As am I. And way to tell her not to pull that shit on you. Go therapy!

Gold star for Plei.

Today while my mom and I visited my grandmother, my dad channeled his inner 10 yr old and ate so many cookies that he's sick now. That's taking "young at heart" a bit far, dad.

I've wrapped all gifts but a book I want to finish and the gift cards I need to allot.

Bullshitting with my brother and eldest nephew and it's kinda nice. Eldest turns 13in a couple hrs and I still feel like I can engage with him. Youngest is doing a sleepover with the rents at the hotel. SIL went to bed at 8, and it was well deserved. The narrative has... changed. It's tragic. She's pretty much in warrior mode. I'm trying to step up doing Xmas food without stepping on her toes. I won't do it right, but I'll do good enough.

Posting mostly silly things today, cause I'm trying to not to focus too much on my medical stuff, minor compared to others. I'll just say that following today's doctors visit I've made good use of something I learned long ago from the Buffistas. Hydrogen Peroxide is good at getting blood out of almost anything. Hope to be able to stop using that knowledge quite so much by tomorrow.

I will also say that long ago I formed the hypothesis that when a medical person says "there will be a little pressure now" it means "you are about to feel some pain". Nothing that happened today disproved that hypothesis.

When a medical person says "you'll feel a pinch" it means "I am about to stab you, and also no one has ever pinched me".

That's the same scale people use when they try to convince me that a given food item is not spicy. (SPOILER: they are liars. Every time.)

Poor SIL Sara. That sounds tough.

My parents have each been super sick one at a time, the past few days--I'm guessing norovirus? So ew. We told them to stay far away. But tomorrow will be presents and dinner. Tonight I went on a tinder date (meh, but worth a shot) and then went out dancing, which was good times. But now my nose is running a bit so I'm really hoping its "I forgot my Claritin yesterday" and not "I'm getting a nasty cold in time for Christmas". Ugh.

Also sad: the one foster kid my sister had who went to college this fall. She's back under a special program where they get somewhere to stay over the holidays if they're in college. And I mean, my sister and BIL like her, she was here her whole senior year. She got a scholarship to college (not sure if it was due to grades or due to the foster kid thing?) but had to keep a certain GPA. ...apparently she signed up for 18 credit hours, skipped most of her classes, and got one B and the rest Fs. So she is going to lose the scholarship and have nowhere to live and have to get a job or join the military or something. And I feel so bad for her but also like giiiiiirl. People warned you. This was your one good shot. And it's not like "oh, it was harder than I thought and I got some Cs and just missed the GPA requirement", so...

Some kids just aren't ready and can't do it, but I don't think there are any good options for them. I had a roommate like that -- her family had no money, and her father lost his job, and she literally never went to class or studied. So of course she failed out.

I feel like I lucked out in that my roommates and circle of friends were mostly nerds, so working hard in school was a given whether or not there was also hard partying going on.

That's the same scale people use when they try to convince me that a given food item is not spicy. (SPOILER: they are liars. Every time.)

I have trouble convincing my dad that spices used for flavor don't necessarily equal spicy food. But I did get him to try a chicken pesto flatbread last week, and he liked it, so small victories. (He also likes a number of things with garlic sauce, even though he says he hates garlic. I don't know, maybe Grandma fed him garlic bulbs as a child and it was just too much?)