Shir, I don't disagree with you - mainly because I don't have the right. But your views relate to Israel. I come from a country where a disturbing number of people really don't know what went on in the Holocaust (and indeed, it shocked me how much I didn't know, despite having studied a fair bit of history and having Jewish family). Jewish people in my country are having their synagogues burnt down and being abused by people who don't acknowledge that they could be just a few steps away from repeating history. Muslims are having their mosques burnt down too, and asylum seekers are being attacked in the street, and mothers are being killed along with their disabled children, and to my mind it's all part of the same thing. And I don't ever want to be distracted by my liberal values so much that I can't see these things going on in my own country, or don't feel the need/responsibility to protest them.

As I've told you away from b.org, my trip to Israel was difficult for me on many levels, and not just the level where The Girl's parents were being idiots. The very fact that I'm marrying an Israeli is hard work for me on a regular basis, especially given the views of her family (not her) towards things like the Palestinian situation. I nearly avoided going out with The Girl entirely because I didn't think I could cope with what I (inaccurately) thought her views would be. I certainly was never going to visit Israel with her - she spent four years persuading me that I could do that without feeling guilty about Palestinians. So I have to put the visit to Yad Vashem, for myself, into that context of ignorance. I am someone who would never think of myself as having prejudices, because I'm liberal and an activist and all sorts of related self-righteous crap that I tell myself so I can sleep at night. At the same time, I'm VERY capable of being an oppressor, like anyone else with any kind of cultural privilege. I like to pretend I'm not, because I can debate British abuses towards colonial nations as well as any other conflicted Anglo-Irish person. But I am capable of oppression. I'm not the only person who needs to learn more about what happened so that I don't end up contributing to a repeat of history.

While I completely respect that you have a very different view on the Holocaust from other people, I also believe that any genocide, from the Eugenics projects to Rwanda, needs to be remembered. Because I don't know whether, if I'd lived during the Holocaust, I would have been brave enough to help people at my own risk (as the Hungarian Christian grandmother of a friend of mine did). More likely I'd have been among the millions who were looking at the ground a lot. And I want to be better than that - in all sorts of situations that I am in, in relation to everything from the way that detained asylum seekers are treated in the UK (horribly) to the situation of Western Muslims in the current political climate.

(FWIW, as someone who is gay, physically disabled and mentally ill, I certainly didn't perceive an 'only Jews suffered' undercurrent in Yad Vashem.)

Beverly, definitely go explore. The boxes will wait.

I bought a new bookcase today. I'm so hopeless.

Shir, thank you so much for sharing your perspective. It sounds like you have very valid issues, and I've wondered about many of them myself.

Will you need to resume communication? Not being snarky. And am very glad you have Vortex with you.

I am going to try and see how it goes. I do have genuine affection for him, and I'll miss him a lot, but we were never on an equal footing in the relationship and I am wary. I don't think he's going to like the conditions I will put on our interaction, such as I am not going to his place because a) that leads to cuddling and border-blurring and b) I'm fucking sick of soulless Morrisville after going there twice a week for the last year and a half.

Shared squee expands exponentially, right? Feels that way, anyway.

Yes, this! I love shared squee. I think I need to change my emo tag already. I love that song ("Gravity" by Sara Bareilles, also known as the "vampire routine" from SYTYCD) and it's very apropros to my relationship with KBD, but really I'm feeling better than that and I'm already tired of the tag. So poof! I banish it to my tag graveyard in my profile.

And if there was even a smidgen of doubt in anyone's mind, I am here to say that Vortex is mind-blowingly fabulous.

Beverly, the inside work will always be there, the excellent weather will not. SHOOO!

We have threatening-to-rain weather down south in Hayward, so shoo! Go enjoy the pretty day. Those boxes aren't going anywhere and the Pacific Northwest damp will be back soon.

Speaking of cleaning, I've hit on something that really works for me. When I am faced with a junk drawer or a box full of things I can't bear to sort out, I simply turn it over and empty it right onto the floor. Suddenly it becomes clear that this item is good only for the trash, while that is gotta go to Goodwill, and that over there is the doo-dad I didn't know I had to have to finish my project. It's so cool.

And now I've got a Drawer of Requirement in the kitchen! Too bad it isn't an entire spacious storage unit. That would be like super useful.

Beverly, the inside work will always be there, the excellent weather will not. SHOOO!

So true.

We've put up the roller shades in the living room, and one curtain rod ready for the valence when it shows up. The living room is very close not needing anything new done to it, just upkeep.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

I got an e-mail from my mom. But not really. I wondered whether her decision not to talk to me would include not sending me mass e-mail forwards.

This one is called "Being a Mother - a must read," and it's one of those sappy stories about a guy who goes and has a nice dinner with his mother after not seeing her very much over the past 20 years...and then she drops dead of a heart attack a few days later, and he appreciates her so much now!

You should invite her for dinner in 2030.

P-C, I think if we tried real hard we could all put together a heart-warming story of a mother that badgered her son so much that they were never able to share a true relationship. UNTIL one day when she witnesses a GOOD relationship between a friend and her friend's son. And only then does she learn how to treat her son with respect and allow him to find his own happiness, so that he will want to share that happiness with her.

And they all lived happily ever after. The End.

Katie, (KAAYYYTEEE!) that's kind of the method I used to pack some of these boxes, that's what's making unpacking them hard. Stuff that was in the drawers in the dining room, and on the shelves in my office, and on my dresser all wound up sharing several boxes. Sorting them out is finicky and stressful. Especially when I found an envelope full of cards StE had drawn in crayon and printed in careful letters.

Then I gave myself a pedicure and almost doubled my time and speed on the treadmill, so. Not going out turned out okay, and I did get a little done and will go back to it for a while later on.