Why are one's parents always annoying?

A friend said: when you deal with your parents, you always regress. You always go back to your childhood or teenage years when you had difficulties with them.

Another friend said: no matter how old you are, you're always a teenager when your parents are around.

We've been wondering with Elina what's the matter with most people's parents. They are just plain weird. Elina's parents won't usually eat the food *we* make and insist on making their own. That's just one example.

But I was quite fed up with my mother earlier this week, presumably on the same day when I wrote "thanks, mom and dad!" Mom phoned and said that she won't come to visit us this Easter and made up some terrible excuse I didn't believe for a minute. She has these mental problems and I think she has some sort of travel fear. I shouldn't blame her for this, but it feels like she doesn't want to meet us and be with her children and grandchildren. And I don't know what to do with it. I don't want to shout at her, but I feel powerless in front of her excuses.

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This was a good day, though. Two publishers phoned and said that our books have come out: the book on rare first names and the book about talkkuna (I wrote about this earlier; 'talkkuna', for all you foreigners reading this, is a Finnish snack food - it's cooked and minced oat (sometimes with barley and peas) and it's usually eaten with yoghurt or melted ice cream and berries). It was a funny coincidence.

On the other hand, I had an argument with the editors of my cinema book. The editor suggested a minor change that seemed irrelevant to me and I didn't want to do it. He finally got better of me and I just said: do whatever you want, you are the publisher. It feels like I'm some touchy writer.. it's embarrassing to get mad at people just doing their job. I've snapped back at editors earlier (and I may've frightened the editor of the talkkuna book with comments about her comments on some other book suggestions). It would be a relief to hear whether this happens to all the authors, since I usually think I'm a pretty easy going guy, but with these editors, nice people though they are, I've had my share of arguments.

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Nice day at the flea market today (again!). We went for a business with Elina and Kauto and decided to drop by a flea market we don't usually go to. I found a Finnish Foreign Legion novel by Kapt. Hell (if I ever learn how to post images here, I will scan it) and the translation of "King of the Beggars" by Leslie Charteris (actually by Henry Kuttner, say those in the know). The crop of the cream was, however, the book on the film "Niebelungenlied" by Thea von Harbou. I think it is the first German edition from 1924 by the writer of the Fritz Lang film (and his wife). I don't know what I will do with it, but it's nice to have. It's amazing to think what this was doing in the ordinary Finnish flea market.