My dad. I've been working on a post about him for days now. But basically all I have to say about him, if I have to boil it down, is that he always surprises me.

He's got insomnia-- might be a side effect of the PTSD, or the anxiety, or the depression. But when I can't sleep, chances are good he's got the TV on upstairs when I go to get a glass of water, and if I've got the TV on when he comes down he's as likely to watch with me as to go into the bedroom.

About an hour ago he went into the bedroom, asking me "Do you plan on working tomorrow?" Yes. Whether I'm rested or not, I have to.

And then he came back out and sat down at the family computer. I felt guilty, thinking I'd kept him up, but he said I wasn't to blame for it.

Then he asked me about some web address I'd never seen before. And told me to check out the blog on the page.

It was interesting to read, for sure; the X-Files fan in me liked it, and the ex-propagandist in me didn't think it too unplausible.

But the fact remains that it's ten of four in the morning and I'm talking government conspiracies with my dad. And I'm still not really tired. And I don't know who to trust in any case, can never tell when he's joking or when he's serious or when he's baiting me into saying something dumb, which he really doesn't do often at all but I think he's doing all the time, pretty much whenever conversation gets deeper than small talk.

And I have so much to say about him and no idea how to put it. And I wonder if I'm really my father's daughter as much as I am my mother's; it's so easy to see what she gave to me, but everything of him is less blatant, just hints-- the thickness of my hair, the freckles that all faded, the way I want to believe the best in people and give them everything I can to help them, the way I can't sleep and sometimes I just can't handle leaving the house. Nothing you can tell at first glance.

It's rare, but now and then someone will say I look like my father. And I have to wonder just what it is they're seeing.