krimimimi

No, Petunia, those are stillshimpy's dogs.

Ha! I think that was my favorite one, too, because he's just being such a dog in it*. It oozes character. But I didn't want to suggest it, because I don't think it's the prettiest one, just the most appealing one to me, if that makes sense? I also liked a couple of the ones with them together, but figured Oscar deserved a solo shot. Those are some really great pictures, though. Hard decision. Good photographer, and lovely models. * Same goes for the one where he's flopped down on his side, so over the whole photoshoot and with a leg in the air - that was a total "dog" shot, heaps of character, but less pretty than the others. Those are the kinds of things that end up on my lockscreen, because I look at them and see the character. (My current lockscreen is the dog barking at me to hurry up and take the picture already, she's had quite enough, tyvm...)

When we were kids there was a small ice cream shop in southern Ontario that offered Tiger's Tail ice cream, which was very orange sherbet marbled with stripes of the most incredibly viscous tar black glistening licorice goo I've ever seen. Ordered it every time. Never seen anything like it elsewhere. @BooksRule, we used to make sherbet floats with clear pops, too. (Lemon or ginger, although I wasn't big on the ginger ale. Plus lemon was better suited to the fruit sherbet.) I thought the rainbow one had raspberry though? It's been decades since I've had sherbet, so I'm not too sure... So what is ice cream sold in now, if not boxes? Or over priced rounded pint things, that remind me of the stuff you could get hand packed at the shop.

Kimmelweck? Beef on wick! Hate caraway, love horseradish, and beef au jus is always a win, so a bit of a draw for me. But it's not a kimmelweck without the "Kümmel." We had tri-color pasta sauces - spicy tomato, dolce gorgonzola and rocket pesto with gnocchi and penne in honor of the footie match I was forced to watch that.would.not.end. Food was good though.

I'm thrilled you've got a new kitty, and a gorgeous one at that. She's terribly cute. Looking at the pictures, I can't imagine how she managed to become a "bargain bin kitty" and wasn't snatched up long ago. But I'm glad she was still there when you were finally ready for her.

Please hang in there, Daisy. Don't let them win. They are toads; you are not. I think in the long run it's far more important to be able to like and respect yourself than any perks surrendering to the morass might bring. To be able to do so as a person of standards just proves more challenging than if you have none. So they might win in the short term on the squeaky wheel principle and economy of effort, but I'm fairly certain good people get genuinely liked and the jerks don't. There's no substitute for genuine affection, and it can't be bought. (Shy of a pet store, anyway.)

Ok, I read all the wrong books and am probably overly suspicious, but when I see "first poem in English," I assume maybe not native speaker? As someone who doesn't use English daily, I can tell you "brae" isn't exactly part of my active vocabulary. In fact, it's barely part of my passive vocab. So maybe he nicked it? I read too many mysteries. Also, suspiciously heavy on the battle imagery. Otoh, the way you guys describe dating, that almost sounds right. /back to lurking (Thanks also, folks, for explaining OK Cupid. I kept seeing the "okc" initials, which to me is a basketball team. And that wasn't something I thought I should google... ;-))

So I've been busy. Phoned around a bunch and Mrs. Driver will be back in town at the end of the week, and we'll phone the women's center again for an appointment. They've got councilors that can help, and she's agreed to go, and asked me to come with her. That's fine by me, because I think it increases the chances she'll actually go. I'm not sure if I've done a good job explaining her situation, in part because it's hard to nail down. Boggled minds aren't exactly easily focused. I'll try to give it some more thought, and better describe it tomorrow. That has the bonus of being a good test run for how to present things to the councilors.

It's never too soon, if you catch yourself looking. I used to say without my dog, I'm just an "owner," and what the heck is that? Our Dutchie died nearly 24 years ago, and I can still cry if I start thinking about it in detail. If I never stop missing her, but I waited until I did to get a new dog, I'd never have had my other fur babies. Each has enriched my life in their own way. None is interchangeable or replaceable, but that doesn't mean they can't have successors. Just like people can fall in love again after the loss of a partner. And I think that sounds incredibly generous, not bad, to let Rufus go where he's happier. That's pretty much the "if you love someone, set them free" thing in a nutshell. Have you come any closer to figuring out what made him so scared at your place?

Yeah, sorry, @ZaldamoWilder and anyone else interested, I was writing about our adventures with the SFMoochersons, when I got a massive dose of perspective which pretty much took the wind out of my sails (more details in the relationship thread if curious). Swiss Family Moochersons (hee!) meet the Mimis: Recap: friends of hubs' just invited themselves over to watch television and eat our food. By text. "That's ok, isn't it?" 1) They descended upon us as expected, and brought neither food nor beverages, just ravenous family members. (side-eye) I hid out upstairs for the most part, and didn't subject myself to icky sports or unwanted entertaining just because of peer pressure. Thanks to everyone's support (from here), I didn't even feel like a jerk, but watched a nice mystery instead. Bliss. 2) I did talk to Mr. Mimi about the situation, but he doesn't get it. We agreed we both felt blindsided by the Moochersons, but somehow he felt that put us in the same boat. Um??? I couldn't seem to get him to understand that *he* was the one that allowed this to happen. (Hopefully part of that is denial, and he's not just thick. Fortunately, he's pretty. ;-)) So nothing solved there, and it's likely to happen again. Hmmm. 3) I was annoyed that the DIY ceased to be a priority, but just did a lot of it myself and learned some stuff in the process. It would have been easier (and quicker, and better) with help, but the result is ok. Atta Mimi! Biscuit for me. 4) I let the hubs do most of the cleaning in preparation (:-)), but I *did* cook (:-|). I know a bunch of you are shaking your heads, but I don't think that makes me a total doormat, because I believe in team work. Give and take. Sometimes he gets sucked into doing stuff for me that he hates. (truer words... sigh) But the real success for me lies in accepting (at least a little bit) that if I don't want other people to dictate my life, that I won't/can't always be nice, popular or sometimes even reasonable. When I kicked up a fuss, hubs tried a provocative "I'll never invite them again," which is excessive (and inaccurate) and normally leads to me relenting, but instead I just ran with it and said "good." It's worth noting that Mr. Mimi isn't a drama queen, if he says it, he means it, and he's ridiculously stubborn. He's completely likely to *not* invite them for a couple of years. It will end with me begging him to do so... But I can live with that. Now for the reality check: Crack of dawn a few days ago, Mr. Mimi's out walking the dog (per usual), and he runs into a friend of mine, also out with her dog, sobbing. Clued in chap that he sometimes is, he basically tucked her under his arm and brought her home, woke me, and set me off to sort it. (If we're being snarky, we could say this continues his trend of surprising me with random guests, but...) Her MIL had passed unexpectedly in the night and her husband had completely lost the plot, thoroughly malignantly, and his rantings and behavior left her and subsequently us wondering if she is even safe around him. Zero to 80 in no time flat, this came out of the deepest blue. There was a *lot* of drama here this weekend. She kept going home and then coming back to us in tears. Hubs loathes drama, and yet he didn't even blink. He just kept sweeping up all the extra dog hair between visits. Further, she was having trouble wrapping her head around the idea that she could actually be in danger, and felt that surely we wouldn't be able to believe it as she scarcely believed it herself, and he reassured her that he took her at her word. (Which he did.) Hearing that from a guy proved more comforting to her than coming from me. <3 When the doorbell rang, and I went to get it (we'd accepted a package for the neighbors), he swooped downstairs to get to the door first. (I'm slow, so that works.) He considered it possible that her husband might be there, and he didn't want me answering it. <3<3 You know those moments when you look at your partner and know why you love them? Yeah. This weekend was full of them. And also of reminders of how fragile that can be, and how thankful I should be for what I have. He was terrific. He didn't ignore someone in pain, he didn't hesitate to do what they needed, he sacrificed his weekend, he listened and believed and comforted (and swept! ooo!), and I positively adore him for it. So, not just a pretty face. And the human shield thing... Woof. So anyway, now I feel like a bit of an ass for getting my nose bent out of joint at the Moocherson debacle. (Still, clearly they are sort of evil and their manners are pants.)

Thanks, guys. Clearly this thing has me going a bit nuts. (Guess he's contagious...)

Let's call them the Drivers, because they do a heck of a lot of that... Googling revealed that there's a state number for psychological emergencies, which I had her call one of the times she was here. Honestly, I thought Mr. Driver really needed help, and figured she could use some professional advice, too. (Interestingly, the website for that resource listed extreme manifestations of grief as a common reason people call, and specifically aggression, so I guess that's a thing.) Unfortunately when you say you fear for your safety, your spouse scares you, and has voiced death threats(!), they pretty much have to put you through to the police (by this point in the day, her husband had crashed/passed out and police weren't immediately required). But that meant the end result was no help for either of them. To her way of thinking, calling in the cops would be the nuclear option, and probably end her marriage. (I tend to agree with her assessment.) Not twelve hours before, she had had no inkling she could be facing a situation like this, so that was too big a step for her to make. (Which is why I feel like somebody with experience needs to give this a look. I am way out of my depth here. And she might be in denial.) They've now headed off to his father's to help him sort the funeral arrangements, and things have calmed some. (This has been an ongoing thing for a couple of days now.) Unfortunately she doesn't have her own car there, and she has a massive dog (upwards of 90 pounds) with her, so the reality is she can't just escape, or take a train or something. (She would risk her life before deserting her dog.) If she did leave her husband, she couldn't go to a shelter because she needs to regularly check in on her ailing widowed mom, so she'd have to head there. At the moment I guess it's partially a question of logistics, and of doing or not doing something that crosses a line her husband can't forgive (like not being there for the funeral). And I think we're both aware of how wrong it seems to be worrying about what *he* can or can't forgive after his thoroughly appalling behavior... I expect the strain of that might do her good will in. She and I are in regular contact, but she is not at all at as ease. She's walking on eggshells, and all kinds of sirens are going off in my head. I so am not equipped for this, but it's not like she was given a choice either, so I'm trying to dig deep...

Guys, I need help. Advise, please. Domestic issues (not ours) and bizarre grief manifestations (also not ours). No, really, not ours.** We've had all sorts of drama here the last several days... Short version: due to the unexpected death of a parent, the husband of a friend of mine has apparently pretty much lost it, utterly and incredibly malignantly - aggressive, irrational and hateful (never seen or heard of anything like it), no idea what can or should be done for him, and the crap he has slung towards his wife leaves me wondering if she is even safe in his vicinity. (Not being dramatic, I mean that seriously.) Fortunately I'm lacking in experience with both aspects and in search of clue... People, what should I do? She's not a psychological lightweight. She's a cancer survivor who's gone a couple of rounds and come out the other side. Sure, we cried together when she got the diagnosis, but I can tell you I've never seen her this distraught. So when she looks me in the eyes and says "I'm scared of him," I take that very seriously. I think as a friend, I owe it to her not to stick my head in the sand, and I was thinking taking her to a women's center might be a good idea, just to talk to someone with actual experience? I also sort of think I need to figure out how to be supportive if she manages to work things out with her husband (although I'm feeling a bit uneasy with even the idea of him now, and I've no idea how to manage that). I know it's impossible to judge how real a threat this presents, but I suspect that if I insist she's got a problem, she's a lot more likely to view it as such than if I don't. I just am not sure if I should? They've been together over two decades, and this just seems to have come out of nowhere... And does anyone have any experience with grief like that? Is there anything a non-professional can do for him, or is the only solution a therapist? (Knowing him: not gonna happen.) ** Seriously, we're fine, except Mr. Mimi is now considering relocating us to an otherwise deserted island...

For the ipad you can try purify. Let's you pick and choose who / what sites can place ads, which I like. Some sites use so much advertising, and then it's all stuff that takes forever to load, that it really changes the speed you can surf. (Writing an update on our evening with the Moochersons (love that!). Shall post tomorrow, for those following the saga...)

Guys, I just wanted to say thank you so much for your feedback! I now feel a lot less like I'm being some curmudgeonly, unreasonable nut. That does good things for my sanity, and is greatly appreciated. You have no idea how much. :-) Amusingly, and somewhat astutely (if I do say so myself ;-)), I recently posted this in a different thread: Well, I guess I should be grateful they've relieved me of the work of actually bothering to invite people... (Fortunately, I have a very black sense of humor and do find that vaguely amusing in retrospect. The italics were there originally, too.) Basically it's hard to tell people you have plans when you've already said you didn't, and they know darn well I'm hiding upstairs anyway. They weren't particularly grand plans, I was just figuring on watching a krimi, and I haven't really got a (more) secondary location to slink off to these days, more's the pity. @StatisticalOutlier pretty much nailed it. Yes, there is a wife involved, and I am 100% sure this is her doing. Except it isn't Fathers' Day here (that was in May, and traditionally isn't spent with the family at any rate, but out drinking somewhere. Yes, seriously.), and they won't watch until tomorrow evening, because of the time difference. But for that reason, I also assume sports bars are out, even if they were so inclined, because it'll air in the middle of the night here. (Evil me assumes at least one of the children will get spoiled as to the results tomorrow (it's hard to avoid), and ruin everything for all involved. Muwahahaha! (No radio, no newspapers, super careful surfing... Yeah, right.)) The problem here was somebody moved the goal post on me. This just kept morphing into increasingly less acceptable instances. When it was one person, hubs probably invited him for dinner. (He seems to think I can McGyver dinner from nothing.) And we *do* cook almost everything ourselves, but we *haven't* been shopping, and given it's only two of us, even if we'd just been shopping, we don't buy enough of any one set of ingredients to feed three times that number, unless we're planning to do just that. It's a lot harder to stretch food for two to enough for *six* than it is food for four or five to accommodate one or two mouths more. We also don't stock snack foods or children's beverages (beyond tap water ;-)), because who needs the calories or the temptations? (In between trips to the dentist for a root canal that will not end, I ended up in hospital last week on suspicion of another thrombosis/pulmonary embolism combo-to-theoretically-literally-die-for. Doing okish, so I am once again a free-range Mimi (just in time to go back to the dentist's... spare me. x.x). But obviously shopping was less important. (You are now completely justified in asking "then why the DIY, you nutter???" but I think it's just about trying to make something good *happen* instead of just non-stop disasters all the time. That gets really old. And it's not like we're getting heaps and heaps done...)) "I think the problem is the husband" ... So you all had my inner rat at the very suggestion that it was Mr. Mimi's fault, obviously, but on consideration I've realized you're also actually right about that. :-D (Of course, as @BookWoman56 said, buddy's primarily at fault, no question about it, but hubs is definitely the person I have to *thank* for this... situation.) @stewedsquash "your problem is the husband letting them get through the barrier. He will have to change his ways if you want to solve the problem." Wow. Brilliant! Right on the nose, and I couldn't agree more - it really *can't* change unless a) I want to become the total asshole and ride roughshod over situations like this (that's just not me, so that won't happen, and it creates more problems than it solves), or b) he becomes just a little bit less of a pushover, proactive and keeps those barrier defenses up (hopefully that *is* him). Un-/Fortunately reading how you and some of the others described what's taking place also sounded *really* familiar. It dawned on me that for years we had a reversed version of this dynamic where my mom was involved. I'll definitely need to think about that some before I go reading him the riot act. Fudge. (If this trait wasn't a good look on him, I can assure you I'm finding it an even worse look on myself...) I don't think you have to be blameless to voice objections, but it does seem a bit easy at this stage in the game to hold that behavior against him, when I didn't exactly wise up and stop it, either. Still, I need to sit him down and practice "just say 'no!'" and "bring pizza!"

Although, to answer that more usefully, Mr. Mimi's last name actually has a beta in it - the eszett. Legally, his name must be spelled with that ligature, or it is not his name. So it must be spelled that way on his driver's license, passport, etc. If he gets a ticket in the states, the poor cop will probably read that as a "B" instead. Embarrassing truth - easily 90% of the time I see his last name is in some form of electronic communications, and those generally use the double "s" instead, just like they use alternate spellings to avoid umlauts (like "oe" instead of "ö"), because not all keyboards have the characters, and not all systems would properly display them. (How do you type in an email address or url if you haven't got the key for it?) So, yeah, probably 9 out of 10 times I'm asked to spell his name, influenced by what I usually see, I technically spell it wrong. There's something broken when your spouse corrects you that you're spelling his name wrong. I also knew a pair of German brothers who, due to a mistake when their birth certificates were filled out, were legally required to spell their last names differently, one with the eszett and the other with "ss". Getting that fixed would supposedly have been a nightmare, so so it remained. Also "schön" can't be reduced to "schon," but *can* be spelled "schoen" because the "ö" is an "oe." Example of a url correction for "ö" here.

Damn, maybe it wasn't the one I was looking for. I thought there was a general one around here somewhere... Ö.ö (that would be a more femine side-eye)

Well there's this one but that might be less for asking and more for snarking. (As such, I've always been a bit scared to find examples of all the things I've mangled in there.)

not until menopause

It does not end... So. Mr. Mimi gets a call, it's a buddy who enjoys basketball, who has done the math and realizes that tonight is the last game of the whatever they call it NBA finals. The hubs has some kind of pass that means he gets it. I'm not sure local cable is even carrying it otherwise, especially given soccer!soccer!soccer! everywhere you turn, and I think he's got a season pass for ESPN or something. And even if they did air it locally, I gather their announcers sort of suck (they basically understand about as much of the game as I do: oh look! a ball! let's just say, you don't want me explaining the game to you.). And I get that if you like this kind of thing (which I personally very much don't, but I understand some people do), it can be nice to watch with a friend. Yeah... So buddy invites himself over. (Who didn't see that coming?) Hmm. Fine. We have a bit of vacation right now that we're using to tackle a few DIY projects (including the never.ending.curtain.saga... *sigh*), and having somebody here vs. watching on his own means cleaning instead of getting stuff done. Hell, I've got masking tape on my walls... But it's only one person, and I won't have to cook too much more, and I can probably find enough extra ingredients in the fridge, and I believe we have a bag of chips left in the pantry. Right. Ok, we got this. A few hours later, buddy texts, and says he'll bring his whole family. That's ok, right? *blink* *blink* Not a six pack. Not some snacks. His whole family. *blink* How astute! Exactly what we didn't have on hand. O.o Thanks ever so for thinking of it. How kind? *blink some more* There's no way that bag of chips is enough now, and cooking is suddenly a big issue, because we didn't go shopping or plan for this. (They seem to have invited themselves for dinner, too.) The mind, it boggles. Guys, seriously, is this normal? Am I just getting too inflexible? Too old and grumpy? This is just bonkers behavior, right? And for the love of mike, where does hubs keep finding these people? I know he isn't setting this up on purpose, because he is even less thrilled about watching with misc. kids than I am about the cleaning. And he'll definitely help with the prep, too, so it's totally unwelcome work for him as well. But it's work we wouldn't have otherwise had, and one less project we'll presumably finish. I'm trying hard to remember that socializing is theoretically good (like it makes any difference for me, I'll be hiding out upstairs), and productivity is often overrated, but it's proving a bit of a struggle, atm. (And sadly, no such thing as Domino's here. But the local Italian restaurant is happy to charge you an arm and a leg for individual pizzas. Like that's what I wanted to buy this week...)

Wanted to add that all of the above wasn't to say I thought you or any of the others were advocating suing his pants off. At 6 am, still unable to sleep with my throbbing cheek, knowing I needed to get up at 8 at the latest and be mentally acute during the day, feeling the probability of that latter seriously dwindling and beginning to panic, reading that read exactly as "Oh, you poor thing! Have a bowl of ice cream and see if that helps any..." And precisely hit the spot. (The post, not the fictitious ice cream.) Fell asleep for an hour shortly thereafter. :-) Also seem not to have screwed anything up too badly yesterday despite the sleep deprivation, so: yay!

O.o Words fail. (don't click, people.) But that's kind of the thing, really. There's absolutely zero way that the most economical thing for him to do at this point isn't just pulling the tooth... Somewhere during the third visit, I started wondering if I would have even needed that appointment if the thing with the tool hadn't happened. When it became clear we'd need a fourth attempt (and he made a bit of a push to try to get it sorted this time that led to a lot of squirming on my part, at which point he acquiesced), I was pretty damn sure much of this was because he was having to do work by hand he would normally use a motorized tool for, but couldn't because things were "blocked" by... tool parts, I guess.* And yeah, I wasn't thrilled. (* As it turns out, also because the issues that caused the first bit to break were still issues, and meant it was likely to happen again. I need a collection of tool pieces in my teeth like another hole in the head.) But. First off, he didn't lie to me. He told me straight up what happened, when it did, and when asked, in detail how that was changing what he could and couldn't do, and why he was proceeding as he did. I really like honesty. And I'm far less inclined to want to "punish" somebody who I think is honest. I know roughly how insurance here works, and I know there is a cap on what he will earn on this tooth. If he can make a good case for it, he might be able to double charge for the root canal and an extraction, but the cost of a root canal alone is capped. And he can't charge *me* extra for it; it goes straight to the insurance provider. So while this is definitely taking up my time, plus travel, and roughly $6-7 in subway fares a pop, if we do the maths, he "costs" X per hour, the use of the "real estate" in his office isn't cheap either, and he needs at least one assistant for most of the time. This *is* costing him. Not as much as a law suit, sure. But he could have lied about the bit, and I wouldn't have noticed. He could tell me he needs to pull it, and I wouldn't know that wasn't medically necessary. He's putting time and a lot of effort and money from his pocket into treating it in what he considers the "right" way, and that is an invaluable trait in a medical professional. That, folks, makes him at least a bit of an idealist. There is no way I'm going to behave in any fashion that knocks that out of him. Further, life sometimes just sucks. You look around these days, and it's like we expect things to be so sanitized, that nothing bad can happen. My understanding is that the typical American playground no longer has swings, and that your pools basically don't have diving boards any more. Ours has a 10 m tower, which is like diving off the roof of three story townhouse! Scary as sin and simply awesome! What a pity that fear of law suits prohibits so many peple from being able to experience that. (Ok, I'm sure most of you haven't missed that specifically, but the point remains.) As far as I'm concerned, there's only one solution for it: people take responsibility for the things they screw up (as they didn't in the case of the hospital trying to kill, or at least financially ruin, @BookWoman56's poor niece), and folks accept that life sometimes gives you lemons, and stop trying to make that into a lottery win with insane suits. "Only life can kill you..." when it stops being able to kill you any more, you're no longer living. (Of course all of that doesn't mean I'm not feeling extremely sorry for myself, or that I don't look a lot like the Joker, or that my cheek isn't puffy like a hamster's, or that it isn't throbbing like mad. But none of that changes the principles in question. It just makes me think I "deserve" ice cream. :-))

1) That would be your AD-ADD kicking in... :-p 2) Think they might have screwed up a reveal there, given Spencer is dating Caleb, and Toby was about to propose to what's her face, technically the only person she can break up with is Caleb, right? (Unless she were to break up with both of them, Caleb first, date Tobes, ditch Tobes.) 3) I was reading that list of who it could be, and legitimately managed to blank on Aria. I actually sat there scratching my head, and came up with Mona or Ashley first. Didn't think of Aria until I read it. Oh, show.

It gets even better: I'm also allergic to the damn gloves. The corners of my mouth, my chin and poor nose are fairly strawberry colored at this point. I can be fairly certain the rash will follow. (I'm hating the world a bit atm tbh.)

Shipping would make it prohibitively expensive, I'm afraid. (Always assuming they even ship internationally.) But I usually have all the ingredients except the citrus peels in stock in my kitchen...