My out-of-town sister is coming into town for a few weeks and she and my mother have hatched a scheme. They want to go to Manhattan, stay in expensive hotels, do expensive shopping, and otherwise waste a ton of money.
All fine and dandy, only my mother is insisting that I simply MUST go, too (plus my other sister). MUST. I have no choice but to go, she says. It doesn’t matter that I don’t have the money and don’t want to spend the money even if someone else is paying for it. The fact is, I think it sounds horrible, like a slumber party from hell.
There’s nothing remotely appealing to me about luxury hotels and expensive shopping. It’s not me. It has never been me. I’m all about Comfort Suites and Target, not Four Seasons and Tiffany. Throw in Christmas, the cold, the pain in my foot, my discomfort with extravagance, my desire for a lowkey Christmas, and the desperation I see nearly every day on the faces of the people around me, and the trip sounds like sheer misery.
Is there any way you can manage to get to some more local stores, and buy some necessary (but relatively inexpensive) things for a local homeless shelter/Women’s halfway house? Then, when you go to Manhatten, you insist on dragging your sister and Mom along and drop these things off. Then don’t buy a thing when shopping with them. Maybe the penny will drop. Maybe.
Unfortunately, these are the two women who announced a few years ago that there were no more poor people in the world. Their evidence? The St. Vincent de Paul Society didn’t want a broken refrigerator.
The head-slapping smilie just isn’t flabbergasted enough.
I wouldn’t mind a trip, a cozy cheap hotel, and going to a show, or some museums or something, but I HATE shopping, and if I have to do it, it is never in some fancy overpriced store.
Even the trip and cozy cheap hotel and show sound unappealing to me during the Christmas season. My whole body wants to find a snug cave somewhere. I hate winter. I hate it.
That sounds like a nightmare! I’m sure my mother would love it, too, though. I’m pretty sure she thinks poor people are poor because they don’t work hard enough. :rolleyes:
I’m glad I have no sisters. When my mother comes up with crazy, expensive ideas for me (she doesn’t very often, all praise the Almighty Og), I can stare at her blankly and say, “You must have me confused with your other daughter”.
Can you offer her something in exchange for you not going? Plan a low-key family dinner or something? I completely support you not doing something you really, really don’t want to do - I’ll probably be doing a similar thread come summer when my whole family is having a long weekend piss-up that I don’t particularly want to attend.
I’m with you. Walking around a large city…OUTSIDE…IN THE WINTER? No thank you. If you ‘must’ go, spring or summer would at least be bearable (aside from the conspicuous consumption, which aint’ my cup o’ tea, either).
Your sore foot is a legitimate out. There’s no effin’ way I’d do it. No. WAY.
Seriously, just say no. Don’t give reasons or excuses, you’re an adult now. Say you’re sorry but you have other obligations, don’t elaborate. You have an obligation to live as you believe and that obligation trumps familial guilt every time. Be polite, but hold your ground. You’ll be very glad you did.
DO NOT let her do this to you if you have a foot injury. The rest of it would suck too, but you will not be able to walk around Manhattan with an injured foot.
Mom guilt about things like this hasn’t worked in years. Decades maybe. But it’s still annoying.
I doubt she knows anything about my foot. I have a chronic problem in both feet (Morton’s neuroma, for anyone who knows what that is), and it can be excruciating or hardly noticeable, depending on how much I walk, what shoes I’m wearing, etc. It’s one of those things I talk about a lot on here but not so much in person.
I come from a family of HUGE guilt trips. If I tell you some of the guilt trips…well, here’s one. My brother left his wife for eminently valid reasons. When he was trying to leave, my aunt - what is she doing in the middle of this anyway??? - laid down in front of him and said, “You’ll have to step over my dead body! You’ll have to kill me first!” And this was after a three hour crying screaming argument.
I see you are used to them, too. Don’t ever give into them or there will just be more and more and more
