I was just browsing around in Gary Denness’ Flickr Account (he’s a blogger who lives in Mexico City) and I was struck, once again, by the realization that being surrounded by good architecture is critical to the health of my soul.

This is all my parents’ fault. Of course. When I was little they bought a huge beautiful Victorian house (this followed living in a tent for a year). The house had soaring 15 foot ceilings and 6 bay windows, 2 of them in the living room. It had 8 bedrooms and 2 kitchens. It had 3 floors, a full basement, a barn, several outbuildings and so much more that any real estate agent would get writer’s cramp trying to take it all down.

But most of what that house had was classy architecture. It was beautiful inside and out. Every surface was nice, from the polished wooden floors to the fancy woodwork around the windows to the plush red carpeting on the wide staircases. There was room for everything and the spaces honored the people in them. It was a house that graced its occupants, it made you feel good. And everyone loved being in that house, it was always full of friends and family and neighbors and stray animals and I even remember a duck, once.

That house spoiled me. No house I’ve lived in since has felt so generous or so gracious. No house I’ve lived in since has made me feel honored like that. But when I see really beautiful buildings I get a taste of that back. And someday I’d like to buy another house that I really, really love. But this one can be a little smaller, that way maybe I can afford to, you know, paint it.

P.S. Check out Gary’s blog: The Mexile.

I’ve long been a fan of Vanity Fair magazine. It’s chock-full of intelligent articles on things I wouldn’t necessarily make myself read (much) about (like the art scene in China and how much the Iraq war is actually costing). And these days, with Bush in office, Vanity Fair is quite critical of U.S. Government, which I fully appreciate. Vanity Fair also has fashion ads which I actually don’t see anywhere else (because I don’t read trashy women’s magazines). So I get to keep up a little with the world of fashion without having to, you know, stoop.

In the back of each issue of Vanity Fair is the Proust Questionnaire; each month they ask a different celebrity to answer the questions. I’ve always wondered what my own answers would be, so we are going to find out:

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
A vacation where I have time to exercise for many hours everyday and still have time to read and to play.

What is your greatest fear?
Being bored.

What is your most marked characteristic?
No idea, perhaps my busy self-deprecating mind.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
I sometimes have trouble saying “no” when I should.

Which living person do you most despise?
President George Bush.

What is your greatest extravagance?
Moving to Mexico and using so much of my savings in the process.

What is your current state of mind?
Happy and tired.

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Chastity (make love not war).

On what occasion do you lie?
When the truth hurts or when I am not brave enough.

What do you dislike about your appearance?
My arms.

What is the quality you most like in a man?
The ability to listen.

What is the quality you most like in a woman?
The ability be realistic.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
“You know”, “I mean”, there are others I can’t think of.

What or who is the greatest love of your life?
My husband and my daughter.

When and where were you happiest?
The day I married my husband, April 6, 2001, on “the Hill” in Boulder, Colorado.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I would have started taking better care of my body at a younger age.

Which talent would you most like to have?
I always wanted to be a rock star, what do you call the “rock star” talent?

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Raising my daughter to think for herself.

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
A cat.

Where would you like to live?
On the coast in Oregon, in the woods in New Hampshire, near my daughter in Colorado, near a trail up a mountain surrounded by wildflowers.

What is your most treasured possession?
My bed, or my hard disk drive, one or the other.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Living without hope.

What is your favorite occupation?
Loving my husband, discussing life with my daughter, petting my cats. Not in that order.

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Ophelia from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

What are your favorite names?
Calais, Delilah, my family’s names.

What is it that you most dislike?
Dishonesty and lack of integrity.

How would you like to die?
In my sleep, after a long life.

What is your motto?
“If you are going through hell, keep going.” – Winston Churchill

Remember those old Calgon ads for bath products? Well in Mexico it’s not common practice to put in bathtubs. In fact, in this house our bathrooms are small and square so there’s no room at all for a bathtub, we just have a shower in the corner. But I digress. I want to take a bath because I need to de-stress in the worst way. So I wish Calgon could take me away…

I’ve been killing myself for work lately. I’ve worked part of each day every day in the last 2 weeks, so I’m in need of a serious day off. It might happen next Sunday, but that remains to be seen.

I’m close to finishing 2 big web projects. Both projects have been difficult for me. Both have shown me exactly what parts of project management I happen to SUCK at.

One of these projects is for a non-profit in the U.S. I got the contract for it a long time ago. But I didn’t realize how much work it would be to get the client to make decisions. The work hasn’t ended up taking significantly longer than I expected. But the number of meetings and emails and conference calls it’s taken to make all the needed decisions has literally added ONE YEAR to the project. I’m dumbfounded by this.

The client has even had personnel changes since we started working on this project together. And guess what? My new contact person there seems to hate me. She knows nothing of the history of the project, just that it’s behind schedule. So I get the blame, all the blame. Today she destroyed a conference call by interrupting, being condescending (she sounded like a bratty teenager), and finally hanging up on the rest of us.

The project is finally within mere weeks of being done. And now it’s getting derailed by a bad attitude? Grow up already. Let’s just focus on getting this shit done and fucking be nice about it.

My husband is that champion of “fuck it all”. When he heard about her little snit he said “tell her to fuck off.” We are 98% done and he wants me to walk out on the project because someone treated me like shit. He has no tolerance for bullshit, and that’s what I love about him. But I won’t be taking his advice, not this time anyway.

Recently I attended the first ever LatAm Bloggers Blowout. Sadly I was only able to attend the Friday night blowout, I had to miss the subsequent Saturday and Sunday blowouts.

The best part was meeting all those great bloggers. Us bloggers are a bunch of blabbermouth extroverts so there was no shortage good conversation. I wish I’d had more time to get to know everyone, but there’s always next time. Thanks again to Wayne for sacrificing his sanity to organize the event, he did a bang up job.

Attendees of the Blogger Blowout were given blog homework assignments which came from the book “No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog” by Margaret Mason.

My assignment:

How did you get those scars? The one on your thumb is from when you were three and you wondered whether scissors could cut skin. The one on your stomach is from your emergency appendectomy. Your boss figured you had to be in the hospital, because it was the only reason you’d ever be late to work without calling.

Your scars indicate what type of life you’ve lived. Whether you’re athletic, fighting for your health, or just occasionally clumsy, let each scar remind you of the story behind it.

My oldest scar is in the middle of one kneecap. The Momsicle tells me that I acquired it by jumping off a chair when I was about 18 months. I don’t remember exactly what she said and I don’t remember the event.

My next oldest scar is on my face, just by my eyebrow. It causes the nearby eyebrow hairs to poke out at weird angles. I was about 6 and I was trying to pull some piece of clothing out of my sister’s hands. I remember it being her clothing, or rather, I remember myself being guilty. She let go of the item and my own momentum sent me headlong into the corner of my bedpost. One inch over and I would have hit my eyeball on that bedpost.

Then I’ve got a scar just to the side of my other eye, it’s very small. This one was from a raging lunatic who had taken an ungodly amount of LSD and was drunk as well (terrible combination that is). He threw me down 3 flights of stairs. Before I passed out I remember hearing his mother yell “Call the cops before he kills her.” It apparently took 6 cops to get him into the patrol car, but I don’t remember that part. I’m lucky to remember anything at all.

I’ve also got a scar on one foot from a drop of hot oil that flew from a pan. That should have taught me not to cook barefoot…but it didn’t.

And my most recent scar is from a glass that one of my kitties broke. I brought the glass upstairs. When it was empty I placed it near the top of the stairs so I would remember to bring it down. Well my Lilah cat went romping and hit it and broke it. Then I walked by, didn’t see it, and got a deep cut in the top of one foot. That cut healed quickly, but left a distinct scar which still hurts.

I’ve got a few more scars from surgeries, but all were laparoscopic, so there’s almost no scarring on the outside. The inside, well, that’s another issue…

Five things you were doing ten years ago?

• Earning 6 times more per year than I am now
• Driving 2 hours everyday
• Thinking about divorcing my first husband
• Working for an internet startup
• Making a lot of computer art

Five things you were doing one year ago?

• Trying, in vain, to take care of 16 web clients at once
• Not exercising enough
• Risking my neck on the road to the airport everyday
• Volunteering too much
• Enjoying all my cats

Five snacks you enjoy?

• Papas fritas, I’m a potato chip junkie
• Fresh berries, when I can get them
• Grannie Smith apples, but they have to be cold
• Carrot sticks or celery with ranch dressing
• Good dark chocolate from Belgium

Five songs you know all the lyrics to?

• Any song by Pearl Jam
• Bob Dylan Masters of War
• Sublime What I Got
• They Might Be Giants Birdhouse in Your Soul
• Weird Al Yankovic Smells Like Nirvana

Five things you would do if you were very wealthy?

• Set up a foundation to help Mexico’s street animals
• Travel for 3 months a year
• Make large donations to my many favorite causes
• Help my sister with money
• Adopt more animals

Five things you like doing?

• Watching good movies
• Running and dancing
• Sleeping late
• Eating Thai food
• Listening to my daughter talk about anything

Five things you would never do again?

• Hallucinogenic mushrooms
• Have casual sex
• Go to see Aerosmith live in concert
• Jump off a 25 foot cliff into a raging river
• Intentionally try to set off a point-release avalanche

My daughter called me yesterday. She was upset. She was standing outside a slaughterhouse in Salida, Colorado, crying.

Her 8th grade class has been studying food production all year. They’ve visited McDonald’s, they’ve been to an organic farm, they’ve studied nutrition, they’ve been to the warehouse of a major U.S. supermarket chain (they even had to sign non-disclosure agreements saying that they wouldn’t reveal the warehouse’s secrets to the competition).

And yesterday, they visited a slaughterhouse. These are 8th graders. My daughter is 13 years old.

I know that there’s no way to prepare someone for witnessing a deliberate death. I’m sure that these kids were too young. But I think anyone is too young. There’s no right age to walk in and watch a cow get shot in the head and then get slit open and have it’s blood splash out all over. And there’s no way to prepare anyone for such a sight.

Several kids passed out. More of them vomited. Some of them made it outside the building before they vomited. The rest vomited onto the blood-covered floor inside the building.

Many of them vowed to become vegetarians from that day onward.

And now all of them know where meat comes from.

At first I was worried for my daughter. Then I realized that her family already “gets” it on the whole animal rights thing. She’s one of the lucky ones, she’s got emotional support for being against the meat industry. But the kids who go home to a beef dinner and unsympathetic parents are the kids who will really suffer.

My next reaction was to question whether the school knew what it was doing bringing the kids to a slaughterhouse. But as I reflect I see that the slaughterhouse is the reality. And all of us who pretend it doesn’t exist, who pretend it doesn’t feed us, well, we are the ones with the problem. The sooner these kids face the hard, shitty realities of life the sooner they will act to fix the things that are so very wrong with this world.

As she was crying into the phone I was searching for something wise and comforting to say. Do you know what comforted her? The only thing I could say that was comforting was to tell her that she had her whole life ahead of her to raise people’s awareness of how important it is to treat animals well. I reminded her that being a vegetarian herself has saved countless lives. And I reminded her that we’ve saved lots of animals from the streets and from unwanted reproduction. The only comfort I could offer her was the truth and right-ness of her own actions.

My daughter will be fine. The cows, however, are not fine. They are dead now.

What a week. I flew back to Cancun on the red eye from Denver, I got into Cancun at 7 am on Monday morning. I hadn’t slept on the plane so I’d been up for over 24 hours when I got home, and that lack of sleep set the tone for the whole week.

My housekeeper was set to come clean the house at 10 am Monday. She hadn’t cleaned in 2 weeks so I wasn’t about to reschedule her. But I did not need an extra person in the house just then, what I needed was a nap.

And I came home to a dying cat. One of my eldest, Ariel, had been deteriorating for several weeks. While I was away husbandito was giving her liquids with an eye dropper, because she wouldn’t eat or drink on her own. His ministrations kept her alive long enough for me to say goodbye to her.

She died Monday night. She was over 17, I’d adopted her, along with her sister Grace (who is still with us), at about age 1½ from the humane society. Ariel spent most of her last months lying on top of the (covered) printer on my desk. She would get needy sometimes and walk back and forth in front of the monitor and meow at me until I scritched her properly. Now when I sit at the computer it’s oddly peaceful and it feels weird to be able to pile junk on the printer and not have it annoy anyone (but me). I miss you Ariel.

In the last few days I’ve had 4 close friends each need some kind of emergency care from a doctor. The worry for each of them, coupled with the passing of my cat, has made things feel heavy. All of them will be ok, not all of them know that yet, but all of them will be ok. But still I worry for each of them.

And if cats dying and friends in crisis and lack of sleep isn’t enough husbandito and I were driving along the other day and saw an iguana try to cross the road in front of an oncoming truck. The poor thing made it safely between the 2 front tires and then freaked out underneath the truck and was crushed by a back tire. It was so sad to witness this abrupt death. And the poor thing had been crossing to get away from some bulldozers that were tearing up the earth and destroying its habitat. Sometimes life is mean.

Last week in Colorado it seemed like life was meant to be enjoyed. But this week in Cancun was not easy to enjoy. Next week will be better though, better for all of us, I can feel it.

As you may have noticed, I have a problem with memes that ask dumb questions. I suspect that my irritation with them may improve my writing, but I still don’t like answering them. So my daughter and I set out this morning to write a meme that asked questions we want answers to. This meme has 20 questions and the answers will involve either a list of 3 things or a revelation about the last time something happened. I hope you enjoy it.

What are your top 3 favorite foods?
Blueberries, cheesecake and cappuccino (coffee IS a food).

What was the last book you read and would you recommend it?
The last book I read was called The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. It’s beautifully written, but it was first published in 1940 and deals with some issues that seem out of date to me. So I recommend it but you should know what you are in for.

What are your top 3 favorite places?
My bed, Colorado’s mountains and Bash Bish Falls.

What was the last lie you told?
I told a friend I was too busy to see them, I wasn’t.

What are your favorite 3 sports (to watch or participate in)?
I love to watch ice hockey, I love to run, I love the sport of cycling even though I don’t ride much.

What was the last movie you watched and would you recommend it?
The Fifth Element for the 7th time and I absolutely recommend it.

List 3 things you can see outside of the nearest window.
A green plastic kid’s push toy that is upside down, a large field surrounded by expensive home and a guy walking his Golden Retriever.

Where was the last place you went?
To Micheal’s Craft store in southeast Boulder, Colorado. We bought painting supplies.

What are your top 3 favorite “good causes” or charities?
My favorite cause is the environment, I’ve supported GreenPeace for years. I also am a big supporter of animal rights; I have supported PETA off and on and was a vegetarian for 11 years. And I support charities that help people, children, elderly, homeless etc. I could go on but I only asked for 3…

What was the last thing you did for someone else?
I made my daughter a fruit smoothie with blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and cranberry juice in it.

Name 3 places you have never been that you want to visit.
Venice, Italy; Barcelona, Spain and Peru.

What was the last thing you threw in the garbage/recycling?
I rinsed out and recycled a glass apple juice jar.

Name 3 things on your bedside table.
A new Coach handbag I just got yesterday, a book called Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (have not started it yet) and a magazine about search engine optimization.

Describe or name the last piece of art you looked at.
A badly painted scene of somewhere in Greece, the scene is of a patio overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. There are plants in pots, a table with chairs and you can see the side of a building with a window. At first glance it’s a pleasing scene with nice colors. At second glance you see that the painter painted shadows going in all directions, some elements don’t cast shadows at all and others have incomplete shadows. It’s truly an awful painting of a lovely location.

What are the top 3 things that your job requires you to think about?
I’m a web designer so I think primarily about visual design, how to convey the right information at the right time and how to anticipate what would be intuitive for users.

What was the last musical or theatrical event that you attended?
I went to a bar in Cancun called Acustica and watched several Mexican folks singers in a row. It was a lovely evening.

What are the first 3 things you would do if you won the lottery?
First I would probably tell my family, then I would invest the money so I can enjoy the interest from it, then I would take a month off and ponder what’s next.

Describe or name the last serious injury or illness you had?
The damn dog knocked me down a couple of months ago when we were running. My hand and elbow still hurt.

What are the top 3 things that you wish you could do?
I wish I could know my father now that I am an adult (he died when I was 15), I wish I could travel more often and I wish I could live closer to my kid right now.

What was the last thing that someone said to you that you will remember forever?
My daughter told me the other day that even though she’s had to live away from me (and with her dad) for parts of her childhood that she feels I still pay more attention to her than her dad does and has. That will be with me for a long time.

I’m going to tag a few of my fellow bloggers to prompt them to answer this meme. But guys I know it’s a long one, so no undone-meme guilt if you don’t get through it. I’m tagging CancunCanuck, Trauma the Drama, Canadian Cat and Mexico Way.

CancunCanuck tagged me with this meme. I often like memes but sometimes don’t remember to do them when I’ve been tagged (so sorry). This one seems to me to be very biased towards the western notion of what it means to be privileged, but I’ll go for it anyway and will include commentary.

The premise is that you bold all the statements that are true. The more bold lines one has, the more privileged one’s formative years were.

Father went to college – And he wrecked his knee playing on the college basketball team too.

Father finished college

Mother went to college

Mother finished college – Couldn’t keep her out of college, she completed a Master’s degree and a Doctoral degree, she almost finished another Master’s. She finished her Bachelor’s degree in 3 years with honors. A regular brainiac she is.

Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor – Mom has a Doctoral degree in divinity.

Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers – Well I went to high school for only two years, cut lots of classes and can’t remember a single teacher other than my 9th grade science teacher, who reminded me of my father, only with thicker glasses. I’m going to say yes since this is a stupid question. Teachers routinely do not share a whole lot about their lives with their students so how would you know this anyway.

Had more than 50 books in your childhood home

Had more than 500 books in your childhood home – My mother is a book addict, my father would read and watch tv at the same time, when I moved to Mexico fully 50% of the boxes we dragged here contained books.

Were read children’s books by a parent – And adult books and cookbooks and poetry and art books.

Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18 – I had private art lessons for years. And I had private flute lessons from a drunk who showed up for them drunk! I remember hating swimming lessons. And I hated gymnastics lessons too. Probably there were other classes I don’t remember. I went to college when I was 15 so this seems like a silly question.

Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18 – Yes dear.

The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively – This is a stupid question! If they weren’t, would I be aware of it? What do people who dress and talk like me look and sound like? I wear shorts and t-shirts and flip-flops except when I don’t! I talk like a normal, if opinionated, person except when I don’t. I don’t dress like a junkie hooker homeless person and I don’t smell bad, so I’m taking this one.

Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18 – And a checking account too, and a couple of savings accounts, can I bold it twice? This has nothing to do with privilege, this has to do with it being easier on my mom if I was responsible for my own purchases.

Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs – My mom worked her butt off to send me to college. And I got several grants because I’m so cute and lovable, and I had several scholarships because I’m a nerdy brain and was a good student. I also had some student loans, which I paid off by the time I was 26.

Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs – Finally one I don’t have to make bold! The students that I knew who were studying solely on daddy’s dime were the ones most likely to blow off class, not study and drop out. I felt sorry for many of them because they didn’t understand how fortunate they were to be in such a great college.

Went to a private high school – Went to a crappy public high school, then switched to the best public high school in the state, which was also crappy. Then went to college.

Went to summer camp – Yes, and I hated every minute of it. Summer vacation not about being up at the crack of dawn and living for weeks on someone else’s schedule. Summer camp was torture.

Had a private tutor before you turned 18 – How does this line up with having private lessons? I didn’t need a tutor. I had private study partners in college. And I tutored other students in Art History.

Family vacations involved staying at hotels – Another stupid question. Yes, they did. Sometimes. But the better ones involved staying at Grandma’s house! Or going camping in Acadia National Park! Yes family let’s go sit in a hotel room, what a great vacation.

Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18 – Most was. My mom used to sew lots of clothes for us too.

Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them – Mom gave me a car when I turned 18. It was a lemon but I fell in love anyway. And I drove it to about 50 Grateful Dead concerts.

There was original art in your house when you were a child – Another dumb one. Do you want me to admit that we had black velvet posters of big hair bands in my house? Is it a privilege to have painters in the family? My grandmother didn’t have running water in her home until after I was born, yet she painted non-stop for 40 years. My other grandmother was also a painter, and my mom painted a little, and my dad would draw cartoons on napkins, and my sister is an artist. I even have some of my own work on the walls. I swim in original artwork.

Had a phone in your room before you turned 18 – Yes, had my own apartment too, so I had my own kitchen, and my own bathroom, and my own rent to pay, and my own cobwebs to clean and my own icy walk to shovel. Helloooo!

You and your family lived in a single family house – Yes.

Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home – Yes we always owned a nice house.

Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course – I don’t frickin’ remember. I think so, because I remember taking the ACT test to get into college early.

Had your own TV in your room in High School – Oh so now it’s a sign of privilege that your parents are stupid enough to allow you to rot your brain in the privacy of your own room. No I did not have a tv in my room during the 2 years I went to high school and I’m glad.

Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College – Opened my first IRA when I was 25 I think.

Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16 – Yes I flew on flying crowd killers lots of times before I was 16.

Went on a cruise with your family – Did not, did not want to, can’t imagine that my mom would like a cruise. She’s more of a go out in the woods kind of vacationer.

Went on more than one cruise with your family – Duh.

Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up – Of course.

You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family – My mother owned a chain saw and cut and split and stacked all our firewood herself. I can say I was not aware of how much she spent on buying firewood. But I was aware of the effort. I was not aware of how much we spent on heating oil (to supplement the wood stove) either.

Whomever came up with this list of questions has some fairly limited ideas about what privilege means. I grew up lower middle class, yet look at how many questions I bolded. It’s true that I had a very privileged childhood in many ways. Still, I always wanted tennis lessons and we could never afford them.

I don’t believe in sin, as you’ve probably figured out. But I very much believe in morality and in knowing right from wrong. And I believe that it’s very wrong to neglect the feelings and sensitivities of other people, especially if you purport to care about them. Of course I screw this up myself all the time, but I work very hard not to and when I fail it is because I’m not aware that I’ve said or done something that might hurt another. If I knew it would hurt someone, I would never do it.

In friendship I work to actively listen and to try to see things from my friend’s point of view as much as possible. And I try to be supportive in any way I can. But sometimes it feels as though I hold myself to a standard that others do not. Sometimes it feels like many of the people who call me a “friend” do not have any real interest in me or how my life is going.

Lately I’ve been feeling like I’m a resource for my certain of my “friends”, people I thought I was close to, who have been calling only when they need benefit of my knowledge or connections, but not to set up time to hang out. And I’m getting sort of tired of being a resource. Maybe I should start charging for my time.

When I discuss this with my “real” friends the conclusion is always that I should be more picky about which friendships I put my energy into. And that’s true. I’ve always had the attitude that I should try to make friends with everyone, unless they are completely uninteresting to me or crazy or unsavory in some significant way. I’ve never approached friendship from the point of view of being discriminating, it seems to me to go against the nature of being friendly.

For the most part my friendship oriented attitude has meant that I’ve always had a lot of people in my circle of friends (which may be why I am seen as a resource, because I do know, and am on good terms with, tons of people).

In fact, I never lost a friend, until last year. And I’m still sad about the loss of that friendship. But I also realize that that person was not ever a loyal friend to me, not really, that friendship was an illusion on several levels. My kid saw it from the beginning and told me not to be friends with her. And my best friend here saw it too and tried to protect me several times. And my husband recognized it in his “guy” way. But I didn’t see it myself until I got hurt.

I got hurt because I gave more than I got, because I was loyal and she was not. And because I wasn’t picky enough about which friendships I put my energy into.

So I’m realizing that maybe I need to not worry so much about other people’s feelings and start worrying about my own. And if someone hurts me, if someone calls me over and over and never asks how I’m doing, if someone treats me like a resource instead of as someone to hang out with, well then I may just have to send a bill for my time.