Me too. My dad is really upset that I’ve put him in this position and I’m upset that he’s upset, but my sister is simply not part of my life and I don’t want to have a vacation with her. My dad even mentioned that my sister is “under strict orders not to ruin anyone’s vacation”. Would you want to go on vacation with someone who has to be *ordered * not to ruin anyone’s time? She’s going to be twenty-four years old next month, by the way. My parents and I had been discussing this trip for a long time, and just recently sprang the idea that my sister should come too. I wish they had just respected my wishes, but no, they’re throwing this guilt trip on me, making me out to be the bad one, when I have tried and tried and tried to be a good sister only to have it thrown in my face, usually accompanied by a lot of shrieking and stomping.
I just got a letter of acceptance to grad school today, and I can’t even enjoy it, I just feel like shit about this whole thing. I WANT to have a good relationship with my sister! I’m jealous of people who get along with their siblings! But my sister is a freaking maniac and I just don’t want to deal with her shit any. more. If the therapy has finally kicked in and she’s a nicer person who wants to get along with me, as my parents claim, why hasn’t she emailed me? I think this is wishful thinking on my parents’ part.
Fucking hell. I finally just emailed my parents and told them to bring her if they want, since this seems to be important to them.
I was really looking forward to this trip and now I’m going to dread it. I feel like crying. It was going to be such a nice visit with my mom and dad, and now my sister is going to come and pick fights with everyone and be a huge pain in the ass.
Godammit, every time I hear this wording, or see it in print, I get a mental image of tornadoes carefully deconstructing one tenth of a house.
It’s an inapproprietly funny image.
Would it kill reporters to use the term ‘devastated’ instead?
Kayla, ask your parents if it would be possible to buy your sister an open-ended ticket. That way when the little bitch throws her first hissy fit, all your Dad needs to do is put her sorry ass on the plane home. Problem solved. If she really has changed, excellent, if she hasn’t problem solved.
This way you come out smelling like roses, you have accommadated her, but have put a very big line in the sand she cannot cross.
If your parents don’t want to do this, I say fuck her, she stays home.
Except that decimate has been an appropriate term for “destroy a great number or proportion of” since the 19th century, “tenth” etymology notwithstanding.
Many people who live in rental apartments moan about how having a shower requires waiting forever for the hot water to come out of the taps. I have the opposite problem. My shower gets in moods where it doesn’t want to provide any cold water. I put on both the hot and cold water taps, the water comes out scalding, and there follows a game where I turn the cold up millimetre by millimetre, hoping to catch that sweet spot where the cold comes on a bit but not too much. But that doesn’t work because the cold never fucking comes on - even when I shut off the hot water tap completely (yes, the cold tap is wide open and all that’s coming out is scalding). Eventually, the water will turn cold again, at which point I have to turn the cold water tap down a bit and turn the hot back on, and if I don’t guess that sweet spot correctly, it’s scalding again. Repeat as necessary.
I hesitate to use the word literally in this case because I’ve always managed to leap out of the way before actually becoming scalded, so I can’t prove it, but it’s much too hot for a human to be able to stand underneath it naked.
And of course, like any true shower, it doesn’t always reveal that it’s in this anti-hot-water kind of mood until I’m all shampooed up and have soap in my eyes, so I end up huddled in the corner trying to splash myself with enough shower water to remove some of the burning of the soap in my eyes, but not enough to burn me with the water coming out of the shower.
So showers in my house are torture.
And my landlady is lovely but there is something of a language barrier and it took three visits and two technicians and quite a lot of miscommunication just to get her to understand that the compressor in my fridge was busted and the thing needed replacing. (She told me to replace the fuse. The fuse! There is no fuse! There is a switch in the wall, which switched off whenever I plugged in the fridge, a switch which I certainly should not “replace” myself … anyway that is a whole separate mini-rant.) The only way I could resolve this situation would be to ask her to have a shower in my place and see how she likes it. And I guarantee that if I did manage to do that, the shower would choose that occasion to behave itself perfectly.
I whole-heartedly second this. I can’t think of any reason why your sister in her twenties has to be a package deal with your parents.
You can look at your trip this way, too - if your sister does come and does exactly as you dread, you will have plenty of ammo to stand your ground next time.
I pit you, new law firm. After years of running, I’ve finally been leashed. Tagged and bridled, hobbled like a little bitch. I’ve got to wear a Blackberry now. Man, what a fucking lame ass development. Selling out suddenly got less fun.
Hey you, the little shithead kid in the brand new car, the one I saw when I was trying to get home from work yesterday. Gosh isn’t it wonderful daddy bought you a car? Now if only you could just learn how to drive, things would be just peachy.
First, if I look in my rear view mirror and can’t see your license plate because you’re about 4 inches from me, you’re too close. When I tapped on my brakes in an attempt to get you off my ass, and you slammed on yours, causing your car to slew and squeal almost into the next lane? Total amateur move. A real buttrider would have been able to anticipate when the driver in front of him is just trying to get rid of him, or really is braking.
Second, those little white lines on the road? We call those ‘lane markers’. When you’re driving, you should keep your car between the two sets of lane markers for the lane your car is in. All those cars honking at you and braking suddenly? They’re trying to remind you that those lane markers are there for a reason, and that you should get the fuck off your cell phone if one arm isn’t enough to keep the car going in a straight line.
And last, this is not a video game, it’s real life. Playing Pole Position on the highway is bad. You remember how when you screwed up in the game, and you car exploded, fountaining burning fuel and wreckage all over the road? Well you narrowly avoided that occurance several times, usually by a few inches. But I have to say, I was rooting for it.
If I ever run into in the future, I will mail your freshly polished skull to your mother, as a warning not to do it again.
My brother called a few hours ago to tell me that my Dad died this morning. Since then I’ve called the airline to book a flight to Chicago for tomorrow, mostly packed a suitcase (which included going through my closet to find clothes suitable for a funeral that still fit), and called a friend to make sure that she’s stop in to make sure my cat got fed while I was gone.
Now I’m trying to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything, and muttering to myself about things like the lettuce I just stocked up on that’s going to go bad by the time I get back.
Fuck you bowl. You’re exactly large enough to hold one can of soup. If I nudge you one iota you drip over everything so I end up standing at my counter eating the soup until it sits lower and I can transport it safely.
Might I suggest you offer the fresh lettuce to your cat sitting friend?
3 sets of undergarments, including hose if applicable
your newest (darkest blue) pair of jeans
two sweaters, navy, black, or gray
two other shirts, button down or knit, white or ivory
sweat pants/sweat shirt
four pair of black socks
black shoes
your funeral clothes
If the jeans will still fit after being dried in the dryer, that can last you at least a week
Around these semi-arid parts, I wear my yellow, patchy lawn as a badge of honour that I’m not wasting tons of valuable fresh water on it.
(Sorry about your dad, Lurkmeister. Nobody ever knows how to react to a death in the family - if you react by worrying about lettuce, then that is the right way for you.)
Get fucked, SmartAleq. I spent the better part of half an hour crafting a well-researched response to your ignorant, childish whining, and the best you’ve got is oh man, that’s really long, fuck that? I hope your admittedly fat ass gets even fatter. It’ll make all that weight I lost (and am still losing) all that much sweeter as you flail around hopelessly, trying to figure out why those last 50 pounds just won’t come off.
I did tell her to help herself to the lettuce. She said she’d rather have chocolate.
I managed to find two pairs of black pants and two black shirts that fit. I always wear sweat pants when I fly for comfort. I hadn’t thought about bringing jeans, but I do have to remember to bring my heaviest coat, which I hope will be warm enough for Chicago; if I have to I can wear a sweater under it.
One of my apartment-complex neighbors has a bumper sticker that says:
Jesus Died for ME!
and you.
That just pisses me off. That last line, uncapitalized, in the tiny font, strikes me as sneering, holier-than-thou bullshit. Like, if said out loud, it would be sotto vocce, out of the corner of one’s mouth, grudgingly.
