Thanks, Sail! I appreciate it greatly.

My Medicare paperwork took about 30 seconds to fill out. At this rate, I'm gonna have all my work done by 10am. Then what am I gonna do all day???

/me juggles flaming chainsaws for vw (and anyone else who needs it)

EEK! That sounds dangerous, WindSparrow! Be careful!

Irish step dances with the cat for vw's amusement.

Timelies!

No worries, vw - I temped as a clerical type person (with no typing ability) for several years - I can handle this.

I'd like to chime in with billytea to say that breaking away from a toxic family takes extreme courage and strength, but is necessary for their victim's personhood and sanity. Which isn't necessarily the least bit helpful for P-C's situation, because your parents may well be of the non-toxic variety. The hard thing is knowing if one's own family are toxic or not - made harder still by the fact that what is toxic for one person is just what another person needs.

/me hugs all around

Sometimes people are toxic. Sometimes, issues are just difficult. There's a big disconnect between how P-C's parents were raised to think of courtship, love and marriage, and their expectations thereof, and western ideas on it. Neither is wrong or right. They're just different. But as much as they raised P-C, he was raised *here*.

beth, whoever put carpeting on that beautiful floor ought to get an infestation of Box Elder beetles in the brain. Yeesh.

They did have 6 kids. so I am guessing it protected the floors. there are some scratches that didn't go away - and a few plcaes the oak turned black - that are still there. But the floor looks like a 50 year old floor. Which is what I wanted.

cearal , because it is breakfast time.

When I was in highschool we had a girl from Turkey come over with AFS. She did date someone, but I think for her it was a fun fling ( hard to imagine , becasue she was very serious) She was going home to an arranged marriage. ( not sure if it had been or was going to be arranged)

I also met an woman from India at a class once. Her marriage was an arranged marriage and she was very happy with it. She was concerned about when her children reached dating age - because she wasn't sure she could help them thru that time.

anyway, there are lots of arranged marraiges that work out as well as the romantic ones. I think robin's advice - of meeting the girls and letting the girls know that despite the experation date your parents have put on you - you don't look at it the same way - might even be fun. I am guessing you family knows you fairly well.

Ack! My paper is too long. Guess I had a lot to say about the video we watched.

Thanks for your perspective, billytea.

My parents aren't toxic. I know I only ever bitch about them here, but except for a few key issues, they're not bad parents. They take care of me, they brag about me to their friends, they make sure I have enough food. And I have important extended family.

I hope they know me well enough to pick the right girl. I don't know anymore because I've had to shut myself off from them so much since I went to college, and I'm not the same person I was in high school. Though my mom has noticed that; she remarked that since I went to college, I've been a lot more...and then she never finished the sentence. But I was laying out her clothes to dry like she'd told me, so I think the word was some permutation of "obedient" or "agreeable" or something positive.