G'morning. Israel is beautiful. My mental health is taking a bit of a bashing (along with the physical - I am exhausted from all the stairs I had to do yesterday). Having a morning at home while The Girl's family goes to see their grandparents. I was invited, but I can't cope with another day being referred to as her "friend from London." Despite that, The Girl's immediate family are (mostly) working hard at being nice to me. I am totally avoiding twitter and Facebook, as the Brits have all seen Doctor Who and I won't see it until tonight!

Ginger, do the furniture reorganizing thing! I love doing that. The Girl wasn't using her office space in the spare room, so I moved her into the living room and my desk and life went into the spare room. Was fun and we both get our work done better now. The Girl has a system where she makes scale models from paper to make sure all the furniture will fit into new places/rooms. This comes from our history of having moved every six months for the past few years. When moving, we need to know whether we can fit the digital piano into that tiny space by the window. Usually we manage it.

Scrappy, congrats on the empty shelves. :)

smonster, can you ask a vet what to do about the cat? There must be people who know how to deal with this problem. I hope it sorts itself out, in the meantime!

In the continuing cat pee chronicles, the little fucker has branched out into spraying my backpack

ION- if you want a good eye ball cleaning, watch the HBO flick "Taking Chance". Thanks to it, I'm outta tissues.

The Girl has a system where she makes scale models from paper to make sure all the furniture will fit into new places/rooms.

I did that all the time before I used the computer for the process. The little paper models were more fun in many ways, but the computer method allows for printing out the desired plan.

On the Doctor Who front, welcome to our torture!

Mmmm, empty shelves.

Another whole bunch of new snow. When I finish my coffee I will need to take more pictures. Pretty!

I can't cope with another day being referred to as her "friend from London."

Oh, Seska, honey, how I feel your pain. When Lewis and I first moved in together and until we were officially engaged, something like two years later, his mother, proper Southern lady that she is, couldn't quite figure out how to refer to me when introducing me to new people. So for that time period, I was his "special friend."

She didn't mean anything by it, she just realized that "girlfriend" was not quite enough.

Sending hugs and supportive vibes to you.

When I was working at TNC in Ohio, our poor head fundraiser had to figure out how to introduce his spouse to our board members at a cocktail event. He introduced him as his "partner" to several elderly board members and some of them got confused and asked what business they were in. He finally told them point blank that they were in a long term relationship. The whole situation was fraught.

TCG's dad has been living with his "girlfriend" for I think near 20 years now, but they have never married. I am always confused as to how to introduce her.

My mother had what I think was a common law husband. I always just called him her 'companion.'

I would follow their lead, sj.

Would someone please convince my body to stop being sick?

I'm gonna have a very busy week in about 12 hours. Just knowing the basics of when it's really hot or when it's cold compared to when my fever's rising and going would be GREAT. I honestly lost any touch with the weather outside.

I like "companion".

Am in Boston. Any plans I had for possibly seeing Buffistas (or any of my other friends who live in the area) are thwarted by the sheer amount of work to be done on boyfriend's place. Am posting on iPhone so won't detail, but suffice to say the last three months of frantic packing, moving cross country, working a 12 hour day job 6 days a week (after 2.5 years of unemployment), two separate return trips to Salisbury, MD for thanksgiving and Christmas (driving alone, 10 hours each way), living out of a suitcase for 2 months, etc... have taken a toll on the boyfriend. This is a rough trip, and not at all vacation-like. I don't like being in a LTR (I have a history of them and thought I was done with them forever) and we are sadly not on the same page about our future. So, Though I really wanted to meet people while here, the timing just sucks. I am spending all of my time trying to repair things. New Years Eve will go down as one of the worst ever (room service bottle of champagne and chcolate strawberries went untouched, and that was my first night here).