All Tricks, No Treats (October Mini-Rants)

THIS! You get it! It’s this specific thing. Like he knows dishes need to be cleaned and has eyes to see that the sink is full, but he never takes the initiative to just do them. But he also is just completely oblivious about things like school work and PTO meetings and doctors appointments.

However, I have finally put on my big girl panties and told my husband what is going on and he said he would help out with the things I specifically ask for help with. It is a step in the right direction and I already feel better having just told him.

In other news, work just had a training about cyber security. It basically said don’t click links in weird emails and don’t write your password down. I’m sad people still need to be told these things.

ETA: typos

I don’t disagree at all.

Something like doing the dishes is different to me though. Dirty dishes are a standard thing that should be a part of everyone’s life since childhood. A responsible adult should know that dirty dishes need to be cleaned and as long as you aren’t lazy and helpless, or there isn’t an arrangement ahead of time (you do the dishes, I take care of laundry and take out the garbage) then you should know to clean them.

That’s different than dealing with a newborn. That’s a new situation you don’t deal with constantly your whole life. You handle it a year or so at a time and then you don’t anymore. So anything involved with that is new. I think that missing duties in caring for a baby is a bit more excusable than a chore that every human being on the planet not born in a cave should be familiar since childhood.

Either way though, yes I was deliberate when I said I was “clueless” at times in what a baby needed, but in my defense with both of my kids I really tried. My daughters spent a lot of time sleeping on me. I was always the main diaper changer. I’m no stranger to feeding a kid (whether from a bottle or jar or normal food as they get older). I have spent hours trying to get a kid to go to sleep or (so, so much worse) trying to get them to go back to sleep. (Somehow I figured out that spinning in an office chair helped my younger daughter go to sleep, though ugh I wanted to throw up by the time I was done.)

If dad isn’t stepping up, let him know. Sometimes even those of us who really put in the effort and like being active dads miss something.

You should read this and then read it to your husband.

It’s a book worth buying as well.

I just got an email from a bartender I know, asking if I know a guy, “Jon Doe”, who passed away. They will be having some kind of memorial for him at the brewery. I did not know him. I found his Facebook and maybe recognize him from the pics.

Well, the Doe family’s loss is my gain. The bartender told me his death makes his mug eligible for the next person on the list. That’s me!!! I’ve been on the waiting list for the mug club for 2 or 3 years, silently moving up as people moved away or died.

Congratulations on inheriting a dead guy’s coffee cup? I’d wash it before using it.

I rarely get upset at home, but when I do, this is more or less what it boils down to. I HATE having to make decisions for everyone else, especially on things that are so obvious (to me). And the old refrain, “Well if you needed help, you should’ve ASKED,” is no good, because I’m going to stop asking if I’m constantly told, “Okay, I’ll do it,” and nothing happens. I write on a wipe board on the fridge every week what activities happen that week but still delegate drop offs and pickups. I write groceries needed, appointments, etc. I still decide when all of that happens and who will do it, as well as what needs to be cleaned, when, how long it’ll take, who’s doing what chore…the whole thing is infuriating.

Beer mug. There are a limited number, each a bit larger than a pint glass and $1 off each fill. It’s a huge deal (to me).

In the corporate world, the manager handling this many decision-making tasks doesn’t actually do any of the work. The manager’s work is delegating those tasks out.

What infuriates me (including domestic situations of my own) is when the manager is doing all the delegating AND handling most of the tasks.

“If you don’t do it, I will. If I don’t do it, it doesn’t get done.”
^^ is a shitty position. Doubly, no triply so, if your so-called “partner” shoves you into that position.

I’ve seen it before but I needed reminding. Just a protip, if you are like really new to the internet, don’t read the comments. Those comments are a terrifying place.

Another example is the carpet in our house. We rent our house and part of our lease agreement is that we pay for professional cleaning of the carpets once per year. Every year, I organize making sure we have the money set aside, scheduling the carpet cleaners, staying with them while the work is done and making sure we don’t screw up all their hard work after. Nothing about this task makes it make more sense for me to do it myself. This isn’t what I do for a living. (My husband manages the cars becuase he’s an automechanic). This isn’t something that stems from something only I can do. (Like nursing the baby and being in charge of his feedings. I am lactating so it makes sense for me to manage it.) This is just a chore. And its one of those things in our household that, if I don’t do it, it doesn’t get done.

Enough complaining about my mental load. The photographer that took the newborn pictures of the baby lost the pictures in an accident. She has offered to do another free session, which I have booked for this weekend. But it looks like it might rain and I wanted cute pictures in the fall leaves like a proper basic white bitch family.

I just wanna say, you know how some days your work life is what you thought it’d be, and other days, you have to chase 70 screaming fourth graders away from their abandoned lunches and inside so the bears don’t attack?

Today was one of them other days.

For the past few months I have been getting calls soliciting me to join in on various class-action lawsuits regarding such things as mesh implants, exposure to various chemicals, etc. I’m used to seeing (or more precisely, fast-forwarding through) TV ads for this sort of thing, but when did it become cost-effective to call random people for these lawsuits?

Are you literally living in a Far Side comic?!

They have a lot of bears where he lives. I was recently there for three days and saw bears on two of those days. And I was in town both days - not out in the woods somewhere.

I would assume so. However his post seems like something you’d read at the bottom of a panel where a bunch of chubby bespectacled children with 50’s hairstyles are running from heavy-browed bears.

Only less funny.

Yeah, Gary Larson would have put it in a more pithy way I’m sure.

No, I mean as in it’s really not very funny when you turn around and suddenly there’s a bear standing on its hind legs about 12 feet way from you. It would be even less funny if you have a bunch of kids to worry about on top of that.

On the positive side, if they stay up on their hind legs they can’t move very fast.

Unless they have Segways.

There were comments?
brb going to check them out now (I feel the need to up my blood pressure)