Hooray for you , SA

I finally sent that origami-of-the-day calendar I bought for my niece in September and she likes it! I'm very happy. (It was supposed to be a Christmas present but became a random gift - because I was so late with it.)

You have no idea how much I want to put my Mom on speaker phone in therapy like the caveman in the Geico commercial.

I am going to enjoy this commercial so much more now. But really Tom, your smile is much nicer than caveman dude.

Congrats on Cardiff, SA!

The words all make sense, but the need to ask the question...

Pity my marshmallow-deprived childhood. I did toast them and let someone else eat mine, but making s'mores and not eating them would have been Too Much, I think.

{{Bug laden stomachs and their caretakers}}

Congratulations, SA! I hope you get into York too.

congrats, SA! So exciting!

Holy shit. My cell phone bill is triple what it usually is, because of how often I used it in the hospital. Fucking $.45 a minute on the overages. Shit. Shit. Shit.

Congratulations, SA! I am unsurprised but totally tickled for you.

Tom, gah. Your mom is making me want to fly out there and give her a good shake and then a smack. Has she ever actually listened to the words that come out her own mouth? A forty-year-old man is monstrously selfish for not spending his birthday with Mommy and Daddy? That's so nutty it's hardly worth taking seriously.

Since your mom is in fact P-C's mom, all I can offer is the same advice that goes to P-C: This is what she does. Always. You will never change it; all you can change is what you expect and how you react. My dad does the same thing constantly (using completely different methods, of course; he installed totally different hot buttons in me) and it took me almost a decade of therapy to get to the point where I was just resigned to that.

Whatever was the worst, most self-absorbed, most completely removed-from-reality thing to say in any given situation was exactly what he was going to say. So, if I ever expected him to deviate from that script, I was an idiot. The one advantage to knowing that was, well, knowing it. I know ahead of time that in an emotional crisis he's always going to be just this way, always incredibly pain-inflicting while sincerely believing he's being wise and supportive; at least knowing this means I can plan ahead, know who I can go to for meaningful support and that I'll just have to either cut him out of the loop or treat his contribution as white noise. It sucks that I will never have the dad I want and need, but (a) I do have other people, and (b) ain't nothing I can do about it. Expecting anything different gives him the power to make me hurt and crazy; expecting exactly what he does always do keeps the power with me.

t /blah blah therapycakes easier said than done

Mind, I banged my head against a dad-shaped brick wall for almost thirty years before I learned to do this with any consistency, and at the edge of forty myself I still backslide.

Anyhow, come out here and we'll booze you up and fill you with tasty foods and do our best to make you giddy and gleeful because we're very very happy that you are selfishly spending your birthday out here.

I'm now on board with Kristin's loathing of March. I mean, we have Buffistas' loved ones dying, Buffistas getting laid off, Buffistas not getting jobs they were interviewing for, an emergency C-section....

Did I miss anything?

Granted, the C-section led to wonderful results, but it's still tied up with Noah and Grace being very early and with Kat having, well, a C-section!

Plus, SA got accepted to grad school, which -- WOOT!!!

But other than that, March is sucking big wang.

t shakes fist March-ward

I'm now on board with Kristin's loathing of March. I mean, we have Buffistas' loved ones dying, Buffistas getting laid off, Buffistas not getting jobs they were interviewing for, an emergency C-section....

Did I miss anything?

Um. I'm...cranky?

Yeah, I got nothing. That looks to be all of it.

For now... (DUN dun dunnnnn...)