As a music director, I don't use that carol because it is so misleading. This is usually well supported by the pastors that I have worked with, and in some denominations, it is missing from their hymnbooks. The pastor I currently work with from the church that sponsors the community arts program is fluent in Aramaic, Arabic, Koine Greek, Ecclesiastical Latin, and fluently reads Sumarian, Akkadian ( I think that's the one...hard to remember them all), and Egyptian Hieroglyphs. He's on a linguistics board, and has translated some dead sea scrolls in the past. I should ask him about Syriac. It has been a very interesting six months. I love picking his brain.

I was the scapegoat with a passive aggressive mother, verbally and emotionally abusive father, and siblings who wanted their way but wouldn't take responsibility. I did too much, and nearly ruined my marriage. So here is my advice. You need to step back. The golden child either steps up to the plate or doesn't. You aren't going to make any of them happy because their "normal" is to dump on you, use you as the kicking post in the family. Your father has been an essentially abusive person to you so you owe him nothing. Really. Even if people tell you that you do, don't listen. The victim owes the abuser nothing, even if that abuser is his or her relative/parent. You need to protect your health and your marriage. Call the facility, tell them you are no longer available and will not be making decisions nor accepting phone calls from him. He can schedule his appointments around the transportation schedule of the facility or golden boy can do the running. You get your name off all legal documents pertaining to him. Seriously. I have seen how this works where the sibs go after the one that made all the decisions causing legal headaches on top of emotional heartaches. I am not kidding you. I've seen lawsuits. You do not want your name on a thing. I lived the nightmare of accusations from relatives even though I never wanted to be on that POA, and they guilted me into it. Never again. I learned my lesson. Father figure is now dead, and I got a lawyer to force my mother to take my name off everything. My brother is mad as snot, but too bloody bad. The stress of going through that with the one parent while being emotionally beaten up by the two sibs caused major marital problems, health problems, you name it. Not.doing.it.again. It is perfectly acceptable to not take phone calls from him or your sibs. Save your energy and health for your husband and kids. These kinds of wickedly, dysfunctional family situations only destroy people, they rarely ever resolve in any health manner.

We like Apples to Apples for an easy game, and there is a junior edition if you have younger children.

This is highly unusual and frankly I worry about the long term effects on the family. I know that in my case, I tanked my health taking care of my mother and her husband and due to that will consider a trip to Oregon or Switzerland when things get tough for me to spare my own kids ruining their health and well being by over doing elder care. That's how strongly I feel about it. Eldercare has ripped many,many years off my life and nearly destroyed my marriage. How do people remain employed? Does everyone have grown kids? I can tell you that if mom has another event, she will simply have to go to a nursing home and no, there won't be a rotation to make sure she is visited every day. I'd lose my job, my brother would lose his job, and well, my sister lives in France so she wouldn't be able to take part in it at all. There is only one grandchild who lives permanently close by, and she has three very young children and is now single parenting. She is a dedicated young lady, and she would very likely troop her kids to the home once per week, but shifts at a hospital or a nursing home would not be happening. My boys would be available on college breaks but that is it. The other grandkids live anywhere from 85 - 750 miles away. OP I think that what you have going is very unique, a fairly large family and all of them in close enough proximity with enough flexibility of scheduling to keep up this cycle. Most families do not have enough people or enough flexibility to even consider it. And frankly, one has to consider SHOULD it continue. At this point you are likely not the only one with a major health issue. If sibs are guilting each other and the in laws into doing this extreme level of care, it is entirely possible that others are hiding health information from others either for the sake of privacy or out of guilt/wanting to keep family peace. The stress this kind of thing takes is huge and not everyone can handle that so I would expect others are suffering but not saying anything.

Exactly.

I am just trying to think about the conversation. Had my high school boyfriend's mother asked me what my pj size was and then went shopping for said items and then wanted me to don them and sit for a formal family photo, I would have definitely went running into the night! Impromptu photos are one thing, professional photos made into the annual family momento and then sent to all of those relatives are quite a different thing. It does occur to me to that one reaction many be having to the pajamas is that this is the attire one normally wears to bed and wakes up in so it implies "spent the night". For many it would be unthinkable to allow minors, and especially 14/15/16 year old ones to have overnight boyfriend or girlfriend unless an emergency warranted it, and would not be thrilled with the imagery. The reality is that MIL bought Christmas jammies for the kids one year when they were young. They wore them to bed on Christmas Eve, and opened gifts in them on Christmas Morn. So that may be a sticking point especially if this is against the family religion.

This. The person we responded to should have taken the time to read the whole thread. The information that the OP is seeking is not innocent. .

Because the subject matter of the conversation would not be, "Are you my relative?" but actually an attempt to dig up a skeleton in the history on a topic that back then was often painful, and kept quiet, family privacy being paramount. Just because you might be related to someone doesn't give you the right to go nose diving for intimate details of a person's life and especially so when those details don't have a direct effect on your life. Beyond that, there are numerous scams out there calling the elderly and claiming one thing or another, attempting to get personal information on them. I have warned my mother and mother in law over and over and over again to hang up on phone calls from strangers asking personal questions, wanting information, claiming to know them or their relatives. It is a very dangerous thing to give out personal information over the phone.

I was not included in family anything at the holidays until DH and I were engaged, same for my family. Seems a little creepy to put a 15/16 year old in matching family pj's...seems like a lot of pressure to "be like us" as well as, uhm, the vast majority of these high school puppy loves don't last so once the break up occurs, now the annual family picture is awkward when on display.

For 100,000 yes because it is more than I make with my employer so would quit the job, and then find something else. Currently, I am required to carry a smart phone for work. I do all kinds of things on it like create community announcements while waiting for the cast to arrive for rehearsal, and definitely use it for a number of job related things when I am at music conferences.

You didn't make this a JAWM so I'll give my opinion of HOW you go about it. You don't. The end. Her right to be left alone, to not talk about it, to not relieve something this potentially upsetting trumps your curiosity. Scarlett, you seem to be entirely missing the point that these kinds of things can be VERY traumatizing, and at such an elderly age, I would caution you that this type of thing has caused panic attacks that lead to heart issues. Your desire to know simply does not give you the right to do this to her. It is actually a very cruel action towards her. Please don't do it.

I am ALL EARS! GAH, Faith goes running into the night screaming at the world. Sigh...my mom's cell phone is a decade's old flip phone. She gets lost more easily than she used to so we really need to get an easy to use android phone with google maps. But the whole thought of teaching her to use it makes me crazy. She is very technologically inept, and though my brother and dh are ever so patient with her over computer and printer issues, even teaching her to use a kindle - QUELL NIGHTMARE but she can finally do it - that the thought sends them in spasms of stress. What we need here is a Bones pill from Star Trek IV The Voyage Home. Instead of growing a new kidney, swallow the pill and absorb basic tech skills.

Between Ds's wheelchair and walker when he was healing from the accident, and then my mom living here for a while when she was using a walker, our hardwood floors took a terrible beating. Terrible. I think that if I were doing this, I'd lean towards LVP/Vinyl. You can put no skid tub stickies on them to create a non-slip walkway if needed, and get a nice pattern that won't show so much of the wear and tear from durable medical equipment. I've watched my mom stumble from catching her toes on the carpet now that she doesn't lift her foot on the bad ankle high enough. So I would not be inclined towards carpet. Physical therapy recommended wall to wall carpet after my grandmother had a stroke. Of course there was no way to make that work for sanitation in the bathroom. She did not do well with the transition from carpet to vinyl, and frankly, she dragged her foot and seemed to stub her toes into the carpet causing her to be wobbly. I did not think that carpet made her less of a fall risk than a "slippery" surface. I suppose that with the really good carpet pad she put in that maybe she was less of a broken bone risk on that carpet. I have seen a lot of advertising for cork floors as a really good option. I don't have any experience with that, but am curious about it as my mom needs to replace some flooring in her house and recently got a settlement from an insurance company and wants to get flooring this spring so I'm going to have to be thinking about this soon.

I remember that! I was in physical science class and Mr. M was super angry with a boy making spit wads from the back row. He was just bellowing at the top of his lungs when it happened. Shook the classroom windows. I think we all sat there in shock thinking, "Mr. M is Thor!"

Ktgrok, I get it. My boys have very visceral reactions to nursing homes. When they were 10, 8, and 7, I took them with my children's choir to the local nursing home to do a short program. The staff physically abused a patient right there in front of the students and me as if this were normal. It was horrible. I am pretty certain that every single one of the children were scarred for life on nursing homes, and will have trouble with them in adult hood. I really struggle to visit people in that facility even though it has changed hands due to the complaint. It still looks the same so I tense up when I go in and find myself viewing the staff automatically with suspicion.

Definitely find a tax attorney. Since he did the transfer of cash after they were in the process of legally divorcing and already had a court ruling on the family finances, chances are the lawyer can make an excellent case that she is not responsible for the taxes.

Exactly this. Whacked! Honestly, my dog gets far better care and concern from his veterinary practice, than I get from any doctor I've ever been to which is just nuts. But, between the insurance industry, the AMA, the FDA, and the DEA all with fingers in the pie and pulling on docs like marionettes, I guess we can't expect much. Sometimes I'm absolutely shocked anyone still bothers to attend medical school anymore!

Oh yes, we've had that too with dh's siblings. Two of them live out of state. They wanted her to move here, be his responsibility entirely, and have us do all the work, but were beyond angry when she gave financial and medical POA to him. Especially his sister who is a not nice person, and will NEVER lift a finger to do anything. His brother only comes up once per year, but at least when he is there he does maintenance on her house, finds out what her future needs are - like this coming summer he and his son are going to put a wheelchair ramp on since she is starting to walk regularly with a cane and has a few steps going into the house - and such. He isn't entirely inactive. But honestly, when he got mad about the POA, I simply said, 'Then move here and take care of her yourself." He eventually conceded that if he is 800 miles away and only comes once per year, it isn't reasonable to be making these kinds of decisions. Sister simply has been a jerk and remains that way. She is six years older than DH, and thinks she is the queen of the family. Mostly I think she wants to make all the decisions in order to preserve the money, and then claim it all for herself. Thankfully, MIL is smart and has it all set up in a trust, advance directives on paper, everything taken care of so there can be no argument about it. Quill, that is one thing to consider. When the decisions get to be tough, "Do we continue medical intervention, should she have a ventilator or a feeding tube or whatever?", how is that going to play out in this sibling group. Does anyone have POA, is there any agreement among the sibs? This is something to definitely be working on right now before she slips any further. Emotions run high, very high, and not all of it is always someone just being a jerk, or making a power play. I think that often sibling groups under immense emotional pressure with a medically fragile parent revert back to some childhood style relationship interactions - kind of a reflex - and forget their supposed to be mature, grown ups. The stress can push them over the edge. So if they can come to some agreements now, and get it on paper, it may save some bad interactions later.

Some people just think they are divas and should be accommodated no matter what. My father in law was one. When he retired, he'd just suddenly decide to come up from Florida. No warning. Get in the car and show up on our doorstep. I was a mom of four, teaching at a parochial school, and had an active music studio - 22 students plus was performing quite often in the city. There was no "just roll with it." So I'd come home from school to find him on the porch livid that I wasn't home to receive him or that the door was locked and he couldn't just let himself in. He honestly thought our lives should revolve around his whims. The very last time he did it, he actually called ahead of time and said he'd be coming and thought he'd arrive on day X. Day X came and went, Day Y, Day Z, and well a week later we still hadn't heard from him. MIL, who was still working full time so never took part in these trips, didn't know where he was, figured he was just meandering his way north, and found some interesting places to stop and see. Well, after 8 days went by, dh's annual vacation arrived, and we had campsites up north. We'd planned that for months in advance. So we loaded the camper, the kids, and off we went. This was in the days before everyone had cell phones so there was no way to contact him. We weren't going to sit around and miss out on a vacation that the kids were very much looking forward too only to have him not show or stay so long that they got no vacation at all. Apparently, he arrived the day after we left after deciding at the last second to stop in Ohio and spend a week with his cousins. He talked to our neighbors after sitting in the drive for a couple of hours, and they indicated that they thought they had seen us leave with our pop up camper. Eventually he drove to my parents home to complain about us not waiting for him to arrive - eight days late dude, eight days late no communication - and all he got was my mother and brother letting him have it royally! LOL And that ended the nuttiness. He never did it again. He only came to visit one time after that, and mother in law made him plan it out in advance and stick to the itinerary, and dh warned him of dire consequences if he pulled another stunt like last time. I adore my mother in law, and am glad she lives near. It is so much easier. She has always been a pretty darn good MIL, but her one quirk when she lived long distance from us was that when she came to visit, she expected a script for every day. She wanted to do something special every single day, and know exactly when meals would be and what we were having. That was really difficult with four kids, dh's work schedule which was never that reliable because of the type of IT position he held, and the music studio. When she moved here so she could see us regularly, all of that kind of thing melted away. She became especially easy going after FIL passed away. I do not think that it is easy for anyone to deal with in laws. Family cultures can be so bizarrely different. I try REALLY hard to be the most laid back, respectful mother in law in the history of the world with my son in law. I adore him. But, the reality is that I think it is still challenging a little for him because his family culture growing up was soooooooooooo different from our daughter's.

And I do find it interesting that around here the dentists offer opioids like they are candy. The amount of prescription is staggering, yet they are never prosecuted. It's always the doctors dealing with people in chronic pain situations like orthopedic specialists that get into trouble. DS had a crown put on, and the dentist handed him a prescription for 21 days of hydrocodone. That's nuts! I hear this a lot from people about their dentists. My guess is that they are given very little training about the limited number of pharmaceuticals they are allowed to write scripts for, and may not stay on top of research surrounding the crisis or pain management because they aren't physicians and tend to not deal with long term situations. I have also never had a pharmacist question a prescription from the dentist, but have had them argue ridiculously over my mother's prescription for pain meds after having total ankle joint replacement therapy. What gives?

My brother is like this. When my father figure was so sick and sis and I were going out of our minds trying to juggle his medical issues and his legal crap, my brother did not ONCE step up to the plate and volunteer to help us in anyway. I finally figured out that I had to simply say things like, "We have to have a break. It is your responsibility to care for them on X Y Z dates or hire someone to do it." or "We have three different shifts that have to be covered which one are you going to take?" or "This bill is _____ and they can't pay it. How do you intend to help us handle it?" (For the last one, he actually took care of signing them up for a charitable program that would pay the bill.) He would always, always, always assume that somehow sis and I had everything covered, everything handled or would if he did not volunteer. Once we changed tactics and said, "This is you portion of the responsibility, how are you going to deal with it because we aren't going to keep doing it? " He then would get on board and do something. I had a similar issue with the first community musical that I just pulled off in my new job as a community arts director. I had a ton of scenery and props that needed to be brought in and set up, and it was most certainly nothing I could do alone. I put out a newsletter in the community saying that I needed five volunteers on evening X to help transport and set up for the musical. Crickets. Nothing. Not a soul volunteered. So, I called the businesses and civic groups that support the program and said, "I need one person from your organization on X date to do Y, please let me know within 24 hrs. who this person will be and provide their contact information." I did not leave it open for debate. I was pleasant, but firm. Low and behold, I ended up with more people than I asked for so it worked out really well. Many people will not step up to the plate because they will assume everyone else is magically getting the job done. With these folks, you just kind of have to be matter of fact and kind of assign some responsibility or give them the choice of fulfilling responsibility with choice A or B. So you could try with the brother, "We have shift X or shift Y that must be covered. Which one are you going to take?" And of course that is only assuming that the brother has the cognitive ability and emotional stability to handle it. Some people, especially when it comes to hospitals, freak out entirely and can't manage the environment. I have a cousin who has panic attacks in hospitals so we never asked her to do anything in that setting when grandma had her stroke. She would call and we would put grandma on speaker phone. Once she was released from the hospital and out of re-hab, she was more than happy to sit with grandma at home, do housework, run errands. So those of us that could manage the medical, hospital stuff, did so, and the ones that couldn't, then were asked to help at home, and did so.

I can see that. I have an acquaintance that has gotten out of a bad marriage, and she is adjusting to the idea that she is a person with full bodily autonomy.

I was afraid that this would be the outcome. Seems like the pendulum went too far one way so instead of looking for the middle ground, they went radical and it went too extreme the other way. I have a son who is permanently disabled and will never be out of pain. He is insanely careful about not using opioids, and many days simply suffers because he can't just always take extreme doses of tylenol and advil because he'll box his liver and kidneys. So much pain. He's only 21, almost 22. He faces this for his entire life ahead, and once told me he really hopes to not live to a ripe old age because what would be the point of living like this. Very scary. Right now he manages on hot baths, ice packs, heating pads, and mild doses of advil as needed, benadryl to help him sleep. But he just barely manages and as more arthritis sets in, it is going to get exponentially worse. My hope is that someday he will get a job in a foreign country with really good health care system and better pain management attention. Seems like here it is pretty much an all or nothing proposition. "Here's a big script for opioids or Suck it up buttercup!" We can't even get a referral to a pain clinic, nor for more physical therapy, aqua therapy (the number one thing that would help, but isn't offered within a two hour drive of her...we tried to force the medical and car insurance company to pay for at least a jacuzzi tub - in some states they have to do so - but got no where and right now we don't have the extra cash to do it ourselves), or biofeedback. Nothing. Haven't found a damn doctor that gives a crap about his pain. The insurance not providing really makes me livid. I know people in other states who have even had indoor pools installed and the car insurance company had to pay for it. When he has access to lap swimming and jacuzzi, it really helps. But nothing. No help. Just suffer.

Sorry. Boundaries. This is unacceptable and you should not allow it. So you call her up and say, "I am sorry you purchased the ticket, But you didn't ask us about this and we already have plans, will be visiting others, etc. You can either get a hotel, and we will see you when we can, or hopefully you bought travel insurance that allows you to get a refund." Don't budge. This is bizarrely unacceptable, and if you accommodate this, what's next? Your husband needs to tell her she cannot come and stay with you, and give her the names of area hotels, and some dates here or there in which you'll be home and she can have dinner with the family or something. Her poor manners, and narcissistic behavior need to be checked.

I agree with this. It is also how our marriage operates. But I think that the issue we fight in modern times with marital consent is that we are still shaking off the concept of "women as property". For most of human history, female consent was a "non thing" and especially when it came to marriage because marriage was an economic contract in which a female was bartered off for some monetary, political, or status gain. Men were entirely in control. Whatever he wanted he got whenever he wanted it. I think that an awful lot of men, while not actually thinking overtly in this way, still have a little bit of this mentality when it comes to marriage. They figure they got married which means sex whenever they desire, and are baffled by the concept that they don't own the woman's body. As a nation, we are still working to shed our puritanical roots.