msbelle, I know that you get it, which doesn't make it suck any less. Is your brother upset by this too?

I have eaten pastries.

::fist pump::

He is less outwardly upset then me, but I think it hurts him.

I think he just wants his family to be happy for him and celebrate with him. But I also think he is at terms that if they will not meet him where he is, that he has made enough of a family for himself that he can just keep visits with them to a minimum and contact to civility.

He is my best friend and you know how emotional I get about crap. My people being hurt just makes me screamy mad.

Internet flame wars? There is a psychological reason for it.

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I can see why it makes you angry, msbelle. Engagement and marriage are things to be celebrated, period. No place in that for parental pouting. Congrats to your brother!

In today's news, the plan for the day is to go check on my sister and take her to a doctor's appointment. We'll likely get the path report finally, and then we'll know what we're dealing with. Meanwhile the housecleaners are here so I haven't been able to get in the kitchen and make myself breakfast yet. I'm starving.

I have eaten pastries. And pasta carbonara.

Yay, delicious foodstuffs!

(I was reading an article this morning and a guy was named John Wren. I spent a few moments thinking how sweet it was that John Reese married one of Harold's aliases.)

I'm sorry, msbelle. It is sad that your parents are denying themselves the joy of achieving what every parents wants. We want our children to be happy. It's really pretty simple if we remember that it is what makes them happy, not us.

Now my kids on the other hand! Nah, really just want them to find their joy.

It is sad that your parents are denying themselves the joy of achieving what every parents wants. We want our children to be happy. It's really pretty simple if we remember that it is what makes them happy, not us.

That is the challenge of parenting, I suspect. I always think of those CS&N lines, "So feed them on your dreams/The ones they pick/The ones you know by."

I kinda view it as my mom have a very long pout that she is not having the life she expected. No wedding of her children when they were young, no bio grand-children - a gay child, a grandchild that is a lot of work. wah wah wah.

Dude. I can understand that--heck, my OWN life, which I have more power over, has not been quite as I might've liked. But in her case...fine, pout. Pout to yourself, or your husband, but not TO/AROUND your kids!!

if they will not meet him where he is, that he has made enough of a family for himself that he can just keep visits with them to a minimum and contact to civility.

That's sad, but awesome that he has made a family for himself.

Was it Matt who linked a couple of days ago to the story about the trans teens who fell in love in a support group at their school? IIRC, one of the dads is pretty stolid and conservative and faced a lot of horror and scolding from his fellow parents, but he talked about finally working out that this was his child's happiness, health and life, and not up for anyone else's approval or censure, and that he'd finally asked himself which he'd rather have: an unexpected living daughter or the son he'd always had, only dead by suicide. And after that it was easy.

ICompletelyON, eeep. We just had an unidentified-suitcase scare right by our office door. Which turned out, thank all TPTB, to have been left in the hall by a forgetful college student who'd just shown up for his first day of a summer volunteer gig at one of the labs down the hall. He got a gentle talking-to by the campus police, who explained (as, apparently, they have to do several times a day throughout student volunteer season) that, yes, even his cheerful plaid rolly-bag counts as a suspicious package. We're a university, but the research building is not a dorm. We do animal research. We do stem cell research. One of our now-retired faculty is missing a hand thanks to the Unabomber. Please, please exercise a grain of common sense and don't leave your unlabeled bags lying around in the hallway.

Kids these days!