Okay, I don't mean to rag on Nick and my relationship when it was good, but I have to say this much: Jake has done in 3 weeks what Nick didn't do in 7 months; he met my mother last night. And to my great surprise and pleasure, she ADORED him. She came in and Jake was making dinner and her daughter (me) was home and the house was clean-ish. He walked right up to her, piercings and mohawk in all their glory, shook her hand and introduced himself. She was like putty! It was actually kind of funny to watch. I didn't have to say a whole lot the whole evening, which was nice because I was vascillating between euphoria that it was going well and terror that a topic of debate would come up (mom's pretty conservative, i'm relatively mid-lining, and jake's pretty liberal) or he'd slip up and mention weed or something and it would all go to hell. But it didn't. It all just went beautifully. By the end of dinner, my mom was almost buttering up to him instead of the other way around. He started rinsing off dishes, and she was like "You know, the cook isn't supposed to do the dishes." Which is not AT ALL her rule. Her rule is you mess it up, you clean it up. End of story. She even said she expected to see him back over sometime soon. I was floored.

By the way, Jake's the one cowering in the left. Zac's got the bat.