Sounds like you’re so on the right track, and your sister sounds like an angel with a core of steel. Three things I wish all parents (and especially people in our situation) would be told right from the get-go:

Please tell me she had a Pakistani knee surgeon.

As long as you keep that up, you’ll be fine. My kid is 23 now, and so much more together, happy, self-directed, and open with me than I even came close to at her age. (At her age, I was pregnant with her, an idea that—rightly—freaks her out.)

Her amazing life is part of why I am so ragey toward my parents. They were…

Here you go: http://live.washingtonpost.com/carolyn-hax-we…

It is not your job to be your mother’s friend or her emotional support. The reason I haven’t seen my parents since January is because when something dramatic like what you’re going through happens, my mom forgets that anyone else has a stake in the situation or might have their own grief to deal with, and she just…

Serious question: How come we don’t? It wouldn’t be like the conservative lies used to bolster who’s “patriotic” and who isn’t. It’s the truth. Some self-centered SOB is hogging water from farmers and tax-paying citizens. Water isn’t like Ferraris or yoga pants in that poor people will be fine without it. It IS…

Nailed it!

Oh. Thanks!

Has anyone actually seen these Doritos on a shelf anywhere—specifically in the Chicago area? I’ve been looking.

Also, I like how, per Cluckabee and his ilk, corporations can do what they want—to the environment, to employees, to consumers—until it runs up against their (a)moral beliefs. Then suddenly corporations are…

If the Heidi Klum item is true, she just went from irritating to fucking awful in my book.

Nope, scorn, barrels and buckets and schooners of scorn.

Yes, ever since 227!

Sometimes,my kid’s friends would call me Mrs. Kidslastname, which is NOT MY NAME, so I just told ‘em to use my first name. Made me less teeth-grindy.

And if parents with minimum-wage jobs could get away with working just ONE job per person, they could show up at their kids’ schools and be present in the evenings for homework and cook real dinners and stuff. Think of how many social problems un-exhausted low-income parents would solve. We certainly can’t have THAT!…

But those commitments are distinct from the marital commitment, which must include bodily union, something that unites two persons of the opposite sex (on equal terms).

Yep, this. If I were a Christian, I’d be pretty enraged about the pissant little God these whiny attention-seekers seem to worship. It’s like building a temple to Caillou.

That thought just knocked me off the sofa. My mom’s “sorry sorry sorry” (yes, it always comes in threes) roughly translates to, “I just apologized so now you have to let things go back to the way they were in which we use you as needed and don’t see that doing so amounts to treating you like a house elf in the Malfoy…

To preface, my parents are generally awful, and I could hijack this thread with sadness. However, I will stick with one story.

That she uses the terms “girls” and “guys” to refer to adult professionals kinda sums up the Nancy Meyers problem nicely.