I was blindsided last week.
Long story short I found my “dad.” And by “dad” I really mean “sperm donor” because, let’s be real, supplying genetic material does not a father make. My father is my step-dad. My bio-dad never paid child support, never visited me, never called, never wrote, not even a single birthday card. Ditto for all my paternal grandparents, uncles, and so on. But don’t think that keeps a little girl from wondering, and wishing, and hurting.
When I was a child I longed to find my dad.
When I was a teenager I longed to find my dad and give him a piece of my mind.
When I was a younger adult than now I longed to find him, give him a piece of my mind, and rake him over the coals for never having paid child support.
Then I found that I didn’t care…or, at least, I thought I didn’t care. After all, why on earth should I care about someone who cares not one iota for me? But that zen conclusion was the product of circumstance. I couldn’t find him. And that was that.
Until I “ran into” him on Facebook.
On Facebook.
And it turned my world upside down.
There he was. He was on Facebook, and MySpace too. There were pictures of him, surrounded by his collection of eleven electric guitars. Eleven guitars. Funny, he wasn’t around to help my mother pay for my one clarinet but he could buy himself eleven friggin’ guitars. And there he was, with a different child in his lap. He couldn’t be bothered to make the child that was me a part of his life, but apparently he had room in his life for others.
I freaked out. I was angry. I was sad. I yelled and cursed and cried. I bawled on the phone with my mother.  I vented to Adam. I tweeted about not knowing whether to contact him or not. I exhausted myself with the emotion of it all.
And then I made my decision.
They say you can’t pick your family {with the exception of your spouse}. Well, I’m lucky because, in this case, I can pick my family. I get to choose if this man will be a part of my life, a part of my family. Over two decades ago he chose to not make me part of his family.
And now I’m making the same choice.
There isn’t a good reason in the world to invite a person like that, a person who would desert his own daughter, into my family. There isn’t a good reason in the world I should put myself through the stress, and anxiety, and hurt I’ve been through any longer. And there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell I’m giving him a chance to be a negative influence in my daughter’s life.
He walked out of my life over twenty years ago.
And I’m letting him go.
Forever.
Goodbye…asshole.

I try to avoid drama on this blog, really. I do. I like to be enjoyable to a broad audience so I often keep my more inciting opinions to myself, unless it’s something I feel ethically obligated to discuss.

And I feel obligated to discuss Nestle, however briefly.

If you’ve active in the blogosphere you’ve likely heard about the Nestle Family event. Perhaps you’ve even seen some back and forth on Twitter under the #NestleFamily hashtag. I hope you’ve read at least one of these posts:

An open letter to the attendees of the Nestle Family blogger event

The great Nestle boycott

What Are People Thinking?

edited to add: #NestleFamily, Bloggers, and Race: Why It Matters

Great posts…though they forget to address the Nestle/child slave labor connection. If you haven’t, please take a moment to do so now. And maybe you could stop by the Infact website and scan this Wikipedia entry.

But this post is not just about telling you that Nestle is fully of suckiness and fail. It’s about personal ethics. It’s about getting in bed with bad people. Now, I’m sure there are plenty of bloggers at the Nestle event who had/have no idea how dirty Nestle is. This isn’t about them (though it’s probably prudent to research companies before you jump into bed with them).

If you know a company is doing awful, horrible, terrible things should you buy their products? No. If you know a company is doing awful, horrible, terrible things should you become part of their PR spin machine? EVEN BIGGER NO.

I just don’t understand how anyone could think otherwise.

Scariest words in the English language: "root, canal."

Followed closely by "over seven hundred dollars."

Also...I hope I never have to be told "you can do option A [for way more money than I can afford] or option B [which will cost even more money later]."

And here's my advice to dentists everywhere. If there is an option C, do not wait until your client has agonized over options A and B and is nigh unto a total breakdown to inform said client of option C. It's mean.

/rant

Anyway...the dentist went [as] well [as possible]. I almost had to get a root canal or say goodbye to my tooth altogether. But at the last minute the dentist suddenly remembered another option, which was to drill, see if the decay wasn't too close to the nerve after all, and fill if possible. Lucky for me the decay wasn't too close to the nerve after all and it was indeed possible to do a filling. And we made it out of the office without giving up an arm, a leg, nor our firstborn. At the moment I'm reflecting upon the experience while waiting for the feeling to come back to the right side of my mouth (it's slowly coming back, and the feeling is "oowwww!").

Bear got to play Nintendo Game Cube in the waiting room. Lucy got to take a nap.

Mama got needles in her mouth and a drill in her tooth.

Aren't I lucky?*

*Well, yes, actually. I am lucky. I didn't need a root canal or tooth extraction. But I'm going for pity here. Pity me. Pity poor little me and my "traumatic" experience.

sigh

BIG sigh

I'm going to the dentist in about a half hour.

Know why?

Because I have a cavity. And not it's not just any old cavity. As best as I can tell it is a massive hole which is going to cost an arm and a leg to be changed from "hole" to "whole." And dental is not covered by Alberta Health. However the insurance Adam is required to get while a student at Medicine Hat College does cover dental. Except that it does not cover me because we didn't want to pay the full year price for part year coverage and that was the only option available. We wanted to save our money and wait until we'd get the full year. Gee, that worked out well. *rolls eyes at own foolishness*

So, here I sit, trying to ignore the growing sense of dread and attempting to distract myself as the clock ticks down to my appointment time. Obviously, not working.