One of the drawbacks of living with my mom is that she has a tendency to let strangers move in. I think she has some kind of guilt complex about living in a big and roomy house. It's really not all that big and roomy, but it is compared to the house I grew up in, and compared to the houses she grew up in, it might as well be a mansion. So to ease her guilt, she shares the wealth, or at least the comfort, at every given opportunity. While this is commendable, it's not always smart. Shortly after the house was built, when her guilt was at it's peak, she invited a family of seven to move in there. Of course, my sister and I still lived there at the time. My sister had the upstairs attic apartment that I'm using now, and I had two bedrooms downstairs, the smaller of which I'd converted into a home office. This meant I had to give up my bedroom to the parents and the two sons and live out of my office, and my sister had to live out of the closet sized upstairs bedroom while the three teenaged daughters took over her living room. Yeah, I know, poor us. Actually, we didn't have a problem with this at first, since it was just supposed to be for a week or two until the dad found a new job and they found a new place to live. Six months later, my mom ended up buying them a house (with the stipulation that they would pay her back over time) because it was the only way we could get them to leave. She's sheltered other folks since then, but none have been quite as problematic. Still, when we made the decision that I would move back home, I insisted on paying rent specifically so that I would have the right to declare my attic off-limits and not be guilted into sharing it with any strangers.

The point of this story is that a new stranger is moving in today. The idea is that she'll be there for a week, just until her new apartment is ready. Which is fine by me, but my mom won't be home tonight, and the strange new lady whom I've never met will be there, which will be all kinds of awkward. I'm no good at entertaining strangers. Hell, I'm not even very good at entertaining friends. I'm told I'm not expected to, but you and I both know that unless she's hiding out in her room when I get home (which I would be were I in her situation, but that's just me), I'm going to have to make conversation. I couldn't even get it together to talk to the plant guy today, and I actually wanted to talk to him. Conversation bad. Tree pretty.

Anyway, I was going to just go hide out at Borders and finish my math homework, but then I remembered that Survivor's on tonight, and while it's not quite the mandatory TV viewing that is the WB (New!) Tuesday, I'd still really hate to miss it, just in case Jerri doesn't get her bitch-ass back in the kitchen and gets voted out of the tribe. So I guess I'll suck it up and go home. I've got 45 minutes in the car between here and there to try and remember how to make small talk.