Unintentionally Brief

Twelve hours until I begin retracing my steps back south of the border...a bit nervous, a bit excited, a bit apprehentious about what will come.

The ultimate test of patience and compassion lies not in the outside world but often within one's own family, sometimes under one's own roof.

Hoping against hope that things will go smoothly and we'll all be able to keep our proverbial cool (although, "keep" would imply that it was there to begin with, right?). Wondering what seeing certain people again will mean later on, wondering if it's possible to keep family and social life from colliding, wondering why "I" and "I'm" has been virtually stricken from my speech patterns as of late. I hate haikus and fragmented sentences.

I am no longer a Christian so I no longer pray.
That being said, Buddha give me strength in the days to come. "god" knows I need it.