caesar salad with matzo croutons and shrimp.

Well, points awarded for trying to be accomodating. And then promptly taken away for being ignorant.

Well, my mother's been talking about what she's going to eat when we go to Maine tomorrow, and this list included steamers, because she can't eat fried clams during Passover.

Well, it's not kosher but if it's not a kosher restaurant it wouldn't be anyway. I had some shrimp today, myself, though I am observing the ban on leavened bread.

Probably not the best marketing choice, though. Limits your customers unnecessarily.

Ugg. The wild fires are putting a ton of crud in the air. Giving me a bit of ick. Blargh. The apartment is warm, but I don't want to turn on a/c or open windows and let in the crud.

Attention: Peanut butter toast is the best. Breakfast. Evar.

Yum. I like to add a bit of cinnamon sugar or sliced banana sometimes.

Sometimes I like peanut butter on toast dipped in hot chocolate.

I also like the occasional Peanut Butter and bacon on toast.

I don't go the full Elvis, tho.

P-C, the note about your uncle might've been a throwaway line, but your family making judgments on your life (and you feeling stress to adjust your life to decrease the tension)is a running theme, so I took it seriously.

You've got a good career going, and you're doing fine. But I am awfully serious when I say that real adulthood is being able to sit down with your family, eye to eye, and firmly assert your own agenda, not merely acquiesce to theirs. You've got a lot going for you, but you constantly undermine yourself because you view yourself through a family-tinted prism. Take away the kaleidoscope, be honest with yourself and it will work out.

Best peanut butter breakfast: (there are many fine breakfasts in this world -- so they must be categorized) Chunky peanut butter on a toast cinnamon raisin bagel

Java, I don't entirely disagree, but I do think that what you're describing is a very recent and culturally-specific definition of adulthood. It is not the definition held in great big swathes of the modern world today. And, sure, P-C's American as an American thing, but that doesn't neccesarily include the kind of WASPy distancing of family and prioritising of self & one's personal desires and aspirations over responsibility to family and community that has become common currency in much of the West. That isn't the default setting of normal adulthood.

I mean, yeah, I think we all share P-C's frustration at the expectations his family put on him over his marriage and his car and his job, but this doesn't mean P-C's being a pussy, or being a child. He's dealing with conflicting paradigms of what it means to be a successful adult and a good person. Buggered if I know which way I'd jump.

Okay, I think I need a hug from javachik and a hug from Fay, and whoever hugs me harder wins.