If the members of My Chemical Romance start blogging about those puppies time and space will implode and all the world will become the internet.

Well, I had The Talk with Mumsy-- flat out asked her "So, when you coming up for Christmas?" and listened to her hem and haw and finally say, "I don't know."

Which then prompted a lengthy conversation about my father beginning radiation treatments and she's not sure who's going to be able to take him if there are appointments on/around Christmas, blah, blah, blah.

(For those of you playing along with the home game, my parents have been BITTERLY divorced for thirty years. They reconnected earlier this year, just in time for dear old Dad to get cancer. My mother tends to preface conversations about him with "not that you care...")

So at any rate, the ball's in her court. There is no question that she's welcome/wanted here for the holiday. What she chooses to do from this point on is entirely up to her.

Thanks for the shoulders guys-- I'll try not to vent too much more. I even bore myself with this drama.

Oh, and GC (and anyone else who loves the YA lit) there was apparently a story on YA in the Atlantic where the author of the piece declared that she "hated" YA novels, but extolled the Sparkly Vampires for "its careful treatment of sexuality and relationships."

It's over at mediabistro and Jason invites people to post/contact him with their opinions. [link]

In her mind, she's got her second chance with the love of her life

Barb, please allow me to beat your mother over the head with not only her failed marriage (which really should be the giant honkin' cluestick she needs), but mine. And a few others I can think of.

{{{{Barb}}}}

Also, {{{{beth b & Matt}}}} I'm so sorry. Losing a pet is always so hard, and grieving is such an individual process.

Ah, it's Caitlin Flanagan. That explains so much.

Thanks j.

And yeah, amych? Do tell? Not familiar with her at all. After reading the essay, I can understand why.

Oh boy. I'll counter with some of the YA novels that I read in the class I took this quarter that I thoroughly enjoyed:

• How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
• A Step from Heaven by An Na
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
• Feed by M.T. Anderson
• Monster by Walter Dean Myers
• Looking for Alaska by John Green
• King Dork by Frank Portman

lisah, I'll look. Facebook is all weird and foreign to me, and I pretty much only go there to confirm friends requests and maybe send somebody a virtual corset or fluffy petticoat.

lisah, I'll look. Facebook is all weird and foreign to me, and I pretty much only go there to confirm friends requests and maybe send somebody a virtual corset or fluffy petticoat.

Evidently you lived with someone in college who was a junior hhigh/high school friend of my brother's who I had a crush on and went on a date with to see This is Spinal Tap ! I haven't seen him in oh, about, 25 years or more and he just friended me the other day. I noticed under Mutual Friends that he was already friends with another old friend of my brothers, which made sense, and YOU!

Flanagan is fairly notorious for completely retrograde women's-lifestyle-ish essays -- girls who put out are just whores, we all really secretly want to be housewives, no mother should ever work (even though I have full-time nannies and household staff), that sort of thing -- but seems to think that the fact that it's in the New Yorker or the Atlantic makes it witty and daring and speaking-truth-to-power in a way it wouldn't be coming from camp fundie.

This is a pretty decent (and recent) rundown of the more outrageous: [link] but a good googling will turn up a fair bit of both eyerolling and teeth-gnashing.