sassenach
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Posts posted by sassenach
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Beauty and ashes. Thank you for sharing. It does my heart good to know that you are so loved and supported. Much love from your WTM sisters, too.
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Here's one I just saw and totally got wrong- Does Richard Simmons wear a headband?
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3 hours ago, rebcoola said:
Another one going around now is who would bring Publishers clearing house checks to your house if you won??
Ed McMahon?
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Watching the video, I'm 100% team Miranda. Sure, it would have been better for her to communicate to her team that this needs to be better handled on an usher level. But Miranda was right, that was super rude, disruptive, and disrespectful to the other concert goers. I looked at the venue map and those VIP seats are in front of everyone. Good for Miranda.
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Peds nurse here. The medication has to get in. I would try to sneak it into her food. Ask for an rx for tablets and then crush and mix it into something. I love Dawn's pop tart approach. If that's not successful, a hospitalization would mean someone else will force the medication down, get her to a more stable place and then try to transition to unforced administration.
I work in oncology and the absolute hardest is when we have a kid refusing and a parent who wants to negotiate. It's more trauma for everyone. The kid ends up crying and resisting for an hour while the parent tries to talk them into it. Let us hold the kid and pop it into their mouth and this whole thing is over in less than 5 minutes. Eventually those kids either get better about taking it or end up with nasogastric tubes because the medication is not optional. Of course, it's way different in your situation because the resistance is part of the disease and I know you're trying your best to not add more trauma/mental blocks to the problem.
Bottom line is that this is a lifelong disease that requires medication. She simply must take it and it's important that you work on your own mental hurdles (fear of a hospital admission, if necessary) so that you can get her the lifesaving treatment that she needs.
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Where do you live?
Maybe your house needs to be sealed up better? Would diatomaceous earth help with the scorpions? You need a professional.
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On 7/11/2023 at 6:31 PM, Terabith said:
Are there any people who are not masking and taking precautions but who have not had covid?
My husband, two of my daughters (one of whom is unvaccinated), my mom's husband.
IDK about the covid immune wipe out but I do think that 2 years of masking did put a gap in the resume of a lot of immune systems. That combined with the natural cycle of many of these viruses created these huge, off-timed waves of infection.
In our household, dh hasn't gotten sick at all since 2020. He takes a lot of supplements but once he was vaccinated, he did not mask unless required. Both ds and dd lived in dorms and had back to back viruses all freshman year. Neither had gotten covid at that point. Since then, ds has gotten covid (last summer) and continued to be sick all of his sophomore year, too. I got covid and work around a lot of sick kids but haven't caught anything else since then.
So my personal take is that it's more about the prevalence of all of these viruses and our collective (herd, if you will) lack of immunity due to taking a couple of years off the natural life cycle.
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I know one person with a failed tubal. Honestly, if you were to get pregnant while on birth control, with a vasectomy and a tubal (even a questionable one)- I would be flabbergasted. I'm not sure how much more a person can do to not get pregnant short of a hysterectomy.
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Yes! Multiple canisters of hair are being vacuumed up daily (2 black labs).
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8 hours ago, MEmama said:
((Hugs))
The *anticipation* of my DS leaving was by the far worst. It's quite remarkable to witness them becoming independent-ish young adults over night.
1000% I was so weepy those last few months. But then they go and it's actually ok and pretty cool to see the growth!
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I would not move just to be near a college-aged kid, especially if that choice would cause a disruption in your younger son's high school experience. I would stay in Poland. It's going to be absolutely fine for your college kid to be in the US without you. I don't consider that to be the same as sending a kid away to a new-to-them country and culture. How will you feel if that kid stops coming home over the summers (a lot of college kids take summer internships or classes) and you guys made all of these big changes to be in the US?
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That is a perfectly normal non-fasting glucose level.
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2 minutes ago, TexasProud said:
I guess I have trouble with that because of family culture. No one ever wanted to go to my mom's house because she firmly made it her space. There wasn't room for us. So we hardly ever went there and felt like we were intruding on her career/time. On the other hand, my in-laws moved when they had an empty nest and still got a 4 bedroom house. The master is on the ground floor. But each of the kids' bedrooms still has the original bedroom furniture for all three kids. We stay there a lot in my husband's room. When my kids have come, there is room for all of there comfortably. We go there a lot. It feels like we are all more than welcome. I want to have a heart like my MIL, not like my own mom. So there's that.
The bed in there is brand new. He took his original furniture. It is set up well. I have no issue taking over and have started taking over the bookcase and such in there. I moved a chair in there. I have already moved a filing cabinet in there. I guess I just feel weird saying, I know there is a brand new bed in there, but you cannot sleep there. Also, we host two students every summer. Again, if the peeing cat would go away, I could use my daughter's room. In 5 years, it won't be an issue anymore I don't think. Which is why I made this a JAWM. I just need to be patient as things should settle down in 2-3 years.That makes so much sense. It's never just a single-layered thing to make these changes.
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1 minute ago, fraidycat said:
Mental hurdle- Yes and no. It depends on my mood and self-talk for the day (thanks perimenopause and hormones!). Some days I'm a failure just because. Other days I'm a huge success. Like, the whole point of a being a mom is to work yourself out of a job. You still love and support them, but you've raised adults, not children. So they (except for DS23) should be capable of feeding themselves at minimum OR cooking dinner for the whole family at least a couple times/month. At this point, it should not all rest on your shoulders.
Love this reframing. This is excellent.
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10 minutes ago, Arcadia said:
Cooking wasn’t an issue because we do takeout if I am tired. I just say I am on strike 🤣 Besides, DS18 does like to cook.
Vacation was an issue and I had to demand for a vacation when I need one. My husband never had a vacation growing up because his parents are tightwads on their kids. So my husband doesn’t see vacation as a priority.Buying things for me was an issue. My husband is always worrying about overpaying and the easiest way was to just have fun money for me. Like to him Starbucks frappe is an expensive sugar drink but to me, buying a frappe less than once a month is a nice treat for myself.
So frustrating as it is, making sure my needs are met and letting my husband know when I am annoyed helps. His mom was unhappy being last priority but didn’t dare to kick a fuss until his dad retired.I'm the tightwad, haha. Dh has no problem ordering out but I start to panic when it gets excessive.
I also really want to hire house cleaners but also keep putting it off because I'm cheap...
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53 minutes ago, Faith-manor said:
Me to.
The other adults minus the special needs adult have jobs and can contribute. So regardless of their circumstances, I would assign each one a night per week, and if it is take out they bring home, then so be it. They are capable of grabbing a deli platter and salads on the way home. If they lived alone, they would have to deal with feeding themselves even if it wasn't convenient or easy.
1 hour ago, Junie said:When my aunt had adult dc move back home, she assigned each person a night of the week to be responsible for family dinner. She didn't care if they cooked, made sandwiches, ordered pizza -- so long as it was not her responsibility.
Everyone has variable schedules, with no consistency on who is home for dinner which nights. They're good about helping with shopping (mostly because they need lunch food). For that reason (and because they're working full time hours plus taking summer classes) assigning meals is not a hill I'm going to die on.
1 hour ago, Pawz4me said:Lots of commiseration. There are only three of us here, all adults (me, DH and DS24). Only DS works. I'm the cook. And I'm so dang tired of it. If I could choose to retire from only one aspect of my life it would be from cooking. I can't imagine dealing with a FT job and cooking dinner every night. For the summer I think I'd stock up on sandwich fixings, premade salads and precut fruit and say "there it is, help yourselves."
Yes, that's the general feeling!
1 hour ago, maize said:I love Factor meals! If you cancel, they'll eventually offer you a $2.99-per-meal discount to get you back and you can stock up at that price before canceling again.
Since you don't have young kids, you could quite honestly just establish an everyone-fends-for-themself meal policy. You could choose one night a week to cook if you would like to, let the rest of the family know the other nights are open for anyone to cook but if no-one steps up every adult can feed themself (make accommodations as needed for your high needs son).
Being female doesn't mean you have an obligation to be an unpaid chef, housekeeper, etc. Families can share those burdens in various ways, and it might have made sense for you to do most of the cooking when you were not professionally employed full-time and when most family members were minors, but circumstances have changed.
Thanks for the tip! I'm really hoping this is a good solution for us. Yes and amen to that last paragraph!
1 hour ago, Grace Hopper said:I definitely went through this and it was way harder on my family to adjust than it was for me to give it up, simply because they were conditioned to me being the dinner maker.
I had to have a sit down with them and say it was time to divvy up the duties. So now we take turns with meal prep, dh cooking/prepping/picking up as much as I do, with college kid (and even houseguests) taking their turns in the kitchen when they’re here. It’s easier since we no longer have a house full of kids living at home full time. The others are willing to cook, but really did need a little finger snap to let them know I was on to a new job after retiring from being the full time homemaker and that I wouldn’t be making dinner every night.
OP your situation is different since you do have some at home all day, I mean you need dinner and probably can’t just grab it on the fly as easily as dh and I do some days. My solution - which covers me for when it’s my turn to food prep - is to every now and then have a batch cooking day and get a few things made that some can be eaten that week and some portioned out and put in the freezer. That way there’s something to reheat in a pinch.
I think batch cooking may be more manageable when it's just dh and I. Really, everything will be more manageable, lol!
1 hour ago, fraidycat said:I was working on teaching my kids independence and contribution to the household right about the time my DH retired from the military and decided he wanted to "do all the things" for the kids that he hadn't had time to do earlier.
So, rather than getting the kids to contribute and do a cooperative style of food and laundry chores, I completely "retired" from food responsibility. I still cook once in awhile, if and when I feel like it or am hungry for something in particular. I do not do the regular grocery shop, I do not worry about what we're having for any meal of the day. It is not my responsibility and I did kind of feel guilty about it for a little bit, but now everyone in my house works, drives, and has bank accounts. DH grocery shops and has food in the house and cooks most meals. They can eat what DH cooks, prepare their own food, or grab take-out. I don't care what they do as long as I don't have to think about it.
I think it just mainly takes time to get past the flawed "I should" way of thinking.
On the laundry thing: kids do their own. I do my own and sometimes DHs, or he'll toss a load in if I'm too slow getting to his stuff.
It is a flawed way of thinking! And it's stickier than I hoped!
1 hour ago, fairfarmhand said:Only thing I must add---Whoever cooks should NOT have to clean up.
The other adults who ate the food can divvy up the kitchen chores--putting away leftovers, sweeping, filling the dishwasher, wipong counters, and washing the pots. Seriously, if you divide it that way, kitchen cleanup should not take any one person more than 10 minutes, while one person doing it can spend over half an hour on these chores.
I had a decent sized meltdown over this about a month ago and ds (who was the main non-contributor) has been much better about pitching in.
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So those of you who can commiserate, is it a mental hurdle for you? In one way I have no guilt over not cooking for grown adults, but on the other hand it still feels like a failure? How do we move into caring for ourselves ahead of the family when we've been doing the opposite all these years?
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(((Big hugs to you))) this is a hard time and hard position. It's a delicate needle to thread, being the spouse of a cancer patient.
I'm an oncology nurse (with peds, which is different but similar). Dh also had cancer many years ago. From a treatment team perspective, we always encourage families to keep things balanced and also anticipate that at some points in treatment all we care about is calories- content will be impacted by so many factors but spiraling weight loss is problematic. I second whoever said keeping strength up is important. It's shocking how quickly muscle mass can slip away and that has huge ramifications for recovery/quality of life.
As a wife, I know there were times that my suggestions were not well-received. They were sometimes perceived as accusation (your choices are the reason you are sick/aren't getting better). This is a long road. Make sure you find your own support people who you don't have to edit around.
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Can we talk about this?
Context: My kids are all out of high school and I have been working full time for the last year. Our current state of affairs at home is dd28 and dd26 launched, ds23 has special needs (receives FT care in our home), ds20 went to cc last year and will be home at least through December, dd18 home for the summer. Dh works from home 1d/wk and out of the house 4d/wk, I work out of the house 4d/wk, and we have care for ds23 4d/wk. The end result of a juggling act of covering ds23's care.
Problem: In a family dynamic that has featured me fitting myself around everyone else's schedules, needs, etc, I'm hitting a wall now that I have my own full time job. There are several examples, most of which do have solutions, but I'll start with the one that my brain/ego/heart is having the most trouble with. I am the dinner maker. When I was in school, I switched over to relying heavily on meal kits and I have continued to use them this year. They're ok. The price works and I love having guaranteed meals on hand. The problem is that I hate coming home from work and cooking. I'm tired. I have very little time to work out or fit in any other self-care. If feels like I come home, cook, clean up, get ready for bed. Other family members are not going to be able to take on this task for various reasons. So I was telling my friend about this and she suggested Factor. I looked into it and decided to give it a try (they give a pretty generous nurses discount). It hasn't come yet but somehow I already feel like a failure. Like my family is going to have to subsist off of microwave dinners because I'm tired. Now, I *know* this is a flawed way of thinking. They're all adults, everyone can feed themselves if they want to. After 26 years of being solely responsible for feeding all of these people, I'm realizing just how hard it is to pull my mom identity out of this. And I don't even like cooking! I am not a person who has every felt like my identity is linked to my cooking abilities (thinking of my Mexican MIL who literally shows love through food).
Any commiseration out there? Or other examples of making this shift (big picture, not just the cooking thing)?
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13 hours ago, YaelAldrich said:
I have a bonus son who just graduated from a liberal arts school (not very selective) with a BA in Psychology. He had very good grades and made Dean's list most semesters and was a TA for his senior year. He's worked most of college in food service, retail, and Jewish education.
He is looking for a job now and is looking at a variety of postions. He is complaining that nothing he is applying for is paying more than $23 an hour (in Boston). My DH and I thought that was a pretty good wage for someone with limited work experience. I realize Boston is a very expensive location to live, but in my youth (in a significantly lower cost of living area as well as Boston) we lived poorly. Small, cheap apartment which took up over 50% of our income, cheap food, one car (needed for school), no vacations, etc. He seems to want a more lavish lifestyle right out of the gate. What say y'all? Am I being a cranky old lady?
Recently having similar conversations with my 26yo college drop out where she’s panicked about the constant hustle of working two jobs in order to live and I’m thinking, yes, this is why your mean parents were upset about the decision to drop out. Welcome to the reality that we warned you of. I’m a cranky old lady, too.
I will say $23 is pretty low for HCOL. That same child of mine makes $28 nannying. Life will be the teacher for these kids. I just make sympathetic noises.
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Common grace? Like things that are good and given to all humans?
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The smallest home we lived in was 900sf with 6 of us. It was a short term situation- about 3 months. We had 5 kids in 1600sf for several years, and then 3 in 1350sf for the last 6 years. Ideally I wish we had another shower (we have 1 1/2 baths) and a slightly larger living space, though we’re comfortable.
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I want whatever my family wants. I won’t be here so it’s really up to them.
Green burial would be preferred but that’s hard to find and expensive around here. Hopefully it’ll be more common by the time I go. Dh has a strong preference for not being cremated but I don’t have strong opinions.
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Part time is the best time. If there's any possibility of you dropping down in hours, take it.
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Finally! The dream, 6+ years in the making!
in The Chat Board
Posted
I love this. Good choice!