{{{{{{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?

Fay!(Ari) Talk dirty to me, baby(/Ari) You should just explain you're a sexy singleton, like Bridget Jones...of course, she figured that out and got coupley, but hey. I also swear by taking cranberry concentrate tabs every day, esp. in summer. I've not had bladder problems since Sept 11. But looking at the tower footage does make me have to pee violently to this day. It's like Proust, but disgusting.

erin, that's a dreadful situation. But you're right - it's a very good thing that the daughter has survived.

Fay, heh - I would have responded in exactly the same Anglo-Saxon, painfully polite way you did. There are just some situations where it's really hard to know what to say, much as you'd like to be delightfully rude.

My only attempts at rudeness tend to be when I'm dealing with disablism. Even so, I'm not very good at it, and tend mostly to get stressed and short-tempered, which is counter-productive. I wish I had sarcastic and/or cuttingly rude comments on hand for every situation. Especially for inappropriate questions. "I was bungee jumping off Buckingham Palace and the cord broke." "I was running away from an evil black smoke monster, and fell over a cliff." "A bear tried to eat my legs." "It's none of your business what I'm doing in this wheelchair, you stupid wanker."

Mmm. *Very* strong tea. That's a good start to a day.

I think my cats are getting better organised. As soon as i started running the bath water (they both get a bath every week) Nico ran into the storage area, looked for the mini tub i use for them, saw that it wasn't there, and ran back to the bedroom. There i swear to almighty dog he NODDED at Mal before hiding under the bed. Mal immediately ran behind the fridge where he knows i can't extract him. Argh.

erin, get the hose! OK, so that might make a mess in the apartment, but, when said with a Mr. Burns "Release the hounds" type of voice, it was rather funny in my head. Glad your feeling a little bit better. Ya, a crappy situation all around. Hopefully the girl pulls through in ICU, and the mother is hung from her toenails till her head explodes from blood rushing to it.

Fay, as we have learned today, it sounded like you needed an Israeli at your table. Since a) they will tell the bloke to bugger off, and b) most have military training, and could administer some sort of karate chop to the larynx shutting him up immediately.

Today was closing night for the season. Strike this week of the gear and scenery. Woot. Tuesday is the last day with lazy-all-I-wanna-do-is-smoke-and-whine assistant. Now I need to figure out some nice PC words to tell him why we aren't renewing his contract for next season, so he isn't pissy and steal shit, or, I dunno, slash my tires or something.

Dang I just can't keep up these days. I skipped about 400 posts to say {{{bitches}}} I love you guys.