This is still an improvement on calling me "bulgy" in high school

Me: Yeah, I need to go to bed earlier tonight. I woke up late this morning and left the house without any make-up on.

Mom: Oh. That's not good for you. Did people say you look sick?

Me: No, no one said anything about it.

Mom: So no one said you looked terrible?

Me: Well thanks, Mom.

Mom: Oh now, don't take what I said and twist it around.

I really don't have any patience for dickbags...

I feel like I missed out on the rules for this sort of thing. I should have been born earlier. I mean, really? What have I read lately that was written before 1900 and I hate pants. I should have been born when having the right gloves for the occasion was a real concern. There was a clear way to act. There used to be (it seems, unless books have been lying to me) a kind of code for civility and decorum in decent society. It seemed to be a relatively simple if A then B scenario. If Mrs. Penningworth's dog bites your child, you send a note apologizing on Timmy's behalf for having goaded the canine, assure Mrs. Penningworth that he's been instructed not to do this anymore, and politely request that the dog not be let loose in the future so as to prevent these unfortunate incidents on all sides. If you are invited to the Right Honorable Justice Misslethorpe's house for the weekend, you don't dare arrive without an appropriate hostess gift (cigarettes and dishtowels were, apparently, always a big hit with hostesses.) If you are Mrs. Right Honorable Justice Misslethrope you make sure your guest room/cabana is equipped with fancy soaps, fresh fruit, clean towels, and even more cigarettes (a few sheets of fresh writing paper, also always appreciated) because you want your weekend guests to feel at home and all your weekend guests keep pineapple on their nightstands. You know this because you know the fuckin' rules.

There are no rules for this anymore, for interacting with people. Every new gadget , every seeming improvement to our communication serves to sever our already fractured connections to actual, tangible people. I'm tempted to just say fuck the Internet; if you want to talk to me, you'll at least have to pick up a phone. At least that's a person only once, instead of two or three times, removed. But I would have to draft some sort of missive to this effect and post it on said Internet, thus nullifying the force of my mutiny (this is not that, this is just an irate, bored, and slightly (ok, more than that) lonely rant. It, like the others, will pass.

I can get quite a lot accomplished while waiting for the phone to ring...

Before...Sad, disheveled bookshelf. No clue where most anything is.




Books atop bed. They seem to have multiplied since I last attempted this..



Molly fell under the weight of it all. Kermit, fight has he might, was likewise overtaken.






At long last, success.




now, onward to the closet of doom!