Anti-whine. We got six inches of snow last night, then it switched to rain, and now the temperature has dropped to the teens.
I went out to try to clear sidewalks and porches and such before it turns to concrete. (Thankfully we’ve had the driveway plowed since we no longer felt able to wrestle with the snowblower.) Anyway, I was out there, making progress but very slowly, and then two young guys (maybe 6 or 7th grade) came from across the street and set in shoveling and snowplowing from the far end of the sidewalk, without saying a word or asking for any pay or anything. What would probably have taken me well over an hour was finished in like ten minutes!
When they got close enough we could speak they introduced themselves – new neighbors who had just moved in the last week. Later on I saw them plowing the sidewalk some houses down, too.
Can’t wait to tell their parents what lovely young men they have raised.
(Okay, they just move in from Alabama, so this is the first snow they’ve dealt with, and handling a snowblower for the first time is FUN - I remember - but it was still very kind of them.)
I’m having a flashback… I was one of those kids 50 years ago. We’d shovel all the sidewalks on our street, and one night I just kept going. I was blocks away when a woman opened her door and asked my name. The next snowfall, I was shoveling her place and getting paid for it. Very well (it was a big house on a corner… lots of sidewalk and a long driveway. And this was long before reliable affordable snowblowers.
So you should tell those kids you’ll hire them. And tell them when you get the next big snow, they can just start shoveling!
we haven’t had snow in 15 years and almost 35 since we had our last blizzard………
but todays gripe is this :who ever owns the rights to the music of queen needs to stop being a greedy MFer and quit whoring out the song "don’t stop me now ?
its on 50 commercials in all media forms and it doesn’t mean what most people think it does…
It’s super windy here today. I’ve been sitting on the couch watching TV, and about an hour ago I heard a loud noise outside: turns out, some of the siding is blowing off the house. I sent an email with pictures to my property manager, and am waiting to find out when someone can get out here. It’s going to be very windy again tomorrow. sigh
(It’s crazy that this is happening just a week after the burned furnace manual, but I’ve lived here for almost five years and on the whole this has been a great rental.)
at least you didn’t just buy the house and have something like that that happen and run to pick up the phone for the property manager only to slowly realize that manager is now you ……
A month after I bought my house, we had straight line winds come through during the night and wreck about 75% of the city. I looked out the window that morning and it looked like Godzilla had rampaged through the neighborhood. My yard was covered in branches and tree debris. I thought “wow, that’s going to suck for whoever has to clean…oh shit that’s me!”. And it did suck.
Hates the guy she lives with, as he can’t do anything much (primary progressive MS) but has nowhere else to live and no funda, as she quit her job and the house she has a 60% share in with her brothers isn’t selling anytime soon.
Calls me on FaceTime, ostensibly to talk to my kids, tells me what a disappointment I am for not taking more, better and/or the right pictures of them for her. Uses said scant funds to put these pics on countless mugs. Tries to make kids call her partner ‘grandad’.
Won’t tell me where the storage unit is with my things. Or what it is called. Just that she may let them auction the contents if she feels like it.
You had me at “mother”, but I’ll still offer to hold her down for you or swear you were visiting with me, whichever you prefer.
Aside but linked:
I think one of the worst consequences of the worship of motherhood is that, when we get a bad mother, or when our generally-good mother has a bad-mom day, it’s so much at odds with the official message. The same behavior which from an aunt, or a neighbor, or even a sister, might elicit a rolleyes or an “ok, mental note not to bring that detail up with her even again” is painful when it comes from Mom.
I’m in a really great mood. I’m weight watching again and I’ve lost 9.8 lbs over the past two weeks. Things are great.
So of course my mother had to call and ruin it for me.
My mother was a large woman for most of her adulthood until she had a botched fundoplication surgery that left her with a barely functioning digestive system. Since then, she has been skinny and sickly. She looks like her head is too big for her body and her arms and legs are really skeleton like. It was a whole thing. My mom also has a habit of calling herself fat at every opportunity. The day I got married, standing in my plussize wedding dress and hoping I hadn’t created back boobs with my back fat, my mom looked at us in the mirror and said “I’m so fat today!” and stormed off. I’ve been pushing back against this because it is incredibly unhealthy. She’s not fucking fat. In fact, she needs to eat more, she probably has multiple vitamin deficiencies. It’s a wonder she doesn’t scurvy or pelagra or what have you.
So with that background, she called me yesterday while I was taking some alone time before my marathon cooking session. She told me she’s giving up potatoes for Lent. We’ve never observed Lent before. Because she eats too many carbs and is unhealthy. And part of me wonders if she’s doing this because I’m trying to lose weight or if this is just her being actually anorexic. I don’t even know what to do. I shouldn’t be mad at her but I am. She’s the mom, she’s supposed to parent me, not the other way around.
Perspective?! I don’t need your stinkin’ perspective!
(But seriously, of course you’re totally right. Though sometimes I’m torn between “I’m so glad I don’t have to pay for this” and “I wish I could just handle this myself”…)
A lot of us boomers are suddenly in the awkward role of having to parent our parents. While we’re still parenting our kids.
Sometimes we just have to let go, in both directions. My mom will obsess about not eating anything with fat or sugar, and I finally said “Mom, at what age do you get to eat anything you want? 100? 95? 90?” (She’s already in her 90s)
But I won’t change her, so I’ll keep ordering the Big Breakfast while she eats half her Eggbeaters™ omelette.
I’m 38. My mother is 64. She has never actually lived alone, as an adult, in her life. She moved to start her nursing career- and lived with her grandmother. When my parents split, she was thirty and she moved right back in with her parents. Stepdad? Moved in to my grandparents’ house.
Now my grandmother is dead and my grandad is in a home and she has lost her mind entirely. Throws it in my face that she couldn’t be independent, otherwise we would have lived in an apartment (so?). Couldn’t be independent, otherwise we would have to go to public school (so?). Couldn’t date because of us, because her mother wouldn’t let her have sex in the house…
And sex talk. Like I’m a friend instead of a daughter. My mother lost her first parent when she was 63. I lost mine when my dad fucked off 32 years ago (and killed himself eleven years ago).
But I don’t know how hard it is to lose a parent, she says. Could I tell her, she asks, what state will let her ask a doctor to euthanise her?
Joke’s on you, you nutball. They won’t do it if you’re just crazy.
She’s kind of crazy. I love her though. I think she gets lonely because she doesn’t work and doesn’t have people around a lot. Maybe that’s where all this is coming from. Maybe she’s been watching too much Dr. Oz.
This would normally go in workplace rants but I think it’s minor enough to go here. The printer I normally use at work is broken. There is a big project to replace all the printers to a single source and contract so they decided not to fix it. Well, those printers were supposed to show up at the beginning of the year. Then it was the next week, then the next week and now there is no ETA any more. Instead, I have to use other printers. And the other printers won’t print the whole page for reasons I cannot figure out. Dang it, just fix the dang printers!
Last night I was getting things together for work today and decided I wanted to wear a vintage 60s skirt I have. I went to the work dresses, skirts and tops closet to get it and it was not there. I looked through the closet twice. Nothing. I looked in the other closets and didn’t find it. How is this possible? It has to be here. It’s never left the house unless I was wearing it. No one has borrowed it. No one has been in my house who could possibly have taken it. IT HAS TO BE HERE. I was home for lunch and looked again. Nope. This is driving me crazy. Things just do not disappear. I’m going to have to take everything out of the closet tonight.
