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BookWoman56

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  1. Small suggestion here: Create a Word doc or Excel file listing your mother’s known health conditions and her current meds, including the strengths and dosages. Do the same for your father. Print them out, laminate if possible, keep the printouts in your car or purse, and take photos of them with your phone. Update when needed. When you’re talking to facilities or having to take one or both parents to medical appointments or even to the hospital, having those lists readily available will save a lot of time. If you’re stressed about the situation, it’s easy to forget some of the diagnoses and meds. The healthcare personnel will generally be grateful that you have all the critical information organized; very often they just scanned in the documents I maintained for my mother.
  2. This is crazy. A gazillion years ago, I was friends in grad school with a few people who were getting their master’s degrees in library science/management, but they all eventually took positions with university libraries. I was teaching freshman composition at the time and our syllabus included taking students to the university library and having one of the reference librarians give them a tour and explain the services they offered. I’m appalled that this dumbing down of the job requirements has happened in public libraries and sincerely hope it doesn’t spread to university libraries or other specialized libraries. There is a huge need in any library for knowledgeable staff.
  3. I understand where you’re coming from, but you don’t have to be a parent to know that if a set of parents treats one kid like crap and a different kid is treated as the golden child growing up, there’s a good chance that once the kid who was treated like crap is grown, that kid is going to resent its sibling and despise its parents. There are aspects of parenting where hands-on experience helps tremendously, and then there’s aspects where common sense should suffice. Sadly, a lot of parents seem to lack common sense.
  4. This mindset is undoubtedly responsible for all the relationship advice posts on Reddit that boil down to, “My boyfriend and I are both mid- to late 20s and both have full-time jobs. We moved in together a year ago, and he refuses to do any household chores other than taking out the trash. He spends his evenings and weekends gaming, while I handle cooking, cleaning, and so forth. His parents reinforce this behavior by telling me that he deserves to relax after work, and that housework is the woman’s responsibility. What should I do?” My favorite answer so far: Pack up his clothes and belongings, and drop him and his stuff at his parents’ house. Inform them they have failed to raise a functioning adult and need to start over.
  5. My grocery store has little placards for each bin of produce, with the price and the product code printed on it. At each end of the produce aisle, there are scales to weigh the produce, and you type in the product code, it calculates the price based on weight or asks you how many items, and prints out a scannable sticker to put on the bag of produce. I have some reusable mesh produce bags that have a designated place for the sticker. There are customers who can’t be bothered to do this, and then get annoyed if the cashier has to look up the product code. I’m mostly doing curbside pickup of groceries now, but when I shop in the store itself, I definitely print out the price stickers for my produce.
  6. I don’t think it will be a major problem to get them out; they definitely want their own place and have finally overcome some obstacles to doing so. The timing might be more of an issue, but they’re going later this week to meet with a realtor some 4-5 hours away, which is fine by me. But I knew if I didn’t give them a deadline, they would procrastinate like crazy. I do have some goodwill left for my sister because she helped a lot when our mother needed full-time care. For my BIL, not at all. I will need to wait until my daughter finishes her master’s degree before moving. I understand I might get a higher price if I sell right now, but it would be pointless to buy another house right now just for roughly 18 months and then have to turn around and move. I would also probably end up paying an inflated price for a different house right now, and possibly not be able to recoup the price in 18 months. Rental houses are hard to find at the moment, plus I have 2 dogs and 2 cats, which just makes finding anything more challenging. So once my sister and BIL are gone, I can focus on some small repair projects and getting my current house prepped to sell quickly once I put it on the market. I’ll be fine in a couple of months, just ready for a return to normalcy.
  7. @WinnieWinkle, I feel for you. My mother had been living with me for almost 2 years before she died in late 2019, and I’m still going through some of her stuff. It was fairly easy to go through her clothes and donate those to charity, and decide to keep some furniture and her china, silverware, and crystal, etc. But I need to force myself to go through some paperwork and shred everything except a few pages of medical history that might be relevant to my siblings and me. Since your father has sold the condo, that gives you more of a time crunch. On a slightly related matter, I haven’t posted much here for the past several months or even responded to a lot of posts. My mother had asked me to do what I could to help my younger sister, and I have done so but now hit my limit. For background, my younger sister has been a hot mess since we were kids, and it’s gotten worse as she’s gotten older. She was widowed fairly young, but about 15 years ago she and a high school boyfriend reconnected and got married. He is a total jerk, whose health has deteriorated significantly in the past few years due to alcoholism and heavy smoking, plus significant mental health problems. So, cirrhosis, hepatitis, COPD, BPD…and the list goes on. He’d been unable to work for a while and finally got approved for some kind of disability benefits. Their housing situation was horrible, and so I offered to let them stay with me for a while until they could get stabilized a little and then move into a new place of their own. They moved in last October, and my life has been absolute hell since then. So a couple of weeks ago, I told her that they need to be in their own place by the end of August. I just can’t deal with them anymore, more so my BIL than my sister. I sat down with my daughter a couple of days ago and we made plans. In about a year and a half, she’ll be starting a doctoral program most likely in one of two cities, both of which I would find acceptable as retirement locations. So at that point, I plan to sell my 4BR house here and buy a much smaller house in the city where she will do grad school. After the past few years, I need some major peace and quiet. I know that things will be better once my sister and BIL have moved out, but I feel very strongly that I want to be in a different place entirely.
  8. I can’t believe someone would do that, but if he’s prone to getting the munchies for ice cream, I would consider stocking up on the Ben & Jerry’s mini cups of various flavors, or the equivalent in another brand. I rarely buy the big containers of ice cream any longer and usually just get a bag of vanilla individual cups. But when I want a little variety, I grab some of the mini cups.
  9. Years ago, the son of a colleague died suddenly in a hit and run. He and I had spent a week working together at a special event only a few weeks earlier, and we chatted a good bit during that time. After his death, I wrote a letter to his mother recounting a lot of the conversations we’d had, including his comments on his life so far and so forth, so she would have a sense of what he was thinking about in the weeks just before his death. She told me later that the letter was a huge comfort to her. If you’re able to, maybe write something sharing your fondest memories of this person and what she meant to you. Her family will undoubtedly get the standard condolences cards, but something more personalized will be more meaningful. For meals or other items, you might wait a couple of weeks. There’s often a lot of stuff arriving initially, and then 2-3 weeks later, after the immediate pressure of dealing with a funeral and possibly visitors and so forth, sometimes the grief just rolls right back in. It can be hard to handle meals and so forth when life becomes routine again, but it’s a new routine without the loved one.
  10. It’s not necessarily that English language prepositions are especially tricky. Which specific preposition is used in a specific context varies across languages. I work with people from several different countries, with a large variety of first languages, and even among those who have a first language in common, they sometimes use different prepositions for similar phrases because they’re from different regions. Even in English, for example, some people wait “in line” while others wait “on line.” All that said, though, using the “wrong” prepositions consistently is a good indication that the speaker/writer is not a native speaker.
  11. I think K-Fed’s other kids are in for a very rude awakening when the child support payments from Britney end. From what I read a few years ago, the increase he demanded in the amount was not just for a larger, nicer house but also so all the kids would receive similar quality of possessions, so for example Britney’s kids might get the newest, most expensive phone, then the other kids would get something comparable. But to me this is an approach that creates a sense of entitlement in the other kids. Because if K-Fed is pulling in only $3K a month, once the child support payments run out, no way he’s going to be able to drop the same kind of money for electronics and so forth on his other kids the way they have gotten used to. I am unsure of the details but my impression is that Britney has gotten increased visitation in the past couple of years. Her family has obviously exploited her for financial reasons, and her father has been the primary person doing so. I find it appalling that her father gets to make reproductive choices for her. Also, no way would this conservatorship have occurred if she were male. FFS, if Kanye West is still running around making horrible choices in romantic partners and wasting money frivolously, Britney should absolutely have that same level of freedom.
  12. I’m currently looking at a 10-day forecast that consists primarily of “highs” in the mid to upper 90s, with one token cool day where the high will be only 90. Soon it will be that point when weather discussion focuses on how many days in a row it will hit 100 or higher. I am very grateful for my central air.
  13. I apparently commit blasphemy every time I make lasagna these days. I used to make my own sauce first and then layer all the ingredients. Currently I use two jars of marinara sauce to one jar of Alfredo sauce, mixed with a large bag of shredded mozzarella and Parmesan cheese, the precooked noodles, and the other ingredients such as bell peppers and onions, spices, etc. I don’t care what other people think about it; it’s easy to make and tastes way better than a lot of lasagna I’ve had in restaurants.
  14. I’ve seen a lot of people complain about FedEx, but UPS (not to be confused with USPS) is somehow always the delivery service I have problems with. In the last year, it’s been: Package just disappeared off the face of the planet while in transit, twice (2 completely different orders). Only box 1 of a 2-box item arrived (the table top without the legs and hardware isn’t going to do me much good). Today is doubly irritating. Package A is a couple of heavy boxes of materials for replacing my door molding upstairs. Got the “track your delivery on a live map” notification this morning. Four hours ago the live map showed the delivery truck about two streets over and six blocks away from my house. Since then, the truck has left my neighborhood entirely, gone to a small town down the road, and is only now one street over and a few blocks away. What sense does it make to have the same delivery truck go into a subdivision and deliver some stuff, leave and go 10 miles down the highway, and then return hours later to the same subdivision? Package A arrived at the local distribution center around 5am and was loaded onto a delivery truck around 6:15am. Package B is a small box; it arrived at the local distribution center around 4am. It did not get loaded onto a delivery truck, and the most recent notification says it won’t be delivered until tomorrow. I just don’t see how this makes sense, that the package that made it to the distribution center later gets delivered today, while the one that got there later is on the delivery truck. Obviously the timing on the delivery of these two packages isn’t a real problem, but it does make me question their efficiency. Coupled with the other problems I have encountered with them over the past few years, they will not ever be my first choice for shipping things. I understand others may have had very different experiences.
  15. I avoid the various dietary/food preferences labels and just describe myself as a picky eater. I will not eat seafood at all. I sometimes eat meat, but occasionally will go for a few weeks without any. I like some fruits and vegetables, but often can’t stand popular fruits such as strawberries. At the same time, I can usually find something tolerable at most restaurants or at a party hosted by family or friends, so I don’t feel like my food preferences cause anyone any real problems.
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