knees and road construction and of course math

I stopped by my parent's house on the day after my birthday to drop off some stuff to my mom. We visited for about an hour and then I said I needed to get going and stood up to leave.

That's when my mom said, "That skirt is too short." And as I walked over to kiss my dad goodbye, he said, "I'm going to tell you something, and you're not going to like it." And I said, "You can stop right now." But he continued, "I've always said that the only joint worse than a woman's knees is a beer joint."

Seriously. Is it so hard to find something nice to say every now and then? I mean, if I'm wearing a skirt (a cute skirt that brushed the top of my kneecaps), and a shirt and a cardigan, and cute heels, and a necklace, and my hair looks good, would it be so hard to just say something nice about the sweater or necklace or heels and bite your tongue about the length of my skirt and my knees? Even a comment about the bruise on my shin that is always there because I keep shutting my car door on my leg would have been easier to take, because that might have indicated a bit of concern instead of--well, what? What is that?


And while I'm complaining. Can I just say that as much as I miss my friends in my old neighborhood, as much as I miss my big yard and my little house, I am so glad that I don't have to deal with that traffic and road construction anymore? What is that all about? Two of the three roads into my old neighborhood are under serious construction, as in, open holes in the road so that it is closed to all traffic. And the third road into my neighborhood is so congested that it takes like 20 minutes to go half a block. What is going on at City Hall when they're approving all of the commercial development without improving the roads, and what is going on in the public works department when they decide to close two roads and funnel all of the traffic into one lane on the sole access into a huge neighborhood? What is that?

And finally. Can I just say thank you for not pointing out that my last post had a math error. If I truly wanted to post enough good things about my birthday to equal half my age, I should have listed 26 items. This is a good example of what happens in my brain during math tests. I either have serious crampage that causes me to forget everything I thought I knew, or I make simple calculation errors. What is that?

I don't want to end this post with such a sour taste in my fingers, so let me just say that I would not have even known about the road construction if I hadn't gone to my old neighborhood to get a haircut and a pedicure today. And since I now have ten pretty great looking hot pink toenails, really, how could I stay upset for more than a few moments about anything?