BookWoman56

@PRgal, maybe your mother is just so excited about your son that she can't resist buying stuff, but I agree that she should at least be asking your preferences before buying a boatload of clothes and toys for him. Probably the overkill on clothes and toys will end around his first birthday or so, and after that, she may go OTT only for holidays or other celebrations. My mother had been in the hospital for about 10 days and finally got out today. She had an incredibly minor cut to her thumb (from slicing a tomato) which got infected and messed up her entire hand and part of her forearm. Luckily no permanent damage, but she will need extra assistance for the next few weeks. My younger sister is here for this week to help and there's supposed to be home health care starting day after tomorrow. All I know is that I need a day where I'm not running to the hospital several times, running to the store, etc., in addition to my day job. I know the situation will get better eventually, but I'm really looking forward to my solo vacation in a couple of months.

I have a certain amount of expertise in standardized assessments (primarily for professional certification and admission to specialized college programs/professional schools), and I will flatly say no single test, no matter how good it is, should ever determine whether an applicant should be accepted into a program or for a job, be promoted, etc. I find Myers-Briggs at least amusing in that yes, some of the descriptions for the personality types seem to be on target for my own personality. But I loathe StrengthsFinder because it seems to be inherently stupid; it's not rocket science to know what your strengths are and to figure out that you might be better off improving those strengths to be very superior at those rather than concentrating on your weaknesses that you may never improve significantly, and yet I've seen various people describing how taking that assessment changed their careers. Anyway @bilgistic, sorry you didn't get the job but my gut feeling is that if your potential employer insisted on using some standardized assessment to figure out if you're a good fit, then that employer is not a good fit for you. After reading all the posts of bad news and horrible working conditions, I feel a little funny mentioning this, but here goes: I'm no longer in limbo at my job. A couple of weeks ago, I got officially moved into a new team, reporting to a manager who in turn reports to my dotted-line manager. And yesterday, after only a few mild allusions in the past few months to the possibility that my role might change, my dotted-line manager informed me that I've gotten a major promotion and a 28% raise. This is a promotion that I really should have gotten roughly a year ago, but my manager at that time was seriously ill (now deceased) and just went through the motions of doing the annual performance evaluations, not to mention that she played favorites anyway and I was always going to come in a distant second to her favored employee. Late last year, I had used an opportunity to interact with the head of our area to discuss my desire to expand my role, and it looks as if those discussions and my performance have finally paid off. So I'm in a bit of shock right now that I both got the promotion I wanted and got a larger raise than expected. On the down side, my friend/colleague that I had recommended for her current position is going to be screwed over. Our other colleague (former favorite of the deceased manager) who does not a damn thing but takes credit for everything, managed to get a promotion out of the deceased manager before the manager went out on her final medical leave. And so now TPTB have decided that this colleague needs to have someone report to her so she can have experience as a manager, and so of course it's my friend/colleague who is stuck reporting to her. Friend/colleague has decided to try to stick it out until she's put in a year and can post out to transfer to another area, but is really unhappy with the situation. The only mitigating factor is that the other colleague has also been given approval to hire a couple of other people who will also report to her, and so I think she'll be too busy giving the new hires a bad time to focus quite as much on my friend/colleague. The person who made the decision to give this other colleague a manager role is going to be in for quite the surprise when there is the inevitable 100% turnover of her entire team in a year or less.

How you break up with her depends on how much effort you want to put into ending the client/service provider relationship. If you're planning to transfer to another salon entirely or something similar, the simplest way would be just to stop making appointments. If you want to see another stylist in the same salon, or if you expect to encounter the current stylist in other situations, then you may want to give her notice that you no longer want her services. The attitude you describe of her thinking that she gets to make major decisions about your hair is why I quit going to salons a long time ago. However, if you feel you owe her some goodwill for having done a good job on your hair for a while, you might consider telling her why you're switching to someone else. Chances are if she is this controlling over your hair, she's the same way with other clients, and in theory, she should welcome feedback about why she's losing a customer. In reality, she might resent the feedback, though, so if you want to give her that feedback, it might be better to do it via email or a similar medium, rather than face to face. I go maybe once a year to a cut-rate salon because I don't want my hair styled; I just want it trimmed so the ends are more or less even. My hair is very fine and will not hold a curl or anything longer than maybe an hour, so there's no point in spending big bucks on something that's not going to work for me. Because I work from home and don't socialize a lot, I generally let mine grow out until I can pull it back with a clip and leave it that way until I eventually get annoyed with it or just trim the ends. It behaves reasonably on its own if I let it hang down by itself. A few years ago while I was still working in an office setting, my daughter and her BFF cut my hair for me just for fun (removing about 6 inches of the length) and more or less accidentally butchered it with uneven ends, etc.; yet, the next day when I went to work, numerous people I did not even know by name complimented me on how much they liked the new "style." Go figure.

Those are giant red flags that should make you absolutely not allow him to move in with you, unless there is a dramatic improvement between now and when he runs out of his inheritance. As you've said, you've just been through a horrifically stressful experience having your MIL live with you. You don't need any more stressors. And given the stress that experience had on your marriage, you and your husband need some time to be by yourselves and see if your relationship is going to work under normal conditions. As odd as it may sound, often when a couple is going through stress caused by an external source, they become convinced that nothing is wrong with their relationship and everything would be wonderful once that external stress-generating situation is removed. Yet after that happens, it can become obvious that there are issues in your own relationship, quite aside from the former external problems, that need to be addressed. Not to mention that even assuming your marriage is fine as is, you don't want your marriage to be one damn clusterfuck of a situation after another. If your brother refuses to abide by the conditions you've set, then it's just too damn bad. Are you willing to let him hold the rest of your life hostage with the implied threat of suicide? What good does it do to temporarily rescue his life if it means essentially destroying your own life by letting him control it? Yes, I probably come across as cold and harsh here, but if I learned anything from the years of hell being married to someone with some major substance abuse problems and other issues, you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped with underlying problems and only wants assistance getting out of the consequences of ongoing bad decisions. Thanks for the good wishes regarding my mother, who is doing much better post-surgery but still loopy from the pain meds. The night nurse was able to explain to her that I had gone home for the night and would be back the next morning. While she may have a few moments of anxiety, right now she's so drugged up she's barely staying awake for more than a few minutes at a time, and so if she does panic again, at least it'll be short. And yes, absolutely I won't be able to take care of her once she's discharged if I run myself into the ground while she's in the hospital. One of my siblings will be able to come for a week or two to assist after my mother is out of the hospital, which will be a big help.

@BuyMoreAndSave, I completely agree that before allowing a family member (or anyone else) to live with you, you need ground rules and a contract. My brother lived with me for about a year during a transitional period for him, and it was fine; we’d shared an apartment when I was in grad school and knew what to expect. However, I allowed my niece and her BF to live with me without establishing parameters because I mistakenly assumed they were reasonable people, and eventually had to kick them out. My mother has been in the hospital for the past few days with an infection that required surgery this morning. The 1st night I went home, and she woke up around 4 am completely disoriented and freaked out because I wasn’t here. So I spent last night here in the hospital room, with the standard interruption every couple of hours to check her vitals. She will be here for a few more days, but starting tonight I will have to sleep at home, or else I will be completely nonproductive. I go back to work on Wednesday, so have to be rested enough for that.

I have never seen Pretty Woman, nor do I ever intend to. I don’t think I could watch that many cliches at once without my head exploding.

As noted previously, I rarely use ATMs, but of the two closest bank branches I use, neither has an ATM in the lobby. What would be the point? The drive-up ATM is for customers who want to stay in their vehicles, and the lobby is for people who want or need to interact with a human teller, or need services not available via ATM. I have seen those generic ATMs, but there are also ATMs belonging to specific big banks in some stores. ETA: There are obviously regional differences in the way banks and ATMs are set up, along with differences depending on the size of the bank and the size of the city/town. I live in a large city in TX, and maybe it's just the part of town I'm in, but I don't think I've ever seen an ATM in a bank lobby here. Of course, the mindset here is often that everybody is expected to have a car, and that nobody wants to get out of the car if possible. I work for a very large bank (thank goodness not as a teller or anything that requires me to interact with external customers), but I don't go into any branch of my bank except under extraordinary circumstances (lost a debit card and need a new temporary card asap, opened up a new account in which I am my mother's representative payee for her SS benefits, and so could not open the account online, etc.).

I’m not entirely sure. My experience is that drive-up ATMs are often shorter and wider than the ATMs in kiosk settings, such as malls, convenience stores, etc. In my neck of the woods, anyway, the drive-up ones have been reconfigured in the past 5-10 years to accept and scan cash or check deposits, and more or less instantly credit those scanned deposits to your account. OTOH, the ATMs in convenience stores and so forth are much more basic, limited to dispensing cash and account balances, at least the ones I have seen. Admittedly I don’t use ATMs much anymore as my banking app allows me to deposit the one paper check I receive each month by using my phone, and so I mostly hit the ATM to get cash to pay my yard guy.

Presumably because the blind customer could be sitting in the left rear passenger seat, behind the driver’s seat, and need to use the ATM.

@Vixenstud, that's a huge amount of shit to have to deal with simultaneously. I hope Mr. Vixenstud makes a full recovery soon, so you don't have to deal with two patients. Is the plan still on for your sister to renovate the house she's being given and move your mother in with her? It definitely sounds as if you need a break from caring for her, and you need your own space. I try to make sure my mother has healthy options on hand, but she also likes a fair amount of junk food. And I'll be blunt here; she's lived to be 90 (91 in a couple of months) eating whatever the hell she wants, so I am not in any way going to insist that she eats only food I approve of. When she was in the assisted living facility, she had to eat the food they prepared but also insisted that my sister bring her certain snack foods. With your father, certainly you feel obligated to make sure he has healthy options, but as long as he's capable of making his own decisions, ultimately it's his choice as to whether he sticks to a healthy diet or eats comfort food. My mother consumes insane amounts of salt; her own mother always kept a small dish of salt (maybe a salt cellar?) next to her plate to dip her food into, so my mother grew up thinking a ton of salt was normal. I don't cook using much salt at all, but she adds salt to almost everything. Her blood pressure is fairly good and she has no heart problems, so it's evidently not doing her much harm. But for me the bottom line is that I'd rather have her eat stuff she likes and be happy, even if that means living a year or two less than she might, than to insist that she follow a specific diet and be miserable, simply to extend her life another year or two. It would be different if she were younger, but she's lived a long, full life and I'd rather she enjoy her life for however long she has left, whether months or years, than to listen to her bitch and moan about not having her snacks and salt for an extra year. In general, I will say the biggest lesson I've learned from being the primary caregiver for an elderly parent is that much like when you have small children, it's critical to find some time for yourself. I work full-time from home, take care of my mother, and am also babysitting my grandson a few hours every weekday. So lately I've been finding it therapeutic to take either Saturday or Sunday and go on a solo excursion for several hours, usually just driving to some specific landmark, chilling out for a little while, and then driving back. Highway driving relaxes me and gives me some peace and quiet for the most part, which I usually desperately need after a week of dealing with a lot of stress. The last few weeks have been especially stressful for several reasons, and adding to that is my mother wants to be helpful by loading and unloading the dishwasher. Sounds great in theory; in reality, not so much. She sometimes forgets to run the dishwasher, thinks dishes have been washed, and proceeds to put up an entire load of still dirty dishes into the cabinets, blissfully unaware of their condition. She also will take dishes out of the dishwasher and put them on the kitchen counter next to the sink, in the designated place for dirty dishes that haven't made it into the sink yet, with the result that she mixes up clean dishes with dishes that haven't even had scraps removed or dumped. In all seriousness, a week or so ago, I found 2-3 glasses in my cabinet with an inch or so of tea/soda still in them.

After reading the descriptions of the challenges for finding the correct connection cables and so forth, damn it, I need a time machine to take me to a future in which things really will be wireless. That is, no having to plug in appliances, electronics, etc. to a power source; no jungle of cables connecting cable boxes, TVs, laptops, etc. to each other. Just the ability to speak into the air and tell any given device what to do. Similarly frustrating, several times a day I have to go in and turn on my mother’s TV because she has managed to fuck up the settings by pressing random buttons on the remote until she accidentally turns off the cable box. Ordered one of those “senior-friendly” remotes for her but can’t get it to sync with the cable system, which is a major cable provider.

Another big plus for me is that he actually listens to what the client wants, rather than imposing his own design preferences on them. He occasionally will show the client a property with features that the client didn’t ask for, but he usually comments about that decision and his rationale. IMO this show is a welcome change from various design shows where the designer is hellbent on using a specific design style regardless of whether it aligns with the client’s request. Essentially, if the client wants an upscale house with an open floor plan, or wants a more modest house that needs some work, that’s what David focuses on instead of a cookie cutter house.

Thanks for the link; the blooper tape was entertaining. One of the things I like about this show is that it's generally free from drama (other than the faux drama of which house the winner will choose). Admittedly a lot of the lack of drama is the nature of the show itself, but I get the feeling that David wouldn't be comfortable in a situation where there's a lot of stress and anxiety. I try to imagine him doing a show like Love It or List It where it seems like half the time, the clients are throwing a hissy fit that they have to fix major structural problems rather than spend all their renovation budget on an upscale master bath, and the other half consists of the two co-hosts sniping at each other (even thought it's mostly in jest). I can't help feeling that he'd walk out on some of those clients. I also like that he gives credit to the local realtors for being able to come up with listings that match the winner's wish list; he's not pretending that he went out looking for houses on his own. But I think two things sell this show for me: It's nice looking at houses with interesting features that are usually well above the average buyer's price range; and David has an engaging personality. It seems like he takes the job seriously of finding these people a house that they really will love, but he doesn't take himself too seriously.

If you're staying up until midnight 4-5 nights a week, and then getting up at 6:30 am, you're setting yourself up for serious physical and mental problems, especially if you already have chronic fatigue. Adults need a reasonable amount of sleep to function well, and you're not getting it. I realize that your husband probably has little or no control over his schedule, but it's not your fault he works a schedule that is quite different from yours. He needs to understand and accept that you can't sacrifice your sleep to keep him company, in the same way that he'd undoubtedly be unhappy if you routinely woke him up at 6:30 am just to chat. Maybe I'm missing something here, but the obvious solution seems to be that the two of you plan your weekends for your serious time together, and just do the adult thing and realize that during the week, your schedules don't mesh well to have a lot of meaningful interaction. If it's that big of an issue, then one of you needs to change work schedules, while factoring in that you have parental responsibilities that dictate being available for the kids at certain times. If your husband is unwilling to either accept the situation or else take positive steps to change it to your mutual benefit, then that's a big red flag that he's going to expect you to accommodate his wishes rather than finding a compromise that works for both of you.

I’m sure oxytocin is a fine thing when produced naturally by the body. However, when it is given via IV without the patient’s knowledge or consent to induce labor, it can be horrible. The OB/GYN who was on call, rather than the one I had been seeing throughout my pregnancy, decided to induce labor after I had been admitted to the hospital for what turned out to be false labor, on the grounds that since the admission paperwork had already been done, no need to make the staff repeat it for real labor in a day or two. Because the doctor didn’t bother to ask me before having the oxytocin added to my IV, he didn’t know that there was a strong family history of problems with it causing convulsions and extremely rapid labor and delivery. Not to mention the problem that it causes extremely painful contractions, but they won’t give you anything for pain because that would slow down the effects of the oxytocin. Long story short, I did not get the epidural I was supposed to because my body decided to go into turbocharged contractions; the staff were literally sprinting down the hall with me on a gurney yelling at me not to push. Tried in the delivery room to give me a local anesthetic but missed and put my right leg to sleep. My blood pressure spiked and I had to stay in the hospital a couple of extra days, because of the oxytocin. These days, I would have sued the damn doctor but this happened when the mindset was still pretty much that patients were just supposed to passively accept the doctors’ decisions. Anyway, the upshot of that experience is that just seeing the word “oxytocin” makes me cringe. So now that it’s associated in my head with gym classes, yet another reason to do any exercising at home, even if that reduces my chances of meeting someone in the future for dating.

@Lantern7, I think you've gotten some good suggestions about your profile in general. I do think it's important to include deal-breakers, such as smoking, up front, so that you don't end up meeting up with someone whose personal characteristics are just not going to work for you. I agree, though, that the profile needs to include some positive characteristics regarding you, so that it's not only about what you don't want but also what kind of person you are and what kind of person you're looking for. I'm not currently interested in dating (way the hell too much stuff going on both professionally and personally right now), but I might have a different attitude in a couple of years. So I'm reading this thread and taking notes (at least mentally). As far as I know, I have relatively few deal-breakers. Someone who doesn't read is going to be a non-starter for me. Someone whose political views are radically different from mine is only going to annoy the fuck out of me, so I won't subject myself to that; similarly, I'm not interested in anyone who's looking for a religious person. Physical attributes are on a case-by-case basis, and not something I can really articulate other than there are people I'm attracted to and people I'm not, although those people may have similar physical attributes. However, I did discover something about myself about 10-12 years ago that I'm not proud of. A guy I was working with became interested in going out with me, and I agreed to a couple of dates. For myself, physically, when I was much younger many people considered me to be extremely attractive; now that I'm older, not so much. I need to lose some weight, which I'm working on for health reasons, but while I'm definitely not at my peak appearance, neither do I make small children shriek in fright. But this guy I dated a couple of times had also been very attractive when younger; I saw the photos. However, he'd been in a pretty bad aircraft accident with extensive burns over his face and arms. So, there were parts of his face and head where some things had literally just melted/burned off, such as part of his earlobe, and there was extensive scarring. Even though on an intellectual level, I could tell myself that his physical appearance should not make any difference to me, on a visceral level, I just couldn't get past the scars and so forth. I felt bad about it, but made it clear to him after that first couple of dates that a romantic/sexual relationship wasn't going to work. I couched it in terms of other challenges; essentially at that time, my daughter had just been diagnosed as bipolar and I had to focus on finding a good doctor and the right combo of meds and therapy for her, so even if I had really clicked with this guy, things would have been complicated. But that experience taught me that even if you're not thrilled that behavior or characteristic ABC is a deal-breaker for you, it's better to be honest with yourself about the existence of those deal-breakers and up front with potential partners, while not being rude.

I finally tracked down the episode for what has been my favorite house of the series, which it turns out was season 1, episode 2, in which the winners have won around $11MM, and go for a farm of sorts in Stillwater, MN. Although I had no use for the barn the wife was going to use for agility training for dogs, I loved the 40 or so acres and the house itself. There were some interesting architectural features without it being too over the top, and unlike some of the houses in a rural setting, the house itself didn't have a rustic feel to it. If I were to win that kind of money, that's what I'd go with in terms of acreage for seclusion purposes and a lot of square footage. With the discussion around the costs of using winnings to buy a house, my guess would be that for many of the winners, it's not like they're going from paying no property taxes to all of a sudden paying property taxes on a house worth $500K or so. So if a couple already had a house in the $250K range, and then with their lottery winnings of say, $2MM, end up with a house for $400K, I'd think as long as they continue working, they should have enough of a cushion to pay the increased property taxes. I also don't see why having a larger house would necessitate extra expenses such as a lawn/pool person or cleaning services, if those services weren't already being used. Maybe I'm getting the wrong impression, but most of the winners I've seen on the show seem like they're going to be doing their own housework and yard work. Maybe they're going to have a cleaning service come in once a month or something, but plenty of people do that without having won the lottery. I think it comes down more to how realistic people are about how much they've won and what they can do with it, versus thinking that winning a million dollars means you can spend like crazy every day. With the Stillwater couple, for example, I think they spent about 20% max of their win on the new house, leaving them with a good amount even after taxes were withheld.

This rumor turned out to be wishful thinking on somebody's part, as my manager died over the weekend. Another colleague and I learned about it first thing this morning. I had frankly wondered whether she was really coming back, given that she'd had two rounds of cancer within one year. Apparently she was hopeful she'd be able to return for at least a couple of months, but took a serious turn for the worse about a week ago. Her two kids are in their late teens and presumably will now go live with their father. It's obviously a sad situation, but from my perspective not really unexpected. However, I foresee some uncertainty over the next few weeks as TPTB decide how to re-org. Unless something changes drastically, I assume I will be transferred over to the person who is now my dotted-line manager. What's up in the air is what will happen to my friend that I had recommended for a job and who is now working on my current team. The other colleague who has been acting as an interim manager is just completely unsuited to be a manager; if I were told I'd now be reporting to her, I'd be looking for a new position asap. With my friend, I'm hoping she will end up on the same team that I should be moved to; it would make sense as my dotted-line manager oversees the entire project for which my friend is essentially a project manager on one component of this project. But I'm a little concerned that if there is a re-org that ends up with my friend formally reporting to our colleague that we both dislike, my friend is going to get screwed over. She's essentially doing the same job that this other colleague used to do, and of course, this other colleague is convinced that nobody will ever be quite as wonderful at that role as she thinks she was. Once the dust has settled, I will strongly recommend to my new manager that it makes more sense for my friend to report to him than to leave her in the existing structure. I feel somewhat guilty in that I don't really feel a lot of sadness or grief over my manager's death, but we were never particularly close and at best her style of management was benign neglect. I've had managers I was very close to where this would have been a major loss, but in this case, I just feel general regret and as self-serving as it sounds, I mostly just hope her death doesn't fuck up the workplace environment for me and my friend. Not sure if that makes me cynical or just a pragmatist.

Exactly. I could sort of see using gray carpet if you were in a tropical setting, with very bright clear skies all the time, and your furniture and wall colors were bright, bold colors, so the gray carpet would tone things down a bit. But gray carpet when the sky outside is often gray? Unless your goal is to get people depressed, or you're doing a stage set for some grim Dickensian orphanage setting, then no, your choice of taupe makes much more sense.

If you decide to do some retraining, just make sure it's something that is transferable to other positions/companies, rather than something completely specific to your current role. While my job appears relatively safe right now, I'm in the same boat that if I suddenly had to start a job search, my age would count against me. That said, a lot of current advice on resumes is to limit your work experience to just the past 10 years of jobs, on the grounds that anything older will probably not be relevant to the job you're seeking, and to remove the dates from any degrees and so forth you might have. I lucked out in that for my last two positions, there was no in-person interview, only phone interviews, and so nobody knew my actual age until the day I started work. Even then, I'm lucky in that I can easily pass for 10 years younger than I really am, but I've seen too many older candidates get passed by because of the perception that they won't be as energetic/productive than someone 10-20 years younger. It sucks. However, that's where doing some retraining can help offset that perception; if you can show that you're willing to learn new things, then people are more likely to see you as flexible and able to adapt to changing work environments. I don't see any harm in going into the office one day being dressed up enough that you could be going for an interview elsewhere; I don't think it hurts to have your boss/colleagues casually wonder if you are looking for something else and then have to consider what they would do if you weren't there any longer. That said, I wouldn't do it more than once unless you actually do have an interview. I've known managers who stupidly feel that anybody who is looking for another job should be fired asap, rather than asking themselves what's motivating the person to look elsewhere. (Despite the fact that these days, it's unrealistic to expect employees to stay in the same job/with the same company all that long. I'd consider it bad form to start job searching 2 weeks after someone takes a new job, but if they've been on the job for more than a couple of years, nobody should be surprised when employees are looking to change jobs.) I sincerely hope she keeps her distance and leaves you alone. Ongoing workplace stress and tension don't generally produce good results. I did put in an insane amount of hours because of my procrastinating colleague, which sucked as much as I thought it would, but on the upside, it did result in me getting some shout-outs and an actual gift card for going the extra mile. We're having planning sessions right now to address how to improve things for next time, and this particular type of incident is included in the list of things that we don't want to happen again. My colleague's boss was not happy with him at all, and copied 5-6 people higher up the corporate food chain in thanking me for my work to pull this off. Meanwhile, my manager who's out on medical leave is rumored to be returning sometime next month, at which point I can be moved over from her team to the team of my dotted-line manager. Looking forward to that, as it means a change in the scope of my work and being able to concentrate on documentation that is more interesting to me.

If it makes you feel any better, I look back at the furniture that my first husband and I bought for our very first apartment together, and wonder WTF I was thinking, because in retrospect it was pretty hideous. We selected it in large part because yes, we felt we had to have certain pieces of furniture to be "real adults" and married, with the result that none of it was anything I really liked. Fortunately, at the point we divorced, I willingly agreed to him retaining all the furniture we had bought jointly, and I kept only a few pieces that were mine prior to the marriage. More recently, I now have a fairly expensive sofa and love seat that are in shreds because not too long after I bought them, our household acquired a couple of puppies, both of which proceeded to chew through the fabric and stuffing all the way to the wood frame. So, I need to arrange for someone to haul those off and then I will go the Ikea route, because at least if they eat through the fabric again, I can just get a new slipcover easily that fits exactly, and if they destroy the couch and love seat entirely, then I will not feel quite so stupid for having spent a lot of money on them. (The dogs are now a bit older and not quite as prone to chew through everything they encounter, but I'm not going to go with an expensive couch and so forth again anytime soon. In the meantime, I still have my grandmother's old sofa that needs to be reupholstered and am hoping maybe in a few months to have the time to go pick out some suitable fabric for that; once that's done, it will have to go into a room where the dogs can't easily access it.) I've mentioned before that my house is less than a couple of years old; I bought it brand new two years ago this coming end of July. But the kitchen cabinets are very dark wood, I think an espresso color, that I don't really care for, and so I'm looking into having them refinished in the next 6 months or so. Which brings up my current interior decorating pet peeve: WTF is up with everybody using gray as their default color for everything from floors to kitchen/bathroom cabinets to furniture? Several design shows I occasionally watch seem to go the route of using gray for numerous things, and I don't understand the appeal. Is gray supposed to show less dirt than white but not be quite as stark/dramatic as black? Anyway, having learned my lesson from buying furniture that I didn't really care for but which was popular at the time, I'm going to go with a color for the kitchen cabinets that I will like, and not give a fuck if it's not a popular color right now. I'm leaning right now toward a Wedgwood blue with cream trim, because I'm tired of the dark cabinets; I might consider a glossy white but think I would tire of that quickly. At the point that I decide to sell this house and relocate, I can always have them refinished to whatever the flavor of the week is then.

I understand your point, but I’d think that if someone has worked himself/herself into that mindset, any consideration for other potential victims would be minimal to nonexistent, just as there appears to be no consideration given to other people on the road. Even if we assume that she accidentally got drunk because of trying to numb physical pain, she evidently didn’t give much consideration to the possible consequences of her actions on her own kids, her nieces, and other drivers and passengers, or else she would have rejected the idea of self-medicating herself and then driving. If she got drunk because she was an alcoholic, then again she demonstrated zero consideration for anybody else, perhaps thinking she wasn’t that drunk and could drive okay. Either way, though, there’s a point at which she is sober, before she consumes any alcohol that morning, but she chooses to drink anyway, knowing she is supposed to drive 5 kids, including her own, back home. So I don’t see the presence of her nieces as a major obstacle to her possibly deciding to end her own life and that of her passengers.

I decided to rewatch to refresh my memory, and a few things stood out to me this time around. First, Danny knew from day one that Diane was driving drunk when the crash happened. There is just something about his face and voice that conveys the entire time that he knows perfectly well that Diane was drunk, but he's going to put whatever spin on it he has to in order to create the impression that it's just unthinkable that Diane would have been both drunk and high while driving around with 5 kids in the car. My guess is that there is some financial aspect to this; whether he's trying to prevent her life insurance from refusing to pay out, or if there's some idea that he might be considered culpable if he admits he knows she was prone to drinking and driving, etc. His story does change; as someone noted earlier, he goes from essentially claiming that Diane didn't drink at all to talking about keeping a bottle of vodka at the camp or whatever. So, somebody who doesn't drink at all or drinks very rarely is going to transport a bottle of vodka on a camping trip, rather than maybe go out and get a couple of wine coolers for the evening? I don't think so. He resents being left with his son to raise; every time he interacts with his son, there might as well be a thought bubble over his head stating that he'd rather have just had the life insurance payout and no surviving kids. Jay struck me as initially hoping that a new autopsy or labs would reveal some kind of medical explanation that would allow Bryan to grow up without hearing all the negative comments about his mother. But as time went on, she went from grasping at straws to just going through the motions of trying to find some theory, no matter how ridiculous, that would offer a different interpretation of what caused the crash. By the end of the documentary, though, she's clearly disillusioned with Danny and disgusted by his lack of interest in being a parent to his son. Her exasperation is quite evident. The bottom line for me is when Danny and Jay are talking to the elderly specialist, who keeps pointing out that there's zero evidence of any kind of medical event such as a stroke, but even if there were, there's no way to get around the BAC levels. I can't remember exactly what the specialist said, but there was a remark where he more or less said that they were looking for some sort of story to tell themselves. IMO, Danny was never looking for the truth of what happened; he was hoping there might some physiological finding that would muddy the waters. From the interviews with Diane's childhood friends, colleagues, and adult friend, she obviously compartmentalized her life. She ditched her childhood friends when she got involved with Danny; my guess would be because they knew her during the period when she was having to take on the mother role for her brothers after her own mother left, and she regarded her relationship and subsequent marriage to Danny as remaking her life to be what she wanted it to be rather than what reality had been when she was younger. She seemed to be a control freak in all aspects of her life. It weirded me out when her MIL described how Danny was like Diane's oldest son; WTF kind of relationship is that? This time around, I came down much more on the side of thinking it was a suicide/murder on her part. Even if she had an abscessed tooth or migraine, I don't see any way that someone accidentally ingests the equivalent of 10 drinks in a short time. I've had an abscessed tooth and used to have migraines pretty frequently; yes, you want something to kill the pain, but the normal reaction would be to pull over and call a spouse or sibling, explain that you can't drive because of this debilitating pain, and wait for one of them to come get the kids. She made a few stops where she could have just decided to stay put and wait for help rather than get back on the road. Even if she was afraid that her brother might send the cops and she'd get busted for drinking, she could also have probably just bluffed her way out of it by sitting tight in a rest area and claiming that she'd taken some pain pills or migraine meds or something that made her woozy. There didn't seem to be any actual medical evidence of a recent abscessed tooth, anyway, other than comments that she was rubbing her jaw, which could be from a variety of causes. I'm not sure what was going on with the phone calls to supposedly wrong numbers, but I wish the documentary had provided a little more discussion of those. Who made the determination that they were wrong numbers? My own theory is that something happened that morning to set her off. It wouldn't surprise me if Danny were having an affair and picked that morning to tell her, just prior to leaving her to deal with cleaning up the campsite while he takes off with the dog. Maybe she was having an affair and that was the morning it fell apart. Or maybe she just hit that wall where she realized that her existence with Danny was as good as it was ever going to get, and it was so far short of what she wanted because he was a child in a man's body, that she decided to end her life and take the kids with her, rather than repeat her mother's actions and walk out on the family. That's not logical thinking, but it could make sense to someone in a depressed state or alcohol-fueled rage. The various witnesses on the road who were able to get out of her way were all consistent in describing her as driving straight, not weaving, and being very focused looking straight ahead. One of them even said that she thought the driver was intent on killing herself. While obviously there could have been circumstances in which she drank much more than she usually did and ingested some pot as well, to me it makes much more sense that she burned out on being the perfect wife and mother, felt betrayed, and lashed out to make Danny suffer and feel guilt. And so my final thought is that much of the reason Danny did those ridiculous private investigations is to deflect any focus on his own behavior. That is, if everyone had simply accepted that Diane got extremely drunk and high, the question might have been raised of what was so bad about her life that she would need that kind of self-medication. Instead, Danny has sought to cast doubt on her being drunk and make it sound like there was no reason for her to drink, etc., because then nobody is asking inconvenient questions about the state of their marriage. Now, I wouldn't put it past him to slip her an Ambien or something similar if there were a foolproof way he could bring about her death and the death of both of his kids, leaving him with a life insurance payout and no responsibilities. But I don't think he'd take the risk that she and the kids might survive with serious injuries that would require him to be a caregiver. ETA: I think I understand why the documentary makers chose to show the photos of Diane's body. There's such a contrast between the photos of her that they kept showing from her wedding and so forth with her kids and others; it's like they're underlining that those photos show a fantasy, but the reality is this bloodied and bruised corpse who destroyed several innocent lives. There are no more fancy dresses, posed shots, and smiling faces; there's just a body that's about to be hauled away.

Yes, I'm just unsure how effective those kinds of things would be in this kind of case. I can't remember if she was speeding much, or braking too much. I'd be tempted to say that there should be something similar that disables the car if someone is driving the wrong way, but I've personally experienced several times when because of new construction, GPS kept telling me I was driving the wrong way on a road, when in fact I wasn't. It just failed to recognize that there was now a parallel road, going the other direction. That's why I think a built-in breathalyzer would be useful; if you register as over the limit, then the car won't start at all, rather than allowing someone to drive while impaired long enough for the monitoring system to pick up on high speeds, excessive braking, or other erratic driving. However, it's a moot point in this case, as the damage has already been done to those families. It's been long enough since I saw this that I may need to watch it again to refresh my memory on a few points. I just have zero sympathy for drunk drivers who kill people; I don't really care what kind of personal or marital problems are occurring, it's not expecting too much of any licensed driver to refrain from driving while intoxicated.

My guess would be that the Bastardi family suspects that Diane's problems with alcohol were an open secret within the family, and that while Warren Hance may not have known specifically that Diane would be driving drunk and high that day, there was an overall pattern among the family of covering up for her or dismissing her behavior as driving while slightly impaired but not so intoxicated as to be extremely dangerous. Maybe Warren assumed that while Diane might drink too much at home, surely she wouldn't drink excessively while transporting her own kids and her nieces. It's that sort of assumption that contributes to this kind of tragedy, when family members know that a person has alcoholic tendencies but foolishly believe, oh, my parent/sibling/spouse would never go to that extreme. I rarely believe in something like this that the family had no idea of her alcohol abuse. It reminds me a little of a situation I encountered a long time ago, when a group of friends had become aware that one of the people in our group was having serious drinking problems. After a party we had all attended, this friend and her BF left after drinking too much, drove home, and discovered the next morning that the front of the car was dented in where they had evidently hit something on the way home. Neither of them had the slightest recollection of hitting anything, and she called a few of us in a panic because she was concerned that she might have hit another car or even a pedestrian. We monitored the news and accident reports very carefully for the next couple of days, but whatever they had hit, it wasn't anything that made the news. But that was the point at which we decided to do an intervention, which resulted primarily in her getting very pissed off. There was a major disconnect going on there; on the one hand, she'd admitted to an alcoholic blackout so bad she and her BF had no idea of what the hell they had hit on their way home, but on the other, she was accusing us of overreacting to her having had "a little too much to drink." In the condition she and her BF were in, they could easily have driven the wrong way on the interstate or just a regular road and caused an accident that would have killed several people. It was this incident, combined with a few other things, that led to our group of friends ultimately dropping her as a friend, because we realized she was not going to accept any responsibility for her actions and was in major denial about her alcoholism. Now, I still go back and forth on whether Diane simply overindulged without malicious intent and caused this horrific accident, or if she decided she was ready to die, didn't want to leave her kids to her husband to neglect, and regarded her nieces and anybody else that might get hurt as collateral damage. But there's no way I'm going to believe that among her husband and family, that none of them had any idea that she occasionally drank excessively. Again, I'm not saying they knew she would drink an insane amount plus be high, and drive around with several kids in the car. I think they knew that she was prone to drinking too much, but mistakenly assumed she had certain boundaries she wouldn't cross. I think one of the things that haunts me about this case is that I can't get past the fear and possibly terror that her nieces must have experienced before the crash. They were already aware that something was wrong with Diane, and they probably realized she was driving the wrong way on the road but had no way to make her stop. This situation is one of those that makes me wish auto manufacturers would speed up a bit on the technology to disable the starter if a driver can't pass an breathalyzer test attached to the steering wheel. As much as it would annoy me to have a car test me every time I need to drive, it would really not be much worse than having to buckle your seat belt every time you drive, and would potentially prevent a lot of accidents from occurring.