I am very bad. Having grilled cheese and french fries for lunch.

Caitlin Flanagan is like Mo Dowd with a serious(though homemade) bug up her ass. Which is funny, cause I thought that about Maureen, too. Maybe we're lucky MD stayed single. But now that she's in Sparkle Fang Nation, I never have to take Flanagan seriously ever again, except to flick my hair like Cordy and snort "What's your childhood drama?"ETA:(Joel McHale) Cool Story, Salon Columnist!(/McHale) GC, yeah, "Part Time Indian" rocks, hard. Love it!

{{{Barb}}} I'm sorry your mother is playing passive-aggressive games with you.

I think I am going to need an alibi so that I can beat some manners into the teenagers upstairs.

You're in Florida.

Thanks, Barb. Apparently they cannot decide if they want to be upstairs or outside, and they cannot shut any door without slamming it enough to make the building shake.

Passive-aggressive makes me, uh, aggressive-aggressive. People are always shocked, too. Apparently, I look like the sort of gal that enjoys a nice round of head-games, followed by a good mind-screw. Looks are often deceiving.

erika, have you read other Alexie novels you've enjoyed? I wouldn't mind picking up another of his.

The mom upstairs seems to be taking care of things by screaming at the top of her lungs at someone. I really really love this apartment, but I so want a house of our own where I don't have to hear other people unless I want to.

I'm a huge fan(John Cleese: So, how big are you?) but you can't go wrong with "The Lone Ranger And Tonto FistFight In Heaven," which are short stories that I still try to imitate. Haven't managed it yet, though. Most of that one ended up in "Smoke Signals"the movie. We love it, and not just cause Grandpa was Indian, although it's *freaky* how much like my grandpa Smoke Signals! Dad is.

Facebook is all weird and foreign to me, and I pretty much only go there to confirm friends requests

In this I am JZ. I have you people. I have LJ. I have a few other spots I visit online. Facebook seems like an enormous amount of work...to do what? Social networking? If I wanted a wider social network than I have I wouldn't be typing words on a screen to a bunch of invisible friends. I'd be out at the cafe or the bar or shopping or all three at once plus talking/texting/twittering on my multipurpose portable music & video player/computing/gaming/video/weather/soap opera and stock market monitor/phone thingy.

I don't need another social network. Gods know I shudder at the thought of reconnecting with my fourth grade boyfriend or the people who graduated from high school with me. College friends I haven't kept track of are either working in the business or failures like me, and we've grown so far apart we have utterly nothing in common except memories, and that's just way too sad a base on which to try and rebuild a relationship which died a natural death for a reason.

I'm a luddite, I admit it. But I'd be one in any culture, so I'm not rejecting the toys and baubles of the connected age, I'm just...rejecting casual and thoughtless connection. I don't care that you just left McDonald's on your way to the cleaners, or that you're having lunch at La Heifre. You have something to tell me, email me, or call and leave a voice mail.

Otherwise, I don't really have time for the social clutter of people I barely know and don't really care about.

Here? What you're doing and how you're doing and what you're thinking are important. That's why I'm here, and not on MySpace.

Oh dear. End rant.

And Barb, I know it's hard as hell to do, but as long as you've put decision back in her hands, and made it unquestionably clear she is welcome whether she chooses to come or not, she can't cast you as the villain of the piece. That's not saying that she *won't* find some way to do that anyway. But you've been the adult in the situation, now try and let it go. I know, do as I say and not as I do, but. Try.

GC, grilled cheese is one of the foods of the gods. Grilled cheese and tomato soup is up there near the top of the comfort foods list.

sj, this house sits on an acre. There isn't a sunny weekend goes by that somebody, and usually several somebodies, isn't weed-whacking, mowing, leaf-blowing, chain-sawing (limbs, or firewood, depending on season). The neighbor on one side has the empty double lot across the street from us as a vegetable garden which feeds six grown kids, a raft of grandkids, some grown and with kids of their own, plus many of their co-workers. Perfect strangers have been pulling up in our driveway to ask if the greens patch belongs to us--we send them to him, he hands out grocery bags and tells them to have at it. But he has a big old tractor that he runs three seasons a year, and it's loud. On the other side, they have their grandkids over every weekend, and from 2PM till dark, they run two go-karts around the homemade track in their back yard, pppbbbththllbbbbppptttt, for hours on end. At other times they have two little yapdogs, a mini dachshund and a hairy rat, both of them nervous and aggressive and so threatening they jump backwards everytime they bark. A lot. A lotalotalot.

I think you probably need a farm or a ranch with your house smack in the middle of several dozen acres so as not to "hear the neighbors".

ETA: Oh, that's what *I* want. Sorry.

Geez, I sound curmudgeonly today. I love you all. It's THEM I can't stand.