Have to have a talk with the Munchkin between now and Monday because she's not doing the things she's supposed to be doing. The Fun Aunt wants to just let her continue to slide, because really, it's not fun to make someone do school when they don't want to, or to enforce that they have to clean up their own messes, or shit like that. It's one reason I avoided the roommate thing for so long. It's one reason there are so few people I'm willing to live with. But I just can't be a flophouse matron for someone who shows up at dinnertime for food, and otherwise does nothing all day. And at this rate, she'll be 27 before she finishes high school. It's not healthy for her, and it's building serious resentment in me. (Plus, if she's not going to take school seriously, she should just go get a job and contribute to the household in that way instead. She's almost 18; no one's going to force her to finish high school if she'd rather work.)

I wrote her a letter, because sometimes it helps us to communicate in writing. We'll see how it goes.

Besides the Teenager Drama, which I know will sort itself out, because I really do have an excellent teenager, and we love each other and stuff, this was a nearly perfect day. Woke up with a headache, but it didn't stick around very long. Nonetheless, to avoid another migraine, I called in sick to my contract gig, bailed on the volunteer thing I was gonna do this morning, and took a serious downtime day.

Excellent TMI, then a nice long, easygoing walk (those are as much as I can do these days) up into Berkeley. Somewhere around five miles and four hours later, we came home, but along the way, used about half of the gift certificates tenacious_snail gave me to buy a few books at Moe's, while listening to the Hawaiian music act they had in today; ate donuts; used our frequent-buyer gift certificate at Pegasus to buy someotherguy a book on H.P. Lovecraft; ate Hawaiian barbecue for dinner (stonebender, they have chicken katsu that I think you would like), and stopped at a coffeeshop before heading home.

Less than an hour after we got home, the warm damp turned to big raindrops, and then truly the brightest, most beautiful double rainbow we've ever seen. Several of the neighbors came out to see and we chatted like neighbors do, which is one of the reasons I love my neighborhood, because in San Diego, I never lived somewhere where neighbors come outside to look at rainbows together.

And now I'm off to watch MI-5 and eat garlic-parmesan popcorn. Another easygoing day is planned for tomorrow, but I'll be doing it at stonebender's place if he's up for the company.

How was your day?