Not feeling too bad today. Still annoyingly faint, still no sense of hunger, but not quite as badly detached from reality. No serious impact on my mood yet, but since returning to Raleigh, I haven’t felt the need to collapse into a weeping heap, so overall, could be a lot worse.

Deb’s parents and brother are coming to visit. It is a marker of how great a friend Deb is that she would allow me to stay with her during a stretch when her family is dropping in. It is a marker of the sardonic humor that the gods seem to be displaying lately that Deb’s parents are Baptist missionaries.

“Are they gonna try and convert me?” I asked.

“Of course,” said Deb, as if surprised I even had to ask.

“Ah.”  I considered this. One does not belligerently proclaim one’s skepticism in such cases–it’d be desperately rude to one’s host to so disrupt the tenuous family harmony. Neither does one mention one’s passing fondness for Ganesh to missionaries who worked in Thailand. “Okay, then I’m Catholic.”

“You are not.”

“I am so. I was baptized, I was just never confirmed.”

“Eh, that’ll work.” (Oddly enough, claiming Catholicism does seem to work for me whenever people get the evangelical gleam. You become No Longer Their Problem. You’re still going to hell, but a more respectable one.)

“And thank you for looking less goth than usual today,” she added, eyeing me. (Because I am living out of a suitcase, my wardrobe at the moment consists of jeans and unrelieved black. And one brown t-shirt, which I was wearing.) “My mom’s already going to say something about the tattoo…”

“Best investment I ever made.” I swear, this thing starts more conversations. Not always conversations I wish to have, apparently, but still…

Wish me luck.