Today would have been my father's 72nd birthday.

 Despite almost 20 years passing since his death (can it really be that long??), I still miss him. I miss not being able to ask his advice, or tell him a joke I've heard.

 I love my step-dad to bits, but he's not my dad.

 I really wanted to talk to a new (female) friend about this today, but she's taking one of her last courses of chemotherapy for Hodgkin's Lymphoma (scans clear already) so isn't feeling well enough to do anything much, including making my small problems feel that way.

 So I'm blogging, for the first time in several months.

 It wasn't the only thing I wanted to talk to her about, of course. I wanted to arrange to see her again. I wanted... I don't really know what I wanted, altogether, I just know that I wanted it really, really badly and I wanted it from her.

 I'm talking about it in the past tense as if I don't want these things any more. Which is rubbish. Of course I do.

But I don't want to hassle her at all. She's quite seriously ill, for one thing. For another, I've made that mistake too many times before - coming on too strong, too soon in a new relationship.

So I'm going to carry on pretending to be as strong as usual, even though I don't feel it just at the moment.

 And I'm going to keep my fingers crossed and hope that she'll get in touch when she feels better.