We went to Morning Sun, the embroidered sweatshirt outlet -- I've never seen so many 60-85 year old women in one spot before. All buying Xmas presents el bulko. Same as my mum. The range is from very tasteful, faithfully-rendered natural small embroidered things like chickadees, to huge, splashy, ug-ug-ugly silkscreened horrors. The whole huge store was 30% off -- so the deals were great. There were very nice fleece things that wound up at seven bucks. My mum got one with an embroidered chickadee for my sister's friend Helen (who is from the Ukraine). Then we had lunch at a teriyaki place by TJ Maxx ($3.99 for soup and big bowl of chicken/veg/rice). We spent so much time in TJ Maxx that I was pooped. My mum is always worrying about what other (perfectly able-bodied) people are thinking -- as I came in TJ Maxx people were whizzing in front, etc., so close they touched me, so I stopped -- better than falling down My mum said, "You're holding up traffic!" (it was about 3 seconds later, "So I got pissed and said, "I'm doing the best I can, and if it's not good enough F*CK THEM!" As we were leaving I was slow crossing the street and she said a man in a car stopped to wait for me "probably hates us." I said, "He's in his warm car and if he can't wait 30 seconds for me to cross the road...!!!" It's an evil curse for her that she thinks everyone is so a) harshly judgmental and b) much more important than us. I had to deal with that as a child -- my parents would laugh and say that all their swans are geese, the opposite, of course, of the person who is proud of their least little thing and believes "all their geese are swans." I don't know if Americans have that saying. Trust my family to do it backwards. The upshot was that when someone gave approval freely it seemed insincere and lacking in worth to me as a child. REAL approval was highly sought but never attainable -- a kind of unholy grail. It's like "I don't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member." I don't want any approval actually offered to me, because the only real approval is unattainable. Eeek. Well, I believe I'm over that -- what a crazy way to treat your children! My poor mother isn't over it, though, and that's pretty rough.