I hope your daughter feels well soon, Kat.

I think the kill-the-symptom approach to my headaches might be my best bet. Fuck why I have them. Going in and repeatedly assaulting the nerves anywhere from C7 on up has had the best effect yet. And in a month, Botox for the front of my head.

Irritatingly, the shoulder I've had done twice now does still twinge more than it should, and it's not like I don't have a headache right now, but some days this week have probably been a point lower than some of the preceding ones.

Consuela, I'm so glad you found someone who thinks there is a workable solution!

I had a semi-cluster-fuck-y afternoon after getting out of work early, mostly due to it being college move-in time and also problems on the subway, but I'm home now, at least! And I called my mother to follow up on her idea of an outing tomorrow, and she had forgotten about it, and now I wish I hadn't reminded her. I don't want to do it tomorrow! I tried to float Monday, but she wasn't into that.

In short: I should get over myself because my life and family are good.

Is this gal going to help you find a place that would accept your parents?

That's the plan. She's going to give us some recommendations and tour the facilities with us. There will have to be a lot of lying to my mother along the way, I'm sure.

Can you not bring her on the tour and just spring it on her when it's a done deal and time to move? I realize that sounds terrible.

The folks who own the villa we're staying at for my sister's birthday are trying to charge her $1500 US DOLLARS, let's be clear, extra for having a bunch of people over to "lyme" (chillax with alcohol) for the day. Seriously--shouldn't there be oral sex involved for at least the birthday girl at that cost?

She's trying to talk them down by trading free ad space from a friend of hers who writes for a travel mag, but how annoying is that? We already have the place Friday through Monday, and we're not exactly boozy university students or doped up Rastas.

Personally, I'm not looking forward to the day at all, because there will be nowhere to run. My sister is very accommodating about my health bullshit, but this is her party (and I'll hide if I want to?) so she gets what she wants. I just don't know how to also get what I need.

Speaking of old songs, I deliberately slipped an earworm into my mid year performance review (one complaint--communication--they can't work out how sometimes I give the shortest and clearest presentations of complex stuff, and sometimes I speak Greek. I want them to step up and get entry level knowledge in what I'm talking about, but that's not going to happen, so I should own it). For some reason I felt compelled to type "in these ever changing teams in which we're working." I hope it infects everyone, forever.

You are evil.

I'm a polictially naive. Is it a step forward to have homosexuality be an identity rather than a facet of an individual? Or is that a necessary step towards it being truly an accepted facet of an individual? When I was diagnosed with diabetes, I resented the hell out of being identified as "diabetic" instead of "someone with diabethes".

As I understand it, the idea of homosexuality as a facet of a person is still somewhat new. The older idea was that a person might commit homosexual acts, the same way a person might commit adultery or some other sin, but the idea of homosexuality being something that someone was rather than something that someone did is pretty much late Victorian, and owes a lot to Freud.

(Someone who knows this stuff better than I do can probably correct some of that, but I think I've got the basic ideas right.)

The folks who own the villa we're staying at for my sister's birthday are trying to charge her $1500 US DOLLARS, let's be clear, extra for having a bunch of people over to "lyme" (chillax with alcohol) for the day.

She's rented the villa already and they want to charge $1500 to have a party? That's insane.

I could maybe, maybe, see that as a damage deposit that is refunded if the place isn't burnt down in the end.

Suela, is your mother on any anti-anxiety type of medication? I feel like it's terrible to suggest, but I feel like Valium could make everyone's life better in this situation.