That is so tragic, I’m sorry to hear. I know organizational changes can cause a lot of uncertainty too. What happens without your boss?
I ran in HS. The last run before winter break was to the groc, where a qt of eggnog was procured; said egg nog never made it home…& I didn’t share, either.
Recipe, please!
She’s not sure, but we all guessed:
• Sweet potatoes
• Brown sugar
• Real maple syrup
• Vanilla
• Nutmeg or Allspice
• Too much butter
• Too much Fireball
Grandma never uses recipes, NOR does she remember the ingredients. The Jell-O had “pears and a dash of sherry”, the rum balls had “a bit more rum than they should”, and when we asked about what was in the Fireball Sweet Potatoes, she shrugged and said “Fireball and Sweet Potatoes.”
I’m not even sure where to start with this one. So let’s start with my grandson, who seems to have trouble “adulting”. He’s got a girlfriend and they have a toddler. She doesn’t work and he seems to change jobs every couple of months. They’re always short of money and begging his mom or my wife for assistance. (I have a feeling a lot of their income is going “up in smoke”, if you catch my drift.) They also seem to move from apartment to apartment quite frequently.
My father in law passed away in early October. The house is empty as we wait for it to go through probate, because he never bothered to file a “transfer upon death” or whatever it’s called so that the house would go directly to my wife and her sister.
Near the end of October, grandson is in a panic because their lease is running out and they were still waiting on approval from the next place they were going to move to. And staying put wasn’t an option because I guess they missed the deadline for renewing their lease.
So my wife decided to let them stay at her dad’s house temporarily until they got approval for the new place. Which seems to be taking a lot longer than expected.
Last week grandson noticed some water on the floor in the basement (mostly finished except for a workshop and the utility closet). Long story short, it turned out to be the septic system backing up. Eventually the situation got so bad they couldn’t stay, so guess where they are now? Yup, we have houseguests… the three of them, plus two dogs (one of them the size of a small pony) and a cat.
Meanwhile, my wife now has to call some place to empty the septic tank, there’s a clog in the line so a rooter guy has to come out to clear it, has to arrange for one of those water damage restoration places to come out and clean up, and she’s working with the insurance agent to see if it is (hopefully) covered under the homeowners policy.
She doesn’t want them moving back there when the place is finally back to normal, and I don’t blame her, but I want them out of my house too. But who knows when that will be.
Hmm, I think I see a pattern as to why Grandma can’t remember what she puts in her dishes. 
I totally understand and feel your pain.
I’m sorry but that completely reminds me of an episode of Friends, where Monica (the professional chef) is trying to figure out how to recreate the chocolate chip cookie recipe that was used by the grandma of her friend Phoebe.
Summary
Monica: Well, I’ve tried everything. I give up. I guess I’m not gonna be the mom who makes the world’s best chocolate cookies. I do make the best duck confit with broccoli rabe. Kids love that right.
Ross: Aww, Pheeb, come on isn’t there any relative that would have the recipe? What about, what about your sister?
Phoebe: Oh no-no, no, I made a promise to myself that the next time I would talk to Ursula would be over my dead body. And that’s not happening ‘til October 15th, 2032.
Ross: That’s the day you’re gonna die? See—darnit, I’ve got shuffleboard that day.
Phoebe: That’s what you think.
Monica: Well, I mean what about friends of your grandmother’s? Wouldn’t they have the recipe?
Phoebe: Well, y’know I may have relatives in France who would know. My grandmother said she got the recipe from her grandmother, Nesele Tolouse.
Monica: What was her name?
Phoebe: Nesele Toulouse.
Monica: Nestle Tollhouse?!
Phoebe: Oh, you Americans always butcher the French language.
Monica: (grabbing a bag of Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chips) Phoebe, is this the recipe? (Tosses her the bag.)
Phoebe: (reading the recipe on the back of the bag) Yes!! (Realizes.) Ohh.
Monica: I cannot believe that I just spent the last two days trying to figure out the recipe and it was in my cupboard the whole time!
Phoebe: I know! You see it is stuff like this which is why (Looking down) you’re burning in hell!!
Her French grandma.
There is nothing “mini” about that rant. Crap, I’m sorry to hear you’re stuck dealing with this mess.
Seconded. Hopefully just a clogged drain.
IMO the mess is the “clogged” offspring and @Shoeless’s wife’s inability to stop enabling those losers. The plumbing is the very least of it.
Well, that’s been an ongoing issue for years. Whenever one of her kids or grandkids has a problem, she’s always right there to bail them out, instead of letting them deal with it themselves. So naturally they’ve all learned to come begging to her when they need help. We’ve discussed how the Bank of Mom/Grandma needs to close it’s doors, but so far it’s still open for business.
(A couple months back we met with the financial advisor for her retirement account to do some retirement planning. He asked her about her retirement goals and one of the things she mentioned was that she’d like to travel more. And I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying “well, we could be doing that now if you weren’t constantly bailing everyone out.”)
My grandma is the same way. She needs to be needed, even at the expense of her grandchildren’s self-efficacy.
As her first and eldest grandchild, I try not to exploit it.
I hate social anxiety.
I’m glad this is the last time I have to leave early to take my kid to OT because I’ve gotten fuck-all done today.
Three year olds are really cute but they are fucking exhausting. They need help with everything. I’m so over potty training and we just started.
We had the meeting with Always Late and I guess we have a plan now, but she has a really dominant personality and I felt steamrolled. She kind of waved it off but at the same time said she would change how she does things so it doesn’t happen again. Good, I guess? But I hardly got to speak. I’m not even sure what happened, entirely. It became a discussion about completely unrelated things. I’ve been meaning to look at the meeting notes but I haven’t had time!
I guess it’s a lesson for next time. I need to be more assertive. See “social anxiety” above.
Sometimes a neutral 3rd party like your FA is just the ally you need. E.g.
FA: You can keep spending $X on bailouts each year and go broke in a decade.
OR
You can stop that, live forever on your assets, AND leave a nice inheritance.But you can’t do both. One or the other.
Or you can gradually cut them off, die unexpectedly, and have all of those loans that they signed a paper on brought up as assets of the estate. And then, for the next 20 years have those bitches sniffing around, demanding expensive independent accountings ( which of course they’ll never ever pay for) and generally rooting around the money of relatives who never took a loan like pigs rooting around for truffles.
I haven’t been keeping up here!
@Chefguy , I’m really sorry to hear about your kitty. It’s even harder when it’s your child’s special pet. If it helps any (it doesn’t, really, but still…) the way it happened is kinder to the cat and probably also to your family than a partially successful surgery and then a slow decline afterwards. I know it’s cold comfort, but you did spare your kitty a lot of pain.
@Spice_Weasel , bringing up kids who are brilliant but have special needs is a terrifying balance of frustration and joy. Kind of like all parenting, I suppose, but with extra flourishes. Potty training a kid with sensory issues is an exceptionally tricky feat, but he’ll get there! Your description of his need for rules and permissions is hauntingly familiar to me. I can tell you that my excessively rules-oriented child finally managed to develop the ability to discern which rules can (and should) be bent under the appropriate circumstances.
@Shoeless , I have the same trouble as your wife. My kids are well into adulthood, but whenever something is going wrong for them, I just want to fix it! And the only concrete thing I can do is throw handfuls of money at them. In our case, though, we have been blessed with kids who are, if anything, more responsible and practical with money than we ever were, and they refuse most offers of financial help. We’ve been limited to giving lavish monetary gifts at Christmas and birthdays, and our kids have indicated that they expect us to cut that out once we’ve fully retired.
On that note, it’s really difficult for me to stand by and watch my adult children wrestle with our terrible healthcare system. My older one is having to scramble to source her ADHD meds every month, and the younger one had to go on a different dosage of her medication in the hopes of finding a pharmacy that had some. This week, she was able to track down the last three boxes in New Mexico, and she made a two-hour round trip to get one. She was on another drug that was working just fine, but when the new one came out, her insurance company stopped covering the old one because the use is off-label.
It’s really hard for me not to suggest that her dad and I cover the cost of it ($300 a month) until the manufacturing issues for the new drug are worked out.
Pretty sure you’re consoling the wrong person.
Aargh! I’m very sorry for that! @Chef_Troy , please excuse the mix-up and accept my condolences.
That’s a relief!
I do have a GOOD news update and it was suggested I share here:
Evaluations are OVER. After a year of wrestling with insurance companies and doctors appointments and ADOSes (he had TWO) we are officially approved by my insurance company for autism services. As my son is about to start ABA, this is very good news indeed!
Another happy bit of news, despite the struggle to get him through the test, we did get some useful information from the IQ test. His visual/spatial skills are 98th percentile on the WPPSI. I knew he was gifted in math (his latest thing is calculating the area and volume of rectangles and cubes, I shit you not) but the visual spatial thing is new info - though not terribly surprising considering the way he’s constantly making color patterns of numbers out of random objects. He really has an extraordinary brain.
The woman doing the evaluation concluded that:
A) intensive therapy is critical and we should start immediately, and
B) if we get that intervention, he has tremendous potential and will not likely need as much support in the future
That’s the first time a professional has said to us, “He’s going to be okay, actually.” We were relieved to hear it.
As a final note, she said that, though his speech skills are average, they should really be considered delayed given his high cognitive ability. Plus he has very weak pragmatic speech. So back to speech therapy we go. But at least they integrate this with ABA - it won’t require a separate commute.
I guess we just keep doing what we’re doing with this amazing kid and it will pay off. Which is a relief because we’ve put in a hell of a lot of work.
You have certainly put in the work to get the services he needs! If you have the energy to document this process, I’ll bet it would make fascinating reading for all of you when he’s older.