You gotta hand it to my parents. Before, they didn't like the fact that I was interested in renting our own condo, the one that's down by the lake. Now that I'm telling them that I'm going to look at a house that's for rent tonight, almost instantly my mother started offering me the condo by the lake. Then my dad started with the guilt trip, the "she'd rather live with two strangers than with us" schtick. And, as per usual, he had a whole slew of negative things to say about the idea. Now I kind of wish I had started with the car proposal first. But...that's life. I know I said that I would never rent again, but I should know better than to say 'never', right? At first, I thought that I could rent from my parents, and that wouldn't really count as renting. So I guess the next best alternative would be to rent from my friend's parents.

Okay, so bad idea #1 was to totally spring the idea on them with no warning. But it's a very fine balance. Tell them early, and they will have time to come up with reason upon reason upon reason why I shouldn't do this, thus prompting me to give up the idea entirely just to get them to shut up. Tell them too late (i.e. after the fact), and then suddenly a HUGE argument could lead to words that you can't take back, or bad feelings for the rest of our lives, or something dramatic like that. My mom has a LONG memory (that's where I get it from). She still complains about that waiter that spilled something on her fifteen years ago, and, as a result, we have never returned to that establishment (even though it has changed ownership three times and that waiter has hopefully moved on to greener pastures). So...oh...there's the phone. Time to go.

"Ain't nobody gonna hold me down, oh no, I got to keep on movin'"