Hi. Busy weekend. As part of my natural nesting reaction to the weather turning colder, I did a lot of cleaning: I scrubbed the kitchen, taking an especially long time with getting the sticky, lint-coated grease off of our big, white "vintage" oven, and using oven cleaner on the burner drip tray things (which worked satisfyingly well, though some residue still remains). The girls were up in VT, getting heartbreakingly dissed by their mom again (she did take them out to dinner and a movie, but opted to send them home early on a train instead of spending Sunday with them; they spent both nights at friends' homes).

Sunday night P, A, T, and I went out to dinner with P's mom, aunt, and cousin. Aunt and cousin were visiting from Atlanta (they're from Texas originally, I think). We were at a sort of fancy, quirky place, Green St. Cafe, and as usual P's mom had much to complain about. "They really should do something about the handwriting on these menus!" "That little pot of tapenade for ALL of us?!" When figuring out what wine she wanted, as they didn't have Merlot or Cabernet, she looked plaintively up at the waitress and said "I've never heard of any of these before in my life." After our waitress brought over a taste of something for her to try, she said "This is awful. Ugh, it's just undrinkable." She has a knack of making waitstaff ridiculously uncomfortable, leaving the rest of us to try to patch things up by tempering her statements with compliments and apologies. It makes eating out with her very stressful sometimes. Yet she paid for my meal, so I guess I'm just an ungrateful swine.

I liked P's cousin, though, who seemed smart and funny and interesting. But I was too wrapped up in keeping a grouchy A happy and trying not to ignore a sidelined-as-usual T. I must have succeeded because we did goofy prancing walks on our way back to the car.

Tonight I've told T I'm taking her to the mall, though I'm quite exhausted. I went to bed around 12:30, I woke up at 3:00 with stomach and anxiety issues and read on the sofa downstairs, dozing off a little while Wedge cat kept kneading me to keep me awake. I returned to bed at 5:23, to wake up for good around 7:30. Oy.