let me bring you up to speed.

saturday night, i went out for dinner and conversation with steph. when i returned home, mom met me at the door. in lieu of a greeting, she said, "so, how's your love life?" i was quite stunned, but not floored. mom asks me if i have a girlfriend every year or so, and i usually tell her i don't have time for such things. so i think i let out a "huh?", and then mom got a bit more precise: "i mean, how's your love life compared to six months ago?"

technically, the answer would be "still non-existant." even so, in that instant, i felt as though my stomach had suddenly dropped into my intestines.

apparently, while i was gone, she got on the computer to up her credit card debt at amazon. she must've "accidentally" closed my away message somehow, making it appear as though i was at the keyboard. understandably, several friends IMed me, under the impression i was available, and one of them mentioned my "love life compared to six months ago." she saw it. she asked me about it. it was very strange. she wouldn't tell me what exactly was said, or even what screenname it came from. she claims she doesn't remember. i played it off. i told her it was probably a friend just dicking around. but i figure the person who IMed me probably looks at this journal at least periodically, as it's linked from my IM profile. so if you're out there, please come forward and let me know what you said. i'm not mad. i promise. i just want to know what she saw so i can decide where to go from there.

and really, i might not even need to go anywhere from there. i mean, the subject was kind of just dropped after a rather tense weekend. but maybe i was making it tense. maybe she's totally clueless. or maybe she knows and she's just waiting on me to tell her without any prodding. maybe she'll throw me out of the house when she finds out, or, if i'm already out of the house (please, god, soon!), maybe she'll cut me off and pretend she doesn't have a son. or maybe she'll be OK with it. actually, sometimes i think that she already suspects and she will be OK with it, and that i'm making this whole situation worse than it has any right to be. but then i'll hear my mom and dad discuss church friends of theirs, and she'll say something like, "did he go before the men of the congregation and repent?" and i'll think, "well, OK, maybe not."

speaking of stormy weather, there's a hurricane coming this way sometime tomorrow. if it knocks out power during survivor: pearl islands, i'm not going to be very pleasant to be around.