I�m caught between my mother and my daughter.

It�s still Little Princess� birthday; that hasn�t changed since I updated this morning. She arrived home around noon after a weekend of debauchery, sleeping with her boyfriend in a tent last night in the cold. Crazy. I made a chocolate fudge cake (from a mix, I apologize) and added food colouring to some white (also store-bought) icing in an attempt to make it purple. Unfortunately I didn�t have enough blue, so I couldn�t get it dark enough, and it came out a lovely mauve colour. The number 18 and some squiggles were squeezed onto it in yellow icing from one of those tubes (it tastes awful, so chemically), and I will be scraping that stuff off before I eat any. And to top it off, red, green and multicoloured sprinkles were liberally strewn everywhere.

Supper will be �Pasta al cavolfiore� from The Moosewod Cookbook, a long-standing favourite and, since the BF arrived and will be having supper with us, of a vegetarian nature. Her plan is to go with her girlfriends to hit the bars tonight, the first time she can do this legally, and her father and I can�t stop rolling our eyes. We try to do this discreetly, but it�s hard.

I had a long chat with my mother today. She is in a bit of a bind regarding her house. If she had her druthers, she would just sell it and be done with it, go into a retirement home and let the proceeds support her for the rest of her natural existence. My big brother, on the other hand, does not want her to sell the house in the event he and his family decide they�ve had enough of living in Israel and he wants a place to move to in the land of his birth. This would entail hiring a rental agent to look after the property, and it would mean perhaps doing more work on the house to make it more attractive to prospective lessees. She doesn�t need this crap at this point. It�s like my brother wants to eat his cake and have it too. Hubby thinks she should just sell it and use the proceeds as she sees fit, and whatever is left over after she dies will be divided three ways, and big brother will receive enough of an inheritance that he can buy his own house if he wants one. I think he is being incredibly selfish.

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