Sitting your bare-naked ass on my living room couch and claiming not to see the big deal when I freak out.
I’m talking about my mother.
That’s not a bad idea. My mom has these cute little cups she uses to measure ingredients when cooking/baking. They could easily hold a small amount of butter. Now I just have to convince Mom that it’s not rude to give everyone an individual butter dish.
Thanks! 
When guests of my sister, who is my apartment-mate, insist on seeing my room too as part of the tour. Not a simple request, but insist.
They are her guests, not mine. I don’t get a few hours advance warning (need another thread for that one). I don’t feel like tidying up my room like i do the rest of the place, so i close the door.
To give my sister credit, she doesn’t relent.
Maybe not as teeth-grating as some of the other anecdotes.
To add: a question for the pet owners: i used to have a cat (left him at the parents’ house). If my guest does ask (during my invitation) if it be possible to keep the cat away (allergy reasons or phobias) i did keep him in a room (with all his essentials). Would you ever agree to do this? Or it’s more of: my pet or you’re not welcome?
Nope. I would say Big 5 is having a sale on tents, and you are more than welcome to use my backyard.
If you’re staying at my house, what you can do is close your door. If that’s not enough, then I guess I can recommend you some local hotels. We’ll meet up there.
Oh, she’s a piece of work, all right. She has this way of disappearing for years and then dropping back in when she wants something. A couple of years later she decided that for her second marriage she was going to have the big white wedding she didn’t have the first time and called to inform us that we were to have the honor of being in the wedding party–and paying for the photography. We politely refused and the marriage didn’t end up happening anyway.
After a few more similarly fun encounters we just stopped returning her phone calls.
I would probably put all of the animals out if someone was allergic and not otherwise a whiny pain in the ass but that’s no big deal here since they all go outdoors on their own all the time. I have a cocker spaniel that looks like a stuffed animal so no one is ever afraid of him and my larger dogs have all been trained not to jump and go lie down when they’re told. I don’t think I’d be very accommodating about phobias because they can just get over it or not visit and I’ll go see them.
I have several relatives with allergies. I have no problem keeping the cats confined to a room while they visit if it’s for the day or the evening. If it’s for more than a day or so then they would be welcome to stay over at the mall or I will even buy them allergy pills if they’d like to stay here and not complain. That said, I have eight cats so frankly no matter where I put the cats there is still going to be cat hair or dander someplace in the house at any given time.
I also have a 93 lb dog that one relative is terrified of and she gets put into a bedroom while that relative is here.
All my relatives and friends (that would ever visit), but for the BIL listed above, are normal and I have no problems accomodating them. They are all kind to my animals because they love me even if they don’t love the cats or the dog.
I almost spewed some stuff on my laptop from reading this.
WTF? I swear this is the second time I’ve read someone’s story about this happening to them. Who are these people? I understand you might be under stress if you poop in an unfamiliar house and run out of toilet paper, but…my god, why?!
Really, let me think about this.
Let’s say I’m a guest for the evening or overnight at someone’s home. I have to take a dump, so I sneak off to the bathroom. I do my business, but then, to my horror, I find that I’ve run out of toilet paper before I’m done. So, what are my options here?
- try to rinse off with water, drawing attention (why is the shower on???) and most likely just making a disgusting mess.
2 a) wipe on the hand towel and throw it away
2 b) wipe on the hand towel and sneak it out of the house to destroy my shame
2 c) wipe on the hand towel and hang it back up and hope no one notices - say to hell with it–good enough! No one’ll notice! and zip up.
- sheepishly crack the door and wheedle for an emergency delivery
Now…let’s see, which is the least embarrassing option here? Yes, yes…it’s quite a tough question…
…
…if you’re INSANE! I can’t imagine anyone without some sort of severe issues choosing any option but #4. Just…why?
I didn’t realise about the christian thing here - I was actually thinking about some of the Indian religions (Hindu maybe?) where devotees / followers remain vegetarian one day a week or don’t eat meat on thier “patron saint” day.
The symbolism of the sacrifice I get, as a way to remind ourselves of the higher power that we should be honouring. This is much the same reason I will attend a church occasionally, go to the temple or whatever (I am pretty non-discriminatory) as a way of “forcing” myself to formally thank a higher power for that which I should be grateful about and appreciating what is good in my life.
Cheers
Oh, Lord. When I was in college, we had a very strict “no naked people on the furniture” rule. I never thought about having to put one in place for family members, too!
Just tell her it’s a public health matter.
As far as cat allergies go, I’ve always had cats and I had one close friend stay over often who was allergic; IIRC, it really makes little difference whether the cat is around at the time. All told, it was better for everyone for him just to bring his allergy pills (especially since he liked the cat otherwise) and keep the guest room door closed so as not to boost the allergen exposure to absurd levels.
I’m a bit of a nudist, so I wouldn’t have a problem with someone sitting naked on my furniture. I do it all the time, and since these hypothetical nudist guests are grown-ass people, they should have sufficient hygiene habits that it won’t make a big difference. That said, I never want to see my mother nude in any context.
Caveat lector is referring to the Catholic practice of Lent, which specifies a timeframe during the year throughout which one is supposed to make some sacrifices, etc.
Well that. Also, Catholics are still supposed to be giving up meat or doing some other kind of penance on most Fridays too. It didn’t go away with Vatican II its just that in enthusiasm to make changes things got…confusing so people think it did.
… and …
I remember my dad, who was a pipe smoker when I was growing up, becoming extremely irate with a dinner guest who asked him not to light up around her. This was in our house, and the guest was well aware that my dad was a smoker before accepting the invitation.
My dad had no problem at all, though, with non-smokers asking him to take it outside when he was in their homes, though. As a smoker myself I would probably feel the same way if it came up. However, I would probably voluntarily refrain from smoking around non-smoking friends, even in my own home. I wouldn’t even consider lighting up in a non-smoker’s home, and even if the person is a smoker I’ll ask before lighting up in their home or car, since I know a number of smokers who choose to not smoke inside their homes or vehicles. And I simply won’t smoke around children, even if their parents do.
Oh hell yes. Years ago, I shared an apartment with a couple other guys, one of whom was a mostly useless drunk-all-the-time idiot. One night while I was at work, one of his drunk-ass friends went into my room, got my Gibson acoustic guitar out, and starting jamming. The roommate took it away from him and threw his ass out and never let him visit again, which is why I only described him as “mostly” useless. As he put it, “You don’t do that shit.”
Lead singers. As the joke goes, “How do know when a lead singer is at the door? You can hold the door open for them and they still don’t know when to come in.” 
Making disgusted, bewildered faces at my decor choices. I mean, honey. I bought that there art, I paid for it to be framed and matted up real nice. You don’t get it. That’s fine. That don’t make it right to stare like it’s a flaming bag of dogshit, not a regular art print. It’s my house, my taste. And manners behoove you to behave as a guest, blood or no blood.
Yep, I’m still bitter about it.
At the time I decided that this wasn’t the mountain I wanted to throw that particular relative off of – I’ll save that for far more deserving causes. 
Watching me wash, rinse or wipe clean everything in the kitchen area - cooker, sink, floor, windows - and then, after I put back all cleaning stuff and wander off, fry the shit out of everything eatable in the fridge. Without washing the dishes or cleaning afterwards. Why not do it earlier???
Messing with my computer. I decide when it gets turned off, not you! And nobody’s allowed to alter the configuration. I remember, in the dark times of DOS, managing by luck and extended trial and error, to free up enough memory to run a game I really, really wanted to try - then a bunch of cousins set up “improving it”, messing my configuration, and I never was able to manage to retrieve it. The game CD sat unused in my drawer since then.
Not flushing the toilet is a big deal for me as well.
Oh, and I do not want to spend the whole of the evening listening to you rant on about how everyone should be forced to be Catholic Christians, and there should be one state ruled by the Pope, “because there’s one God, and there should be one state!”. Especially if you don’t want to have a discussion, and talk over me, and pretend I don’t have anything to say. Keep the loony stuff out of my house, okay?
If you were allergic, I probably wouldn’t invite you over, unless the allergy was fairly mild. There’s cat hair and presumably dander everywhere, and there really isn’t that much we could do about it. If you need some level of protection from cats due to allergies other than “don’t pet them” and “don’t let them in your bedroom while you’re sleeping” (and I can’t give you a room where they haven’t been- they have the run of the house), you should probably not come over to my house. Rest assured, it’s not personal, but I know how miserable allergies can be, and I wouldn’t want to put you through that.
If you were phobic- maybe. I’d still probably try to suggest meeting elsewhere. It’s quite obvious that we have cats from a cursory glance around our house- cat trees and toys are everywhere. If that would be enough to freak you out, then I wouldn’t invite you over. If it’s just the cats themselves, maybe we can work something out.
If you just “don’t like cats” or I think you’re just being a dick, no way.
So true. Both my wife and I are allergic to cats, my wife extremely so. If we are in a house where cats live, even if they’re not in the room, her eyes are swelling up within five minutes. We have some friends and relatives that we love dearly, and enjoy being around, but we cannot go to their homes.