9:44 a.m. EST is the new launch time for Ares....

Anyone else feel like Facebook's "suggestions" tab has gotten awfully pushy? It just told me I need to reconnect with my Mom by writing on her Wall.

That's hilarious.

Bah. A cargo ship is in the danger area. It will take 90 minutes for it to get out of the way.

Bastards!

I have a cousin I won't speak to. She done me wrong, and I have no problem cutting her off. Doesn't take any energy at all. She has the option of reaching out and apologising, but I think Narcissistic Personality Disorder kinda gets in the way of that. But it's on her, not me.

This just in: mole rats cure cancer! (In mole rats.) [link]

That study was done at my University!

My mother was fanatical about insisting that we all get along with siblings, cousins, etc. It must have worked because we are all close. Her MIL was absurd with the favoritism. Grandma adored my oldest sister who looked just like my dad, her son. The 2nd granddaughter was blond and looked like my mom. Grandma called her Mary Jr. and she was a total 2nd class grandchild. She would always bring a present for Mona and only gave attention to Judi when it was her birthday, but then she would bring something for Mona too so she wouldn't feel bad. She was gone by the time I was a toddler so my brother and I were spared the memory. I think Mom's insistence that we all adore each other was in part a reaction to her MIL's behavior.

It gives the truly bitter a reason to live. They need the bile and the drama as sustenance.

This is my family's raison d'etre. Seriously, the people in my family aren't truly happy unless someone is feuding and not speaking with someone else. It's exhausting and totally not my thing, which is one reason I've chosen to live away from the family cluster the entirety of my adult life.

And in that vein, my sister called last night, absolutely infuriated (which, it doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's pretty fearsome). Our aunt (Mom's younger sister) was recently diagnosed with colon cancer. Because she's a bit of a flake, she kept putting off getting a traditional diagnosis and when she did get a diagnosis that pointed at colon cancer, refused to believe it and would go trotting off to another doctor, hoping for a different diagnosis without sharing that she'd already been to doctors one, two, three, four, et al. At any rate, she wound up in the hospital for emergency surgery and they discovered, unsurprisingly, that the cancer had progressed to Stage IV.

That's just the background. The surgery was about two months ago and now, her daughter, who is in her own way, an even bigger flake, apparently sent her mother an email saying that after hours spent meditating at the bottom of the pool, she had come to the decision that she couldn't "cope" with her mother's disease.

Cope? What coping? She's been to see her mother all of three or four times in the four months since the surgery and they live in the same fucking city! I mean, my aunt was never anyone's idea of Mother of the Year--she was widowed very, very young and spent a lot of years very angry and bitter about it and kind of unfairly took out her anger on my cousin, but at the same time, she gave everything she possibly could to my cousin who grew up with this whacked out sense of entitlement all based around the fact that since she grew up without a father the world owed her, I don't know... everything.

But still... it's her mother and I can't believe this pseudo-mystical mumbo-jumbo she's spouting about not being able to cope.

Huh. Now they're gonna launch at 9:49.

I think they told the freighter to turn around.

she had come to the decision that she couldn't "cope" with her mother's disease

Um...

More on the global cooling that is not: AP IMPACT: Statisticians reject global cooling