I particularly love the bit where I call them on it and they're all, "Oh, but I didn't mean people like you!" or "Well, I don't think of you like that." Right. I'm one of the good docile minorities. Friendly. Helpful.

Yes, I have this tshirt -- Acceptably Black Clean, non-threatening, well spoken

I'm not sure why someone would try that around Vortex. Seems very self-destructive.

I know, it surprises me, too.

msbelle, I'm so sorry. I did track down my friend and will let you know the best way to get in touch with her soonish.

Being stoned I finally yelled at my dad on the phone as he investigated every angle and detailed it to me instead of doing the search on google like I'd asked him to. I don't do it often, but this time he actually hustled his ass to the task instead of telling me I was being rude. God that makes me scared.

This morning driving to work I almost had a crying jag thinking "what if Mom dies and we never get to do the things we'd planned together" (I've been doing this since I was fifteen, imagining my parent's deaths and freaking myself out). She calls me this afternoon to tell me she's having Dad take her to the emergency room. They're keeping her overnight. Not helping. Dad helped, though, by calling me repeatedly with no new news (she's fine), and annoying the shit out of me.

So far, side effects are depression, 12y/o sense of humour (something to do with a blower leading to uncontrollable giggles), grogginess, and intense apathy.

Sparky - thanks. I am meeting with one potential psychiatrist tomorrow. A second referral I called tonight, but he doesn't actually work with kids, not sure how that got missed.

msbelle, I wish there was anything I could do to help you. it seems like you have the plagues descending on you all at once.

I didn't mean to do an issues/anger post and run. But I hate the "not to be rascist people" The last guy was angry about some funeral procession where there were flags of another country on the cars (it had delayed the buses, which was annoying, but he was mad about the flags. He thought they should have American flags. But he kept changing the country from Puerto Rice to Jamaica to Nigeria. Which are vastly different countries AND one of them is part of America.

I said that we are all really from somewhere else, and I am sure I have seen Irish and Italian flags on cars as well and he shut up.

The sad part is I think he was just trying to make conversation.

I hate the "I don't notice what colour people are" thing too. Fuck you. How can you not? It's fine if you don't care, as long as you do respect it, but how can you convince me you haven't noticed me? Do you not realise I'm female too?

"I don't notice color" is just bullshit white privilege. When your skin isn't white, you don't have the luxury of being color-blind.

Yeah, I had a race conversation with a white daycare kid once who described his own skin as "plain."

Hee! I just found out I'm even more "them" than I thought. My mother, because she's going on and on and for example, on about my father, just told me that my father's father and his family were from the Canary Islands-- they apparently emigrated to Cuba when my grandfather was a very small boy and then my father was born there in Oriente Province.

So I got me a whole mess of "them" in me. I have Cuban, North African, French Jew... so many people to offend in one fell swoop!

I once dated a woman who could not see color. The DMV wouldn't issue her a drivers license.