If she has a garden, a plant might be a good idea.
Flowers die. Plants show life.
I agree with Mindfield - ask the sweet seamstress to specifically not mention this to Deborah - and I also agree with compensating her financially ($100 is a bargain for what she’s doing - but she may refuse more than that) and doing something nice for her as well (a plant, a homemade edible - doesn’t have to be cookies - how are you at lasagna?)
The only mistake Deborah made, IMHO, is not checking with you before running to the store.
and Zoggie - while the suits may be in perfectly wearable condition, they’re hardly new if they were purchased at a Salvation Army store.
I’ve never eaten lasagna. You’d also be correct it you guessed that I’ve never eaten it either.
Yeah, you read that first sentence right. I am a mutant.
Just chiming in to agree with others: $100 sounds right. A plant or flowers or anything similar would be a nice gesture in addition to that.
GT
(bolding mine) Wow. Have you ever eaten it, tho?
Heh. You can say that i’ve never eaten it…
Please replace the second “eaten” with “made”.
I’ll…I’ll go over here now.
Well, I meant new as in new to him. I suppose pointing out that she got him eleven used suits would have been more accurate.
I assume they’re used. They’re all certainly new to me.
In additional to the $100.00, I was thinking something similar to this.
Since you mentioned you were fitted in the OPL’s house, look around and see if she has house plants then give her a gift certificate to a plant store. This way she can pick what she likes and it’s still sort of personalized.
If not plants, look for other cues (books, etc.) – maybe even a gift certificate to a notions shop.
ok - point taken - I was just trying to say that maybe LOUNE didn’t want hand me downs, no matter how well taken care of they’d been. Deborah certainly should have checked with him first before making the purchase - even if she intended it as something nice for her third pregnancy by-product.
I’d say forget giving her money. She is providing you a service, it is only right that you provide one in return.
Does she have trouble getting around physically? Does she need any gutters cleaned? Lawn mowed? Groceries delivered? These might not be good example if the woman is fully capable of getting around on her own, but you get the idea. There’s gotta be something she needs done that a nice young fella like yourself could help her out with. Probably be worth more to her than $100.
She mentioned that she was going to look into it. I didn’t know she was coming back with 11 suits.
Common sense is not her strong point.
“I made you a cookie, but I eated it.”
I think your instincts that your birth-giver is taking advantage of the old Polish lady are good. Your birth-giver sounds like a taker (one of those people who just takes and takes, and considers it the other person’s responsibility to tell her no when they’ve had enough). Altering one suit is a very nice favour; asking someone to alter seven for free is awful; the old Polish lady should have said no, but she’s probably too nice. I agree with the $100 and a nice bouquet of flowers. And ask the old Polish lady if you can do anything for her.
I was confused. I was thinking of “female birth giver” as some sort of New Agey midwife-type person.
If you want to give the Polish lady some money it would be a nice gesture, but I don’t think your “birth giver” did anything all that bad here. The lady offered to help. She could have said it was too much work to do all of the suits if she didn’t want to do it. I don’t know how much work it takes to alter a suit, personally, but I imagine for someone who is experienced at tailoring clothes it probably isn’t that big of a deal to do it. Maybe you should find out how much work it is before just jumping to the conclusion your mom did something terrible?
I don’t think that giving disrespectful names to your mom and complaining about her on here reflects very well on you.
If you’re old enough to have a job, you’re old enough to feed and clothe yourself without her help.
So if you want to keep letting your mom do stuff like that for you, it seems to me like you should be grateful to her instead of finding reasons to complain about how she screwed up in the process of doing you a favor.
It seems pretty darn nice to me that she decided to go buy you some clothes you need and can’t afford on your own, and arranged to have them fixed up for you so you can use them.
If she was stealing clothes from you and then selling them to buy drugs for herself or something crazy like that, then maybe you’d have something to complain about.
When someone tries to GIVE you something, the proper response is “Thanks” not “Hey, you didn’t do it right!”
It amazes that some people don’t treat their families with the same consideration they would show to a stranger.
Knowing enough “old country” people as I do, she was probably taken aback at the OP’s mother’s dumping 11 suits in her lap to alter, but thought it would be rude to say anything. Don’t project modern American attitudes on folks raised in other times & cultures.
I don’t know the OP’s family history. Having been the recipient of unasked-for “favors” imposed by family, though, I can understand some of his exasperation. Heck, I won’t even tell my family any more about some things I plan to do, lest they offer to help in ways that totally don’t go with what I had in mind. Sometimes it just creates more work or expense, and then having to deal with hurt feelings because you didn’t just accept what they did.
Sure you could say it was nice of his mom to go pick up 11 suits for him. What do they look like, though? Are they appropriate for his current job? Reasonably in style? My mom and I never had anything approaching the same taste in clothing, so I could see plenty of room for unhappy consequences of her “kindhearted” act.
The OP’s way of referring to his mom don’t come across too well to people not acquainted with his history, true, but you could try putting yourself in his shoes for a minute to see the other side.
Rats, this bit got mixed in with the quote. Apologies.
To the OP, yes, definitely give her $100 and some flowers, offer to do some other small errands/tasks for her, and ask her not to tell your mom. I’d stay away from gift cards only because you can’t always tell where people would prefer to shop, and anyway with money she can spend it on something more vital (food, rent, etc.) if need be.
That’s certainly possible, but I would think that even polite “old country” people are capable of recognizing when someone is trying to take advantage of them and finding a way to say no even if they aren’t as direct as an American would be about it. It is also possible that the old lady doesn’t consider it to be as much of an imposition as the OP is assuming it is. After all, she was the one who offered to do more work when she could have easily considered the first suit to have been her way of repaying the favor, and she’s not under any kind of time limit for when to do it.
When the OP needs to wear a suit every day, I don’t think 11 suits is really a crazy amount, especially if they have to dry cleaned.
Part of my opinion was influenced on recalling his prior thread about how his mom was audacious enough to offer him food that wasn’t up to his standards. Based on what I’ve seen, it seems to be a pattern that his mother does stuff for him and he finds something wrong with how she did it.
Now, mind you, I’m not saying that he has to be happy eating old salami and wearing clothes tailored in Polish sweatshops. I’m just saying that it looks pretty ungrateful to accept his mom’s help and then complain about it. If he doesn’t like the way she handles this stuff, he is old enough to be able to do it himself and leave her out of it.
I’m sure that the mom is no saint. Nobody’s family is freaking Ward and June Cleaver. But I think it is pretty shabby to not recognize she’s trying to do a good thing.
Actually, I agree: That’s a good way to handle it if your family keeps meddling in things you don’t want help with: Just don’t let them get involved in the first place. I think that’s much better than to let them help you, then go behind their back and bitch about how the help they provided wasn’t quite good enough.
Well, the OP did say they were “good cheap suits”, so I don’t think they could be all that bad. Even if they were though: If you need a suit and can’t afford one, maybe a gift suit that is a bit out of style is better than none at all?
In the culture that I come from 
we say “thanks” when people give something to try to be nice even if their gesture of kindness isn’t exactly what we would have picked out for ourselves. I think a lot of people take their families for granted.
Based on the other thread and this one, the way you talk about your mother just seems so condescending. The female birth-giver stuff, that’s bad too, but going out of your way to make these little jabs about how she’s not all that bright and is rather rude are pretty awful. Bad enough to say these things about a stranger, but your own mother, who is trying to help you out?