it's "inhumane" to leave her on Memorial Day

Only if you leave her tied to a float in the parade.

Unrelatedly, we tried to go to Taco Bell to get the kids' meal b/c the toy is luchadores you put on your thumbs to thumb-wrestle, and the Taco Bell drive-thru voice over the squawk-box said that their kids' meals didn't come with toys. FAIL.

Oh, that is such BULLSHIT We have PROOF to the contrary. I'll try to get a few for you up here, Teppy and send them on. Owen left two at my sister's but we have two more and I'm going to just keep going back until we get a collection. They rock!

Tep, they're also on their website. I'd check with corporate or try another store in your area. They're called Thumbs of Fury.

I was assuming that they meant just their location didn't have toys. Now, I have NO idea why they wouldn't have them, but, yeah -- I saw Thumbs of Fury on the Web site, and I MUST HAVE THEM.

So tomorrow I try another Taco Bell.

They will be mine. Oh, yes. They will be mine.

Today seems to be the day to be annoyed at Mexican chain restaurants. I went to Baja Fresh today and ordered a veggie bare burrito, no cheese and no sour cream. They went a bit overboard with the "no"s, and gave it to me with no rice, either. So, basically, it was black beans, grilled veggies, and salsa. Which tasted OK, but wasn't quite the full meal I was expecting.

I offered to cook dinner one or two nights when I'm visiting my parents. My mom told me that she's not eating carbs. This is going to be interesting. Um. I can make split pea soup?

Yeah, feeling better now after a good (medicated) sleep. It's all over the news: a mother threw her 2 kids (7 yo girl, 4 yo boy) off a local bridge into the cold, cold river. The boy drowned, the girl is still alive, if not awake, in ICU. The mom is in jail, charged with the boy's death and the girl's attempted death. The situation still sucks, and i still wish we could have saved the boy, but when a mom decides to kill her kids....*shakes head* it's unimaginable yet happens far too often. Right now i'm calling it a positive that at least one survived the ordeal.

Hil, dried peas/beans tend towards the carbalicious. Here is a website that has fair variety of low-carb recipes and might be of use to you: [link]

{{{{{{erin_o}}}}}}} this sucks beyond the telling of it.

I offered to cook dinner one or two nights when I'm visiting my parents. My mom told me that she's not eating carbs. This is going to be interesting. Um. I can make split pea soup?

lentils? chickpeas? maybe a nice hearty vegetable curry that the rest of you can have over rice?

I think that, when my mom says no carbs, what she means is no bread, rice, or pasta. When she asked me what I wanted her to cook, one of the recipes that I mentioned as something that she's made before that I liked was a black bean and sweet potato salad, and she got all excited about looking for that recipe again (like, way more excited about that than about any of my other suggestions), so I figure she's eating beans. I'll ask, though.

Food is complicated. I'm vegan. Mom's low-fat and no-carbs. My sister won't eat fruit or onions or sweet potatoes or squash or any of a zillion other things that I can never remember. Dad's suspicious of anything that's not a chicken sandwich or a burger, but he'll usually eat whatever's put in front of him, except, for some reason, apricots.

maybe a nice hearty vegetable curry that the rest of you can have over rice?

This is what I was thinking. I've got a really good and really easy recipe for lentil cauliflower curry. What I wanted to make was peanut noodles, but the noodles have carbs, the peanut sauce has fat, and the toppings include seitan, which my dad is still kind of wary of, and cucumbers, which I just remembered my dad doesn't eat. So, no peanut noodles for my parents.

Seriously? I mean ... SERIOUSLY? Social skills?

I wonder whether this type of behavior is ignorance of social skills, or deliberate ignoring of them, taking advantage of other peoples good manners to be tormentingly rude for his own amusement?