Oh, tommy, I am so sorry. ~ma to you and Senor Sock.

{{{Tommy and Senor Sock}}}

Poor you, tommy. And poor Senor! I hope stuff gets sorted out.

Here's as much Sock-ma as I can manage from far away. He's in good, competent hands, at least!

Madison appears to be having a Marathon this morning -- I heard yelling and cheering outside my hotel window, and looked to see hundreds of runners streaming past on a nearby street!

Tommy, I'm so sorry. I hope Senor Sock is looking better today.

I am in no danger of falling for my neighbors. You can't fix stupid.

Poor Senor Sock. Much cat-health-ma to him.

Jess! I got the Spider-Man button -- thanks!!!

Oh yay! I thought you'd like it.

Oh, poor Senor Sock, and poor you too, tommy. It is awful to see small beloved creatures suffering -- they don't understand and you can't explain, and you have to comfort them while you're being broken into pieces inside.

Apropos of last night's discussion, I must note a couple of things: I got involved with Hec very much against my own better judgment and while ignoring several giant red flags I had long ago set up for myself, telling myself it'd be okay because I was going in knowing it had no future and I was continuing to see other people looking for a better long-term prospect. I'm still utterly shocked at how things turn out, and I certainly don't intend to recommend my method of spouse-finding to Matilda, but it did turn out that all the red flags that scared the shit out of me turned out to be things that went away (or, rather, things that Hec discarded, with some assistance from Teppy and amych).

The second thing is that the Republican red flag keeps making me giggle. The fellow immediately before Hec was in fact a Republican, a fact which he hid from me for several weeks (didn't lie, which would've been a bigger red flag, just avoided the subject) because he knew my political leanings and was afraid I'd never go out with him if I knew. And as it turned out there were lots of reasons for me not to date him and lots of reasons for me to break up with him, and his Republicanism was exactly none of them. Plenty of issues reared their ugly heads during the four months we were together, but not one of them was related to politics and not one of them was anything immediately visible; it was all stuff that I had to get to really know him to find out. My red flag list turned out to be totally useless.

Red flags are a damn good, self-protective idea, but not all red flags are permanent and not all matter as much WRT any one individual as they seem to when you're applying them to an entire class of people. And it sucks because of the potential for huge pain, but sometimes the only way to determine just how red a red flag is is to let yourself get to know the flagger. Damn teh humans and their infinite variety of personalities and circumstances and backstories that conspire to frustrate all clean, crystal-clear list-making and categorizing.

My husband was 15 years my senior, married, father of three and a smoker when we met. The very definition of not-my-type. 2 years later, we were married and it was possibly the greatest gift of my entire gift-laden life.

That being said, I tend to adhere to something I once heard Oprah say,"When someone tells you who they are early on...believe them.

JZ makes an important point...it isn't generally the social-order labels we use, like political affiliations, that end up being the problem.

When someone says,"Oh, people say I'm _____." THAT is the thing that will end up being problematic.

Fela is perfect for me on paper. Compatibility on all those social labels (religion, politics like whoa, geekdom, dog lover, even perfect sex!) but in the very beginning, he told me that he had attachment issues, was 'oblivious' and believed he had something wrong with his brain.

THOSE things ended up superceding stripes that might have changed. Hey, even Senators can switch political parties, but self-doubt and habits we cling too? Those things take cosmic dynamite to change, if they ever do.