Unfortunately, it’s really easy to screw up if you start doing favors while babysitting/housesitting. Reminds me of something that happened several years back. We’d left town and had a friend and her boyfriend stay at our house while we were gone. We told them that the sink in the guest bathroom dripped, and not to worry about it.
The boyfriend, however, decided he couldn’t stand the thought of us paying for all that dripping water, and went ahead and turned off the water supply to the sink via the water shut-off thing in the cabinet under the sink.
Problem was, the reason it was dripping is that we knew the shut-off valve ALSO leaked. We were going to get that fixed, but hadn’t yet; we’d left the sink itself dripping because at least then the drip went down the drain. So we came home to the cabinet under the sink soaked. Only thing that really saved us is that there was a small bowl there that caught a lot of the water.
Kicker: we have well water. It cost us absolutely nothing to have that sink dripping.
Moral of the story: don’t try to help out by fucking with people’s homes unless you are 100% sure it’s OK. And even then, don’t do it. Just do the job you were hired to do.
no, it isn’t. there are way too many people who think they know what’s best for everybody, and have no problem sticking their asses into other peoples’ business.
Right up there with my one BIL, the computer guy. He knows how your desktop needs to be arranged, he knows what color scheme you need to have, he knows what shortcuts have to be displayed and in what order, he knows what browser you need to use and what your homepage needs to be.
So when he comes to visit, computers are kept turned off.
Oh, gads - even my mother wouldn’t go that far, and believe me, she’s a controlling nutjob! We solve the issue by (a) never leaving her unattended in our home, and (b) changing the subject (sometimes tactfully,) whenever Ma starts with what we ought to be doing re: childrearing, home management, money management, voting, healthcare decisions, religion, careers, nutrition, et cetera.
But when the damage is already done? Eh, I grouse to the husband, or my best friend, or random internet strangers. Ma isn’t going to change, and there’s no real point in trying to convince her that she isn’t the Wisest Person on Earth.
This is what floors me. Why, in the name of all that is holy, do toddlers need their own televisions? Let them grow up and become independent so they can buy them themselves.*
But, yeah, the rest is bad, too. Has she always been like this?
*This comes from someone who grew up in the era where families only had a single television per home, and gul dern it, we liked it that way!
I want you to come and babysit for me, and my kids are in their twenties.
As to the OP, if anyone re-arranges anything in my kitchen, they better do a stellar job of hiding the sharp knives, so I don’t find them before you enter the witness protection program.
Really? Sounds to me like she doesn’t mind crossing any old line she likes, since she’s perfectly happy to throw out your possessions and rearrange your pantry. I agree with Miller: Juanita will probably buy Liesl something J thinks L “needs” with the money and not have a second thought about it. After all, she clearly knows better than anyone else what y’all need.
I’d be happy to smack her several times with the clue stick. She royally deserves it.
Yeah, maybe I’m too generous in interpreting this.
See, this is where my perceptions are skewed by my family’s total dysfunction. On the scale of “a typical Christmas with dracoi’s family” this merely sounds like it could be a well-intentioned but misguided attempt to be helpful.
I can do the OP one better although it happened to a friend and not me.
Friend’s baby-daddy’s mother goes over to their house when she is not around. Goes around the house grabbing friend’s stuff at random: baby clothes she was going to give to friends, collectable lunchbox from the 80’s, etc. and decide to have a garage sale. Friend pulls up and sees her stuff on her lawn being sold, grabs her stuff that’s left and tells the old lady to leave. Friend finds out that mama made $50 on her stuff. Baby-daddy tells friend that mama is keeping the money because she did all the work.
