Oh, no problem. I was just explaining why talking to my brother wouldn't work (largely because I don't have a brother). Mostly, I just roll my eyes and feel sorry for the kid being raised by her. At least his father is pretty sane. (No longer living with them, but still in the picture, at least; and not perfect, but…

She's my wife's sister, not my brother's wife. And MrsPye is well aware of this, and has told her repeatedly to STFU. We would only see them at big family gatherings (and not even all of those, as she's my wife's half-sister) but we live in the same small neighborhood, so I run into her every time I leave the house,…

To be honest, I can't really say she "wasn't always like this." Motherhood has intensified her shitty self-centered tendencies (and focused them on Motherhood—not even the baby, but on how amazing SHE is for having given birth to him) but they were always there. Pretty much all you're allowed to do around her these…

I don't mind citrus-scented cleaning stuff, but in general, if my house smells like delicious food, it had better be because someone (probably me, but that's okay) just made delicious food. My house smells like baking bread right now, because I am baking bread. If my house had smelled like bread yesterday, though, I…

I love the smell of both lemons and bacon, but lemons have an edge. (On the other hand, I don't want my washing-up liquid to smell like bacon, and the smell of frying lemons has never got me out of bed on a Saturday morning.)

I have no idea, honestly. It never made sense to me, but so little of what my mother did ever did make sense.

Exactly. For many years, my racist, homophobic mother's two closest friends were a black woman and a gay man. They were the "good ones." Not like those "other" black and/or gay people. (Note: I have no idea how those friends felt about the situation, but they spent a lot of time with her, even after they no longer…

Some people do, in fact, say shit like this. My SIL says shit like this to me all the time (well, where "all the time" means "since she had her baby last year"). She even tells me that since I won't be biologically related to the children we're hoping to have (I've had a hysterectomy, so MrsPye will be doing the…

I know people who refuse to believe soup can be anything but a starter or side dish (like with a sandwich). I used to work with a woman who used to throw a chowder party shortly after the first "real" (aka, "stuck to the ground") snowfall every year: New England-style clam chowder, potato and bacon chowder, corn…

In a Yelp review of a store I was looking at, the reviewer complains that to get to said store from their home, they have to change buses at a location where they feel unsafe. HOW IS THAT THE STORE'S FAULT? It isn't even a complaint that the store is in a "bad" neighborhood. The store has NO control over where you…

You're such an optimist. I listened to someone yesterday afternoon complain that their espresso didn't taste like it did when they got it in Rome. Their Tim Hortons, sixty-cents-a-shot, espresso, DIDN'T TASTE JUST LIKE IT DID IN ITALY.

I've known more than one guy who claims to have played soggy biscuit/ookie cookie—a high school friend, a college friend, and these two guys at my work cafeteria who sat there discussing the game of it they had apparently both taken part in recently. We (my colleagues and I) were at the next table, and I got the…

But—just to add another data point for Malcire—I've lived *most* of my life in either small rural towns or smaller (around 100,000 people) cities, and I've seen it at least once in all of them, from the guy who used to jerk off in the public library when I was a kid to the dude in the CHILDREN'S underwear section at…

I don't know about Arkansas. I grew up in the South—rural Georgia—and the only reason I moved away is that my then-partner's father was [supposedly—long story] dying and she wanted to spend his last months near him. I'm not transgender, but I am a lesbian, and I had no plans to leave the South. I knew many gay,…

I would have shared my cow-print girl (much like the cat on the right)! And talked about how it took, literally, 6-1/2 years to break through all of her skittishness and get to the sweet, loving cat that I kept seeing glimpses of. (No idea why she was like that; her sister, from the same litter, was a cuddlebug from…

Yeah, black-and-white cats are also difficult to adopt for some reason. We have a black cat and a black and white one, the last two from a litter of mostly-tabbies. I can understand why our cow-print girl didn't get adopted—she's very skittish —but her sister has been a lovebug since day one. (Actually, I've lived…

Or Santa Claus, GA. (There are also towns named Santa Claus in a couple of other states, but I went to college with a guy who lived in Santa Claus, GA as a small child.)

At least soy sauce would mix in with the drink, instead of sitting there in congealed globs, like bubble tea from hell.

Yeah, but they were brought at different times. If I order my salad with dressing on the side, I usually get the salad and dressing at the same time, in separate dishes.

Yes and no? I mean, there were more kinds of dressing in my house than that, because my mom made it from scratch (cheaper), and more lettuce (in the summer) because my parents gardened. But I do remember when ranch suddenly appeared in my world, and I was bewildered.