Suzi, I'm so sorry.

askye, if you don't eat fish, don't eat the fish just because a guy gave it to you. Definitely thank him, mention you're a vegetarian, and offer it to someone you work with or back to the guy, I think.

So, do I eat it or do I send him an email thanking him, saying I'm really sorry I missed him but I'm a vegetarian so I appreciate the thought but didn't eat it?

Don't eat it! But, yeah I would lightheartedly mention you don't eat meat. That way he knows next time to take you to a nice vegetarian place.

ETA: juliana, do you wake up panicky, or more like, "Huh."

Oh! I have had to deal with this one.

Don't eat it, cause you know, face and all.

But, as DJ says a nice way to make the point without necessarily making the fellow wrong is to mention a veg restaurant you like, stressing the veg aspect. He'll get the hint, save face and be motivate to take you to said veg place.

"It was so thoughtful of you to bring me lunch..." It worked for me!

juliana, do you wake up panicky, or more like, "Huh."

Definitely a "huh". An annoyed "huh", even. Weirdest part was I was sleeping next to Martin for the first dream, and he made it into the dream, but in a shadowy way. Subconscious fun!

Better than the other. "Huh." is usually dealable. Panicky leaves me affected for at least a day or two. I suggest in your next dream, letting him catch you so you can turn around, smack him and yell, "QUIT FOLLOWING ME!"

Too bad you can't fedex it to me! It sounds yummy. But yeah, polite email is the best way to go.

juliana, sometimes going back is cathartic in unexpected ways. Though unwontedly stressful, usually.

Suzi, best of luck. I know it will work out.

So, much like Kristin, I need some hairpats. Or sympathy clucking. Probably some booze.

Why? Well, I just got off the phone with my mother. (Yeah, that'll end well.) She sent me this book in the mail with no note, called "Adult Children of Alcoholics." Which is funny, because there are no alcoholics in my immediate family. I gave her a call, to ask what was up. Short story shorter: she used Al-Anon as a way to deal with the extensive emotional abuse from her motherf'n crazy, crazy parents and with the ways in which my biological father, John, screwed up her life.

Which, okay. That's something I didn't really know, and I can see that she's trying to share some of her history with me. That in itself is strange, because generally I don't have much more than an intellectual relationship with my mother. Not a bad thing, but I don't share things with her. I don't really trust her with them. Which is hard to say. But her outlook is so radically different from mine. I've known that for all my adult life--we simply do not have that many points of commonality, for as much as I love her, and to be frank, I would come here first for any problem I have (like, ha, now) before going to her.

Hence the strangeness of this entire thing. And what it boils down to is money. I didn't decide to start a career, or take a job and start paying down my student loans. I decided instead to fuck off to Europe for a year, see what happened, and go from there. My parents were excited for me, and as a graduation present they bankrolled the initial trip, and then helped me get set up here in Manchester again when it took longer than anticipated to find a place. I was grateful for the help.

And the thing is, I play risk more often than I should and end up overdrawn on my bank account, which is what I have overdraft for. But my mother, bless her snoopey little heart, freaks out every time I overdraft and makes a special trip to go take care of it. Because she reads my mail, which is de facto delivered to the house, and is attached to the bank account, which was only supposed to be for emergencies. She's paid my bills before I got to them, she dealt with my student loans for awhile. And I let all this go on, because dude, I'm 23 and working as a secretary in a foreign country. It was infinitely easier to let her deal with it, because it meant that I didn't have to deal with paypal transfers and currency loss.

So in this conversation, she started to talk about how my behaviour is like John's, in that I don't consider the future and instead deal with the consequences, and waste a lot of money in the process. "It's about integrity," she said. And, aside from being pretty insulted that she is likening me to John, that is highly fucked up. She's talking about our "codependency" and how I should look into finding an Al-Anon group to deal with the struggle, and that I really have to change my ways, etc etc.

And I explained that, while I understood her feelings, letting her deal with things had mostly been out of my laziness and from being abroad. Which was apparently the wrong thing to say, as she flipped out and said...a lot of confusing things. About how she would give me all the money in the world if she could, but it wouldn't change my attitude. And I was like, look, this summer I'll take you off the account. And she said NO you are going to *need* me and the problem isn't me being on the account it's what you do with the account, and you have to tell me in advance if you think you're going to overdraft so I can fix it. And this won't change until--I swear to god, she said this--I can handle this on my own and she can't read my mail.

At that point I just considered the whole conversation a wash and we both got off the line as quickly as we could. (continued...)

( continues...)

So now I am making all kinds of squinty faces and trying to figure out just what the hell happened. I mean, I know I'm not perfect. But I'm generally solvent and pay my bills reasonably on time. If there's a problem, I fix it, even if it takes longer than she is comfortable with. I have a job, I have an apartment, and this is, technically, still the first year I've been living out on my own. I know so many of my peers who are far worse off than I am--tens of thousands in credit card debt, buying cars but not getting insurance, jobs at low levels, can't pay their bills, kids and spouses and cancer and all kinds of things that I have been so very blessed not to have to deal with.

I fuck up sometimes. More often than I should, sure. But I'm not some crazy person who requires freaking Al-Anon.

I just. What the hell do I do with this?

About how she would give me all the money in the world if she could, but it wouldn't change my attitude.

Well, no.

And I was like, look, this summer I'll take you off the account. And she said NO you are going to *need* me and the problem isn't me being on the account it's what you do with the account, and you have to tell me in advance if you think you're going to overdraft so I can fix it. And this won't change until--I swear to god, she said this--I can handle this on my own and she can't read my mail.

Huh? She's arguing in circles. The problem from where I sit isn't you (except in that, yeah you may be a little less responsible with money than you should be, but I'm not going to throw a stone lest my glass walls come crashing down), but this co-dependant, need to control stuff is coming from her end.

She needs to bail you out, even if you don't need her to.

my read on this

1) she is mom, which means she will worry more than you think nessicary

2) mom has had some very bad experiences with people - so she reacts much stronger

3) you guys don't think the same way

The two things I can say are - Don't use your overdraft if you can help it. It costs too much. Also get mom out of the loop, you are causing her worry and you extra agitation. She is going to continue to worry and give you unwanted advice as long as she has some control over your money

Truthfully, SA -- and you KNOW I say this b/c I think our mothers have a lot of crazy in common -- I think that she's still working out *her* issues, and unfortunately, she's doing it via you.

I don't think it's about you. I think that, through her efforts to get *your* life in order, she's either (1) avoiding getting her *own* life in order, (2) pretending that, because she can arrange *your* life, that must mean that her own life is peachy keen, or (3) both 1 and 2.

It's not you. Really, really, REALLY.