I really should leave the house to go do all the errands, but it's cold and rainy and I don't wanna

I think I'll walk over to 3fe which I think Sue suggested and get some real coffee and stew.

The first time I went there I was getting sick, and I was feverish and achy. I don't know if it was the altered state or not, but that was the best coffee I had ever had.

Alton Brown reviews kitchen gadgets on Amazon.

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Parent not picking up a kid, for days and being unreachable, is how I came within weeks of becoming her legal guardian.

Seriously, what? Someone can just drop their kid off and not come back, and you become their legal guardian? They just... don't come back?

The last four days have been: moving everything out of the first floor, ripping out old carpet (yuck), putting down new flooring, and moving everything back in. I'm tired and sore, but it was worth it. Wish I'd done this years ago. Getting rid of that carpet made a huge difference, both to the look of the house and to my allergies. As soon as I can, I'm doing the same thing upstairs.

And the weather, ridiculously warm for December, was perfect for having to move living room furniture onto the patio for a day! After today, the temp is supposed to start falling, so yeah. It was all for me.

The first time I went there I was getting sick, and I was feverish and achy.

There was no place to sit when I walked over there, so I'll have to try again when it's not prime brunch time. I seem to be feverish as well, so I guess we'll see if I'm going to the office tomorrow.

Buying a car is like varsity-level adulting, man. This is the first time I've bought a car when I didn't *need* to (i.e., when I bought the Echo, it was because the transmission on the Camry died, and it wasn't worth repairing the transmission in a 1991 Camry in 2004). So we've actually been researching and obsessing and whatnot. Should be going to test-drive some cars this week. Probably going to end up with a 2013 Corolla, which is light-years ahead of the good old Echo (which is a 2000 and still kicking, but it has 169,000 miles on it, and we need something a little more reliable, though we are going to hang on to the Echo for now).

I told Tim we shouldn't get each other Christmas presents since we're dropping a load of cash on a car, but he nixed that idea.

I also wanted to get one of those huge car-commercial bows to put on the new-to-us car, but then I looked online and saw they were $50, and I was like, man, I can buy shoes with that! So no bow.

Her father was/is an alcoholic and her duh addicted mom was living with a guy who had sexuality abused C. Dad went on a binge and dropped of the face of the world about 3 weeks before school was to start. While she and K-Bug were friends, C had been going to school in San Jose. As the first day approached and we couldn't find either parent I contacted K-Bugs scool to see if there was anyway to let C start there. If was distressingly easy to get her transfered without any parent involvement. We heard from her dad soon after that and he seemed perfectly happy to leave her with us. That is when we started the legal process to take guardianship. C was fine with all of this until the first time she got in trouble. Then she went back to get mom, who was thankfully no longer with the abusive boyfriend. But she was still deep in her drug addiction. It killed me to let her go, but we had no legal was to make her stay.

That's awful, SuziQ. Still, it was good of you to step in while you could.

I survived Lush and Sephora. I think I'm done for my SIL. Hermetically sealed all the bath bombs, but I can taste them....Already lost 2 gift receipts. Cookies ready to go, gonna go swim, deliver some cookies....then cookie Swap!

Yeah, Suzi, that's all-around awful, and I'm glad you were there for her.

I have eaten way too much junk food. Mission accomplished.