiting for me. Boyfriend asked, "How do you like your coconut tree?" It reminds me of when we were kids and would "plant" an avocado seed in a glass of water, suspended by toothpicks. Do you think this will actually grow with it sticking up out of the potting soil like that? Maybe so. It's not like it needed any 'soil' to make it grow thus far.

It's amazing how we can grow in less-than-ideal conditions. We might seem a little cracked, but there can be beauty in the imperfections. Conditions are likely never going to be perfect. Sometimes we just have to open up, let some light seep in and allow our inner beauty to branch out.

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Before the holidays, my mother sent us a C.A.R.E. package with an assortment of stuff, including a chocolate bar from Dagoba. I'd forgotten I even had it. Boyfriend's at a gig and I felt like treating myself to something decadent. But what? Then I remembered that Dagoba bar. I just opened it and started nibbling. It's forest-grown, organic dark chocolate infused with lavender essence and wild blueberries. YUM!!!

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DAD UPDATE: My father finished his 7 weeks of radiation today. I spoke to him tonight; he feels pretty well. Of course, that could be due to the Vicodin, Xanax and pain patches they've got him on. I'm surprised he can feel anything. This week they narrowed the area on the left side of his neck they were zapping. I called him every weekend to check in. Weekend before last, he was having a really hard time and said, "I really don't want to go back there for any more of that." It made me feel awful. The last two weekends, he's talked about how severely burned his neck was from the radiation. But last night he said his neck has healed remarkably in the last five days. I asked if that might be due to the reduced area they were radiating this week. He wasn't sure, but said the radiologist had commented how rare it is to see someone's skin heal so rapidly in such a short time. Other effects have included damaged salivary glands and horrendous sore throats. He was on a liquid diet for a couple of weeks, and a couple of times they admitted him to the hospital for rehydration. He talked about what a saint my stepmother has been through all of this--how she's done all of the driving the last couple of months. (The treatments were done at a hospital in the next state, two hours away.) She told me last weekend that they'd had a few moments of disagreement through this whole thing. I imagine that's to be expected when you're undergoing something that stressful, and when you're spending 7 weeks cooped up in a little hospital-affiliated apartment. (They went home on the weekends.) But it's over, and let's hope that's the end of it. He goes back in a month for follow-up.