I just got my confirmation from the airline for my trip to Orlando in September. Squeeeeeeeeeeee!!! Thanks, dad!!!!

He said he gets off at 6 and I should have totally used that as an opening for drinks after work but that will be in the future.

Good that you didn't. It leaves time for him to be thinking about you and preparing to ask you out--which I predict he totally will!

He said he gets off at 6 and I should have totally used that as an opening for drinks after work but that will be in the future.

no need to rush. he's clearly interested, he'll be back.

Okay, third time trying to post. Who broke the interweb?

Huh. Okay, I can't explain that.

Wasn't your mom just there for a week?

Yay askye with the lovely attention. Whee! Feel free to squee.

She hasn't been up here since Thanksgiving. I've been down that way a couple of times but didn't even see her the weekend of the other parents' party.

And I really had to think about that because lots of other people have been here in the meantime.

I suspect she intends to come up for a few days, usually less than a whole week, every three months or so. Which dovetails nicely enough with the need to seriously clean the whole place every so often.

Which dovetails nicely enough with the need to seriously clean the whole place every so often.

Ah, the Mom clean. I know it well.

randomness:

I just went shopping at the SOMA Whole Foods with a co-worker, and we ended up doing a conga line through the Health & Beauty section to "Copacabana". We managed to get a few fellow shoppers to join in, too. I love this city.

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.

SA, I have a good friend who's gone through exactly what you're going through (only without the year abroad.) My friend, M's father was an alcoholic who was abusive to her mother. M's mom went above and beyond escaping that situation, building a life and raising her daughter by herself. She sacrificed and gave M everything she could, paying for school, a car, etc. M went on to graduate school to get her doctorate in psychology. She then went on to work for the VA. M is working with severely schizophrenic patients and doing a lot of good but until recently, wasn't making more than enough to survive. Her mother was there as a safety net in case M needed help financially. But Mom used this as a method to control M, too. And she did it often times unnecessarily--she would poke through M's checkbook when M came home for a visit, freak out about her Visa balance, etc. And this was when M had reached 33 years old.

It took a lot of therapy on M's side to learn to handle her mother because her mother was coping with her issues THROUGH M. It was really hard to separate the love from the issues.

End result is that M eventually detangled her mother from her financial affairs and it greatly improved their relationship. I know you're doing what's easiest for you right now, but maybe you can find someone you trust enough but doesn't have such an emotionally vested interest in handling your finances for you. That way your mom can learn to help you when you ask for it, rather than trying to anticipate it. She's creating a self-fulfilling prophecy by assuming you need help and rushing to do it when you're perfectly happy dealing with the consequences yourself.