Tomorrow—or today, whichever you want to call it at this point—as y’all gorge yourselves on everything that’s wonderful about the holidays, I’ll be doing the same, only unlike you, I might well be balled up in the corner with the first bottle of whatever I can find. See, while y’all enjoy your family, *I’ll* be spending Thanksgiving with BOTH MY MOTHERS.

AT THE SAME TIME.



I know, I know: What a blessing to be amongst those who love me, etc. etc. I get it. But people, complete bizarreness of my situation aside, think about it—TWO MOTHERS. Not a mother and a stepmother, or a mother and a mother-in-law; those are your run-of-the-mill dynamics. I will have TWO MOTHERS who love to—what else?—MOTHER in the same house, mothers who will either fawn all over me or point out every flaw I have as if I don’t know what they are. And if Mother’s in one of her moods, I’ll be inflicting her on completely unsuspecting people. I mean, she seemed in decent spirits when I talked to her earlier, but that was hours ago—who knows WHAT will happen between then and when we’re supposed to get there that’ll set her off!??

I’m a little freaked out here, people. Please send alcohol.

Went to the eye doc today—first time in, oh, four years, because if my eyes aren’t bothering me, I just don’t give it much thought. The bad news: My frames aren’t made anymore and haven’t been for two years, which sucks because I LOVE my frames deeply and flipped at the idea of having to find new ones as cool as these. The good news, however, is that my eyes haven’t changed significantly, so new glasses aren’t necessary. But I bought some anyway, because I’m a girl who’s easily excited by the idea of having TWO pairs of glasses.

So Mother and I are sitting at dinner last week when out of the blue, she hits me with this:

Uh, wut!??

God knows Mother nags me about myriad things—MYRIAD things—but the one thing for which I always gave her credit was that she never harped on me about me being single and without spawn. So, after I looked at her like she’d suddenly sprouted three freakin’ heads, I showed her my received call log, which consists of Girlie, Poppy, my sister, the paper and, well, that’s really kind of it on any given day. She seemed satisfied, but I of course was kinda squicked out by the whole exchange.

No, there hasn’t been a regular male cast member in my merry band of idiots for going on three years, and save for a certain delicious interlude, I haven’t really necessarily been in the market for one. Things like the following remind me of why: Today a friend of mine got some pretty exciting news and naturally wanted to share it with her boyfriend, even though they’re pretending they’re casual. She gets him on the line, and he proceeds to tell her all about how he’s at HIS EX-GIRLFRIEND’S helping her with some sort of disaster, poor, poor pitiful him. And do you know that HIS crap all of a sudden became more important to her than her really good news!?? Yeah, I had something like that happen once. The night before Dad’s wake, the one guy (remember that asshole?), after not hearing from him the whole time Mer was in town, called and as we were talking, he started on some tangent about all the times he’s been kicked when he’s down (and there are many). Something about the conversation told me he’d just gotten fucked over by someone he was dating (yeeeeessssssss, besides me, y’all, no need to dwell), so I asked him if he’d gotten his heart broken. To his credit, at least he said “No” and wouldn’t elaborate, and he did show up at the wake the next day, which I completely didn’t expect (he never met Dad, so it’s not something I would’ve asked of him).

Anyway, I did think to myself, “Um, hi? My dad just died, and even though I’m probably not going to talk to you about it, can we at least focus on me me ME, you know, because MY DAD DIED!???” but that bit of righteous selfishness somehow turned into “Oh, he’s telling me in so many words about his failed relationship because he’s trying to take my mind off MY stuff! Wow! That’s really considerate!” (Yeah, wish I could blame that one on grief, but no. That would be me using my acute rationalization skillz.)

Yeah, I suppose I didn’t need to go into all that, but after two almost-in-a-row major relationships with possibly the two most joyless human beings outside of Tara’s ex, I’m perfectly happy with what little peace I have. I mean, if someone normal wants to come and hang, I could be down with that, sure; I’m not SO jaded that I’ve sworn off men or anything. It’s just something I really don’t think about on a daily basis. But yeah, so now I guess Mother wants me married off or some shit.

What’d I tell you: Lookit

Now, to m: Was I right about the soup?

From the Popster herself—

What will they think of next!??



[Ganked from BC, even if I’m kinda at a loss as to what to even say about any of this. I just ... huh.]

Last week, Poppy and I were talking about diet fads and somehow the ever-popular cabbage soup diet came up, so she decided she was going to make her own version. Her version, of course, was less diet, so much so that she needed my ginormous pasta pot in which to make it. Then, she invited me over for said soup one day last week. Maybe it was because the day was so dark and dreary, but Oh. My God. The soup. It was all I could think about all weekend until yesterday, when I called her and asked if I could come over for more, and she said, “Well, if you can be over in 10 minutes, you can have the whole pot; after eating three bowls the first day, I kinda wiped myself out on it.”

People, I’m telling you, I’ve had to keep the soup in the kitchen so I have to physically get up and take bites of it because if I didn’t, I would try to fit my head in the pot to eat it, it’s THAT GOOD. And it seems to only get better as the cabbage melds with the tomato base, because it’s all sour and ... (shudders). If this is what kimchi is like, yes please!

Is it wrong for a broad to want to engage coitally with a pot of soup?

Well, I WAS in a decent frame of mind until I logged onto Facebook (where I spend another fairly big chunk of time) and found one of my pals/colleagues posted THIS bit of horseshit: Lookit.

When it comes to the paper, I don’t even know where they think they can cut us anymore, but I can tell you one of myriad ways in which they monumentally fucked it up: Outsourcing our circ to our MAIN COMPETITION. From what I understand, the TRIB is the one that not only prints us but handles our delivery. So, if the Trib’s going to handle our circ, do you REALLY think it’s going to give a Goddamn about what delivery problems the Sun-Times News Group’s having over its own issues!?? Think about that. Yeah, I’ve heard our upper brass goes to Cyrus et al all the time, and Cyrus et al talks about how they’re going to “present these issues sternly” when they re-up the contract or whatever, but again I ask you: With the newspaper industry and all its issues these days, do you really think the Trib cares? Was there a clause in the contract stipulating that as long as the Trib doesn’t ACTIVELY pursue STNG’s subscribers, instead just not doing anything and letting the subscribers get pissed off enough that they cancel, it’s cool? I mean, what!?? It’s stunning to me that these people are letting us die on the vine. And sure, more cuts sort of means more for me, but I don’t WANT more at the expense of other, much better reporters. Never have.

And now with this pissing in my oatmeal, I have to pick up MOTHER in full-on jerk mode to get a new winter coat after she had to sleep on the couch last night because her landlord didn’t fix the roof properly, and it was banging against the side of her crib all night. (whimper)

It’s official and everyone can rest easy: I have in fact done my civic duty and voted my freakin’ ass off. And you know what the best part was? Voting a big fat NO! to retaining Diane Boswell as a judge. I swear to God, I have NEVER seen such screwed up sentencing as I have from that woman, and I sincerely hope the victims who were hurt by her far outnumbered the criminals who got off with slaps on their wrists. I also completely threw caution to the wind and voted for whoever’s running against Van Til and Philpot (for the NWIers in the hizzy), even though I know NOTHING about their credentials other than they’re Republican. And I ALSO voted for our incumbent governor, if you must know. That’s a horribly unpopular choice for many Hoosiers, but love him or hate him, no one can deny he’s actually DONE stuff, and a good portion of said stuff hasn’t been detrimental to the state. If Long-Thompson gets in, however, I won’t be disappointed as long as she keeps to her word about getting rid of tax abatements for incoming companies. (They don’t NEED them!)

In other news, I will be spending my evening at Lake County Guvmint Complex reprising my role as STAT GIRL! (na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na!), which I love. Hell, since the major networks will no doubt be there in full force to see what Lake County does, you may even see me slinkin’ around. I’ll try to wear something bright and festive so you don’t miss me.