So sorry Nora. Sending you and your family warm thoughts.

Nora, I am so, so sorry. That is incredibly hard and hardbreaking. It tore my stoic dad apart seeing my grandma disappear into dementia, and that was without so much pain.

P-C, I am glad you have money available to you, but don't let it sour your trip. It's a travel abroad rite of passage; I had my last 10 pounds pickpocketed on the tube in London, my last two days there. It was LITERALLY the only money I had left; I survived on handouts for meals, transpo and to get to the airport.

I'm feeling mentally wide awake and like I need to Do Something, but physically exhausted. So I keep noticing things to clean or fix or organize, but I know that I'd end up hurting myself if I actually did any of them. Probably the safest idea would be to make lists of things to do tomorrow.

Nora, so much peace~ma for your grandmother and your whole family. I'm sorry you are having to go through this.

P-C, I'm glad you are ok. But what a PITA for you.

Nora, I'm so sorry. That's so, so hard. Peace to your grandmother and you and your family.

P-C, you have become both a cliche and a statistic. Plus, you have a great story to tell people. (None of that, however, outweighs the giant bite in the ass of having your wallet stolen. Sorry, man.)

Barb -- she is baaaaaaaaatshit crazy. God DAMN.

As for me -- oh, here is proof of how much I love The Boy's dad: I watched Bill O'Reilly with him tonight. AND I managed to not scream "Unclean! Unclean!" and/or "Kill it! Killllllllll it!!!" at the TV.

(Honestly, tonight's particular episode -- if I had just awakened out of a long refreshing coma and knew NOTHING about O'Reilly, based on tonight's episode, I *honestly* would have thought it was a comedy show. [Yes, I do know that's exactly what Colbert is doing.] But *seriously.* O'Reilly was actually funny in a couple of places, and the overall effect was that of a spoof of a news show.)

The thing is, The Boy's dad has NO IDEA how big of a sacrifice that was on my part. And -- I'm not a dick. He will *never* know.

Later, I made him laugh by showing him a picture of my dad's neck tattoo. That will never be not funny.

Speaking of Colbert...

Colbert testifies before congress

Home from date. While not a Meara hotness type of date, I think it went really well. It was going to be a short evening because I have to be back in Irvine at 7am, and she has to work for The Mouse in the AM as well. And it turned into 4 hours of conversation. Some very candid things. Some very goofy things. mocking ourselves. Mocking work. Lamenting about work. Some rather eerie similarities in our families. Mutual love for Animaniacs, board games, card games, books, and History Channel. And an unfortunate complete disagreement on toppings for pizza. Luckily for that, we can always order half n half. Now for the tough part. Since she is in process of finishing this job, and trying to ramp up hours at the other job, finding time to see her is going to be difficult. ::sigh::

Oooh, yay omnis!! And clearly "meara-hotness-type-dates" have not worked out all that well for me, seeing as how I'm all single and shit, so...work what ya got goin', I'm sayin'...

Yes, so we are in the same boat. Except for one major difference. You have had hotness in recent times! And there is something to be said about that.

OK, I seem more capable of getting out of bed today, so things must be improving! We're finally at the unpacking stage, upstairs - we have enough furniture built now to be getting on with. (We spent a fortune at IKEA.) I'm feeling cheerier now that we're looking more like a home than a storage facility. We even have a kitchen! We're going food shopping. Woot.

Yay for good date, omnis! I wish you more of those. My Girl and I have to do half-and-half pizzas. It is not an insurmountable obstacle. (Now, the fact that she's a dog person and I'm a cat person... that's a problem.)