The Stars and the Cookie Jar

I do. I have a total crush on Gordon Ramsay. He's like me, you see. He yells and fumes and throws stuff around sometimes, but he's a big wuzzy teddy bear who likes to cook tasty things and give people a chance to prove themselves.

Of course, he's not like me in that whole 'multibillion-dollar, three-country restaurant empire and a TV deal'. But whatever.

So the point is.

I need a Gordon Ramsay icon.

Bonus points for Shirtless Gordon Ramsay icons. They can even SAY Shirtless Gordon Ramsay.

I just had a perfectly normal, civil conversation with my mother.

Now, I'm not about to go re-evaluating my relationship with my mother or my perceptions of her as a person, but I will say: that was nice.

She called (she does that a lot -- the best defense is to say 'uh-huh' a lot and let it stream past like bad music from someone else's car stereo) and asked about our house-hunting situation, and she listened while I described in vague, petty details how we'd looked this place and that place, this townhouse and that building, but each one was either skeevy or scary or was a theft magnet or was perfectly amenity-filled but with mouse poo on the floor. I swear it was fifteen minutes of pure blah blah only tangentially connected to real estate. I'm not sure I was listening.

But in the end, in a perfectly modulated, friendly, reasoned tone, she said "Well, keep looking and you'll find something. Make sure you don't settle for things you don't have to; if they bother you now, they'll bother you in a year."

... no snipes about my lack of credit. No assertions that it would all be fine if only we moved home and lived in her basement apartment. She was just... quiet and mom-sounding.

Jesus, do you think she's drugged?