ita, can you meet me in spoilers lite in a moment-- I have a Hustle thing.

I'll be right over.

I'll have to pick up that Jane Eyre DVD when it comes out; it sounds great!

My mom went to nursing school right out of high school, and worked part-time through a horrendous first marriage and birth of my brother, divorce and moving back home with her parents, meeting and marrying my dad, then giving birth to both my sister and me (although she had enforced bed rest for the final three months before I was born). She continued to work evenings while Dad worked during the day. When I was seven, she got a good job offer for a full-time day job as the nurse at a nearby plant. Dad (apparently, she never told us this flat out, but it was definitely implied) went ballistic over the thought of her working full-time, but she took the job anyway. Four years later, after some counseling, they finally separated and divorced a year later. They were ill-fitted, personality-wise, but her independence definitely grated on his more conservative opinions on women. He remarried a few years later to a widow with three kids who didn't go to work (even part-time) until the youngest was 16.

My mom never got a paycheck after she got married, but it was made clear to us that that was a choice she made. My maternal grandmother did the books for my grandfather's business for 40 years, she certainly considered herself a partner, though I don't really know his opinion. My paternal grandfather worked after she was widowed, which was before I was born, so I only knew her as a working woman.

My mom didn't work until I was in High School (the '70s), but she did go to some grad classes and did LOTS of volunteering. Political campaigns, Headstart, other lefty stuff She then worked full time at a newspaper for quite a few years before she opened her bookstore, which she worked at fulltime until she sold it when she was 70. My dad was always proud of her. Some of her friends worked and some didn't, but they were all active outside the home, so I never thought of women as those who didn't work.

Anthony Bourdain critiques the Top Chef contestants.

My father was pretty enlightened for his generation (born in 1923), perhaps because his mother worked, too. I always took it for granted that women always had that choice. It surprised me to find out during my divorce that my ex had always expected me to be a SAHM after I had kids. It wasn't any part of the reason we got divorced, but it did show me just how unrealistic and unworldly some people can be in the face of their expectations. We needed my income, no ifs, ands or buts.

What else? Better ideas?

You've been in more than a few bar fights? What was that line you told me? "We'd go out looking to start trouble. And then we'd finish it."

Oy. I can't work out if it's worth taking anti-nausea medication if I'm not nauseated. I do think I might toss my cookies, but nsm with what I've come to think of as nausea.

At the core the stuff must work against reverse peristalsis, right?

Ah, fuck it. Can't hurt.

I hope it helps, ita.