That does sound most ideal, Suela. And I want to pipe up with how difficult I know it is. My mother has expressed in no uncertain terms how she would never be happy in any kind of home and that she expects us to care for her should the need arise. She's not speaking out of a vacuum; she was the primary caregiver for her mother, blind and partially deaf, for many years, and is now the caregiver for my father with Parkinson's. She's not asking anything she hasn't already done herself. There are definitely times when providing the care yourself is, in fact, the best thing you can do for the person, albeit not the best thing you can do for yourself. So it's not ever an easy decision, and I feel for you.

Man, I have to leave at 6 tomorrow to pick up the SO from the end of his tour. I should have been sleeping, not getting myself involved in a discussion of Native spirituality on facebook.

I will add that while getting the best airline is ideal, almost any foreign airline is better than the U.S. airlines. When I went to a conference is Bali, the budget of the people paying for my tickets only covered my fare if I took a bottom of the basket Taiwanese airline. And it was great. 20 hours. The seats were comfortable even though I'm a fat guy. The food was good. (We had either a Chinese or an American option. I always took Chinese. Why fly a Chinese airline and eat American food?) The flight attendants were not only polite. They were warm and went out their way to be be helpful. I had no special dietary requirements but there were to my knowledge one vegetarian and one person eating kosher in my seating area and both seemed happy.

Argh. There is no water in my apartment. Which makes me not want to go to work, but actually, I should, since there is water there! But I feel (am) dirty! Oy vey.

Oh, that sucks, Jesse. I have water, but I'm still having trouble with my water heater.

However, I don;t care, because I'm off to pick up the SO, who is through with his tour, yay!

'suela, out of curiosity, does your father have medical power of attorney for your mom or do you or your sister?

Week two of school has been brutal and it's only Wednesday AM. I'll survive, but it was not made easier by the $2000 needed to fix the clutch of my car. ARGH.

Noah and Grace's first day of Kindergarten went okay. Noah is extremely excited about school. Grace needs to be forced to use her AAT in order to communicate about what happens.

Oh man.

Liese, yay for DH coming home.

I would not go to work with no water. No HOT water I could make do with, but no water means no teeth brushing.

I want to do a study of the comments on the original "mansplaining" article to count how many of the comments are men explaining mansplaining, discounting the women's experiences of mansplaining because they have never noticed it or making a "joke" like "Because women are constantly asking their men "Why are you doing fill-in-the-blank?" or "Why did you do fill-in-the-blank?" practically every time we turn around. It's like constantly being on trial for our every waking move."

Roger Ebert just shared the article on Facebook, and the comments are hysterical. Article: [link]

No HOT water I could make do with, but no water means no teeth brushing.

Luckily, I had water in the Brita that I used to brush my teeth and make coffee. And I cleaned the rest of me with face-cleaning wipes!

If I had been a little smarter, I would have come to work earlier and showered here, but whatever.

At least when I got outside, the street is all torn up, so it's not that my building is crappy.

no water means no teeth brushing.

Apparently Tim really, really wanted to brush his teeth but I got in the bathroom before him (there is no way we can both be in there at the same time; it's like a damn closet), so he took his toothbrush and went to work. I assume he planned to brush his teeth there, and it wasn't just a dramatic gesture to indicate disdain for me getting in the bathroom first.

I just finished listening to the David Rakoff excerpt show on This American Life, and now I has a sad. They ended with "What'll I Do", which brought the allergies.