Little mini- rant re: vague communication.
I friend of mine is having a party tonight and I offered to bring some extra tables and chairs. Last night I sent this text.
What time does the party start?
And
Will you be there at all during the day, I’d like to go ahead drop off 2 folding tables and 2 or 3 chairs. Also, is there anything else I can bring? Do you need desserts or anything?
The reply I got was
Yes
. I’ll figure it out, but really?
I hate when you ask someone multiple questions and you only get one answer.
Ahhh, you’ve met my one of my best friends!
ME: Hey, thanks for those chocolates! So, you were talking about going out to dinner tonight. Want to go for burgers, or someplace nicer? If we do Emilio’s, I should make reservations now. Are BF and Scoot coming? Let me know ASAP.
FRIEND: Mmmm… chocolates. Weren’t those yummy?
In that situation, I think the appropriate response is:
No.
I just gotta vent. I delegated the gift wrapping to my loved one. Made 3 piles for each recipient. I come home bada bing there’s the pile of gorgeously wrapped presents. But wait a fucking minute don’t tell me, yep they did. They neglected to write to and from on the gifts. Theyre in identical wrapping paper and similar sized boxes. WTH asshole!
Speaking of global warming (yes, we were speaking of it earlier) now that I’ve committed to a snowplowing contract for the season and am looking forward to a nice white Christmas, the forecast is as follows (loosely paraphrased):
Between now and Christmas Day, some rain with risk of freezing rain tonight, but don’t worry, it’s rapidly warming and there will be no risk of anything freezing after tonight. In fact, by Christmas Day the outdoors in this part of the Great White North will be warm enough for us hardy Canucks to break out the shorts and T-shirts! Definitely don’t store anything in the garage that you want to keep cold, because it ain’t gonna be cold in there.
Also, the weather office predicts no snow for the entire winter season, so only a complete idiot would take out a snowplowing contract during this kind of El Nino season. Although there will be a freak unseasonable snowfall on April 8, 2024, depositing its lovely wet flakes from ominously dark skies upon those waiting to see the total solar eclipse.
Yes, life sucks.
Regards,
The Weather Officecc: God
Carrying out Thy will.
I don’t drive, but I have a friend who visits often. Once when she was parked in my driveway we had an ice storm. I remembered seeing that cat litter could be used to provide traction, so I sprinkled some by her tires.
What I had missed was that this only worked for non-clumping litter. The clumping litter I used did nothing but make a mess. 
As the wise @wolfpup said, the answer is “no help for you.”
This is why everyone should have an x-ray machine for emergencies.
I think one of the most valuable lessons in life is that it’s okay to make mistakes… but you have to make them right.
So have a “rewrap presents” party for some/half/most of those mystery boxes.
As a former babysitter of many 3-year-olds, I vote yes. He is testing his limits with you, trying to find out what your boundaries are. Best get used to it. Of course, you are blessed with a child who has different limits for himself than a typical one, but this is spot-on typical.
And congratulations on the potty training progress!
Years ago my brother drove from Michigan to our home in western Pennsylvania for our xmas party. There was bad weather and other reasons for him to leave Michigan early and he ended up at our house at 11 am for a 5 pm party. My gf was a bit flustered.
It turned into a tradition, though. Every year on December 24 he shows up at our house horribly early, but we expect it and are ready with brunch and bloody marys.
Foggy, foggy day
Paint your pallet brown and gray
Look out on a shitty day
With eyes that vainly search for snow
Ho fucking ho ho ho.
It’s been cloudy pretty much every day of December so far. Lots of rain.
He’s back home; I don’t know if just for Christmas weekend or permanently but I hope it’s the former. He’s still trying to get us involved in his delusions.
I woke up about three a.m. to flashing police lights out front. Again.
I don’t yet know what happened this time, but it almost certainly means their eldest child has another ‘incident.’
The family that lives basically across from our house has three children. The parents are nice, two of the children seem pretty much normal. But the eldest girl … well, she belongs in a horror novel. I don’t know what all her diagnoses are, she has had multiple diagnosed problems from about age two on, but I swear one of them ought to be “Just Plain Evil.”
She does things. Like she set fire to the family’s dog at least three times before they finally rehomed him with a normal household. Like deliberately pour things such as cleaning chemicals into the open cartons of milk in the fridge. Like, just last week, she pounded up Christmas tree ornaments and sprinkled the broken glass around all the floors. (They had to get a specialized cleaning crew in to treat all the carpets to make them safe to walk on.) Like push a sibling down the stairs several times over the years.
Just flat out deliberate attempts to hurt/kill/torture her parents and siblings.
That’s not even counting the fairly ‘normal’ abnormal things she does. Like go outside and just stand there, shrieking threats at the top of her lungs at other children as they walk home after being dropped off by the school bus. Or go out and tip over as many of the wheelie bins as she can on trash collection days before her mother can catch and stop her.
And the parents just won’t give up trying. And trying. To make her well. To show her she’s loved. To keep her safe. To keep her at home. “She’s not like that all the time.”
Meanwhile the other two kids must be experiencing horrors. According to one of local cops who I went to school with, they have locked doors on all of their bedrooms. As in, with genuine key in locks on the outside from infancy. Because Evil Sister would attack them in their sleep sometimes. She’d hit them with anything she could get at and lift. One of her brothers had to be hospitalized with a broken arm and a concussion when ES was just eight!
I just don’t understand the mentality of the parents. Yes, she’s their first born, they love her. But what about the other two???
Yes, they have all of them going to play therapy. But how can you possibly expect them to have a chance to grow up normal? Sometimes you see the other two playing outside, but never with any other children.
The parents sometimes send one or both of the other kids away to stay with relatives when the Evil Sister seems to get revved up and focused on one of them, but then they bring them back when she’s “better.”
“Hey, Joey, your sister is trying to kill you again, so off you go again! No, no, it doesn’t mean we love you less than her. It’s just that she’s ‘special’, you know. We’ll talk to you on the phone every day, that’ll be good, right?”
I can’t believe the situation is let go on. It’s not like the police and CPS and so on don’t know. This isn’t some poor or backwoods family out of sight. The father is a lawyer in a well known Boston firm, the mother’s family is pretty well off. They’re hooked up with all sorts of special education benefits and special day schools and so on for the oldest daughter, but … well, they’re determined to go the best possible route for her, I guess no matter what it does to the other children.
Other than killing ES, what do you do? Jail her for life for the crimes she’s already committed or will otherwise someday commit if left free?
Despite novels going back a long time, there aren’t “hospitals for the criminally insane” except outside Gotham City, And that one seems to have recurrent problems keeping the inmates in.
I’m being a bit flippant here precisely because this problem is so utterly intractable.
When I was a little little kid there was an only-child boy living across the street who was ~2 years older than me. From the age I was old enough to understand (so age 3 or 4 maybe?), my parents instructed me in no uncertain terms to avoid him. His Mom & my Mom were friends, but I wasn’t to go over there.
We moved across town when I was 9 and he was ~11. Our Moms stayed in touch although I never saw him again. Different schools and such. His arrests started not long thereafter and by age 25 he’d had a couple of armed robberies and a number of assaults to his name.
I lost his trail after that, but I wouldn’t blink if I found out he’d been convicted of murder by age 30.
Bottom line: Some bad apples are exceedingly obvious early, and nevertheless utterly un-fixable. You can’t prevent them growing up, and so far all our legal systems are reactive, not proactive.
Thanks for that link. I was kind of moping around the house yesterday, it was overcast and misty, and I told my wife “it just doesn’t feel like Christmas.” As much as I hate Christmas music, I thought about putting on some CDs to try to get me in the mood. Good to know it’s not just me.
That’s my brother. He was always violent our whole life. Thank God I was the older brother so he couldn’t bully me, but he did “sneak attack” on occasion. Things like when we were both little he’d hit me in the back of the head with a big toy, or slam my head into something. But even though I wasn’t a violent kid, he was scared of me because I was his older brother and never put up with him.
Don’t get me wrong, we got along just fine part of the time and I have fond memories of having fun with him playing or watching TV. We had plenty of similar interests. But there was also always something wrong with him. He was later diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. He has been in mental hospitals a couple of times for brief stays. He later got into drugs. He’s been in an out of jail over the years. He used to attack my mom, even went to jail once for assault and she has a no contact order.
Some people are just broken. I love him because he’s my brother and for years I tried to help support him both financially and emotionally, but my wife has never met him, nor have any of my kids, and I haven’t seen him in well over a decade. (My first wife met him a couple of times but was terrified of him.) After he tried to kill my mom that was something of a dealbreaker for our relationship.
So my grand kids were arguing over a charging cable this am. It got a little loud and the younger boy was being bossy and trying to “help” by ripping the charger out of oldest granddaughter’s hand. I don’t mix it up with younger grandson unless it’s absolutely necessary 'cause we butt heads and I think/know he’s spoiled.
I poked my head into the bedroom thinking my daughter was in there and said someone needs to deal with this. Big mistake. Daughter was at her friend’s house. Son in law was here. He came slamming out of the room broke the trim on the door from slamming it, screamed at the kids and took all their phones away “forever.” Older granddaughter is, by this time, hysterical and sobbing. He tells her to get out and go to the friend’s house where my daughter is. It was not that big a deal that he had to throw a grown man temper tantrum over it. I should have just dealt with it. I know I shouldn’t have to, but seriously, he made a small tiff among sibs into a major traumatizing mess. Geeze I wish they’d move.