My In-Laws

Me to Dr. S, a few months ago: "Dear, sometime we should talk about what your parents are going to do when they can't live in that giant house any more... which will be in a few years because of [assorted preventable health issues, history of CANCER!! (it was Stage I, ten year life expectancy is unaffected), and a neurodegenerative condition].

Dr. S, very huffy: "I don't see the point!  They won't listen to me anyways and we'll just deal with it when we deal with it and it won't be your problem anyways." [Stomps off.[


Dr. S, this week, after visiting his parents: "Dear, we should talk about what my parents are going to do.  My dad had a fall and eventually they won't be able to live in that big house any more."

(Readers, I RESISTED the urge to say I Told You So.)

Friendship, Part 5, Or: People I Wish I Liked

Do you ever meet people (in person, that is) and you... want to like them, but something is just not right for a friendship or, indeed, any degree of real intimacy?  Especially in Small Town USA here, I often meet people and think, not that they could be my friends, but that I wish I could want to be friends with them.  (In other words, I wish they were themselves, but without one or more completely objectionable traits.)

The latest crop includes, but is not limited to:

1) A wide array of One True Way people.  Evangelical vegans.  Homeschoolers who believe- and tell you!- that no child could get a decent education at a public school, and besides, it'll damage the little darlings.  Evangelizing Christians.  Evangelizing anyone.  I have examined my life choices, thank you, and while they may not all be optimal, they are mine.

2) People with Deep Personal Stuff that they have made, and are making, no effort to sort out.  Untreated severe eating disorders.  Anxiety.  Depression.  Not people who have sought treatment and it wasn't effective; not people who are working through different options.  People who literally won't leave the house for half a year in case they might catch a cold.

3) People who say one thing and do the exact opposite.  And then are puzzled about the results.  As in, "I am really bored!  I really want to work!" And then not applying for a single job.  What... did you think was going to happen?  Or people who really want their child to sleep through the night but give them milk and cookies at 3 AM every night. That's precisely the opposite of how to get the desired result.

4) People for whom no amount of 'proof' is ever enough.  See also: all the rabid Hillary haters, vaccine deniers, and antiscientific nuts who think turmeric cures arthritis.

5) Everyone who truly believes a woman should never have the right to choose an abortion. (Edit: just people who think NEVER.  Not the life or health of the pregnant person, not an ectopic, not incest or rape, not fatal birth defects.  I have one strongly anti-choice not-close friend but she also believes that access to birth control and social services and food stamps and stopping POC being killed on the streets is part of being against abortion.)

FMB: Lonely for rational people

I'm not talking about rationalists, who can be real asses, but a basic level of reason-based interaction with the world.

Epsom salts are NOT absorbed through the skin.  Think about it for a minute!  When you sweat does it get absorbed back in?  If you sit in the tub does your body absorb water into the bloodstream?  Of course not.

GMOs are not inherently bad or dangerous.  Natural is not inherently good.  Extracts that kill things in cell culture are not automatically good cancer treatments.  Essential oils don't do anything except smell nice.

The water is tested yearly and they send us the report.  Three cases of cancer on one street are not a cluster, and probably not due to arsenic.  Almost nothing has a 100% penetrance on cancer causing.* In fact, almost nothing has 100% penetrance on anything, aside from some nasty genetic diseases.

Basic logic is a thing.  Proof by counterexample.  Reasoning from principles.  The difference between necessary and sufficient conditions. Whyyyy are people so bad at basic logic?

(This post is brought to you by a record number of people I wanted to shake this week.)

* High dose radiation but less than the lethal dose, possibly.   Maybe drinking some really bad chemicals.  Asbestos? 

How to Lose Weight

Have a sick baby who nurses six hours a day for two weeks.

Be allergic to practically everything. 

Leave your dinner on the stove.  Go nurse cranky baby, leaving cranky older children with extremely cranky spouse.  Do not say to spouse 'Please turn this off soon' because he is a grown-ass human.

Return an hour later to a burnt, inedible pot of mush.  Eat one baked-oatmeal muffin and half a red pepper for dinner. Go to bed hungry. 

Repeat.

This Is Just to Say

-My children have murdered the laptop and will get no more screen time NEVER EVER because we don't have a television.

-School cancellations inspire me to rage.  It.  Is.  The.  Mountains.  It fucking snows every year.  Please can we stop cancelling school for ice.  A small amount of ice in a city with no buses and 7000 inhabitants.  Please.

-Something is Not Right in the southern hemisphere here and my otherwise great family practice docs say 'wait and see' BUT it had already been Not Right for 20 days or I wouldn't have gone to the bloody doctor.  

-Not everyone has to be like me BUT I cannot contain my disbelief every time someone takes their healthy toddler/larger child to the doctor because of something harmless ONCE.  The kid had ONE day of fever or threw up ONE time!!! Panic!!!  Whyyy. 

-Related: Treatment guidelines. Read them.  Because the doctor did. 

-Also, when I am sick I hate everyone. Yes.  I am sick right now.  

-The usual is Not Right in the boob region and in consequence I am cutting Sweetpea's nursing back to four times a day (morning, morning nap, after lunch, bedtime).

-Sweetpea is compensating by nursing foreeeeeeever.

-It continues to take only small amounts of chronic pain to send me into a Despair Spiral.

-I have a Weaning Plan!  (Step One, 'teach baby to take nap without nursing to sleep' has already happened.). And a deadline: June 1.  At the latest.  June is summer and summer means DONE.  

-How do... people put babies to sleep without nursing?  Do I give her, like, milk and a snack before bed?  I don't even know.  

-I continue to realllllly want more like 50% of a job but to reallllllly not want 100% of a job and this continues to be frustrating.

Grinchiest No; Advance Directives; Also, Wakes

Someone I knew in Cold City is 'crowd funding' her parent's funeral. To the tune of $15,000.

Look, I know funerals are stupid expensive.  However!  If someone's last wish is to be cremated and transported to  [East Asian Religion] monastery in a far flung corner of [Faraway Country], perhaps that person should make those arrangements their own damn self, especially before being dead/ expensively brain dead.

And if someone's only offspring is a broke grad student with a child, maybe that's a good time to put aside sentiment - and expensive funerals.

Maybe I'll feel different about it when I'm older, but I suspect I and my robot feelings will turn out like my mom: "Bury me in the cheapest crate they have.  Or a sheet. I don't care. I'll be somewhere else, or nowhere at all, by then."

Also, if it were my ashes or even my beloved parent's ashes, I would have the crematory send them FedEx.  Live within your means!

(I'm trying to think if there's any kind of 'crowd funding' for donations -as opposed to goods and services- that I don't feel grinchy about.  Maybe 'my house caught fire'.  But only for people I actually know well, because I feel no financial obligation to relative strangers, though we do donate to charities. You?)
*****

For some reason this brings to mind the time my grandma was filling out a Five Wishes form.  She was going along checking off and crossing out.  "I want my clergy person to be notified if I am hospitalized - yes. I want to be bathed even if I am nonresponsive- yes. I want my congregation to pray for me if I'm ill - maybe.  WAIT.  'I want to be massaged daily with oils?' Fuck,  no."

*****

I recently went to a memorial service at the local country club.  'I think they'll have wine,' I told Dr. S.  'At a memorial?' he said. 'No!'

Open bar and LAKES of wine and a bluegrass band and five kinds of dessert and only 15 minutes of speeches.  Dear readers, when I go - may it be decades away - raise a glass and float me off on a lake of liquor. But only if everyone can reasonably afford it.

How to Alienate Your Child's Spouse: A Letter to My Future Self

Dear Self In Twenty Years,

Don't do this.  Don't do any of this.

Love,
Me.

HOW TO ALIENATE AND ANNOY PEOPLE IN TEN EASY STEPS.

1) Disapprove thoroughly, regularly, and vocally of your adult child's choice of partner, who is surely Too Something.

2) Criticize all joint decisions.  Surely the spouse's choice will ruin your child's life.

3) Exclude the spouse from decisions, outings, and photos. Choose whatever's least considerate.

4) Disrespect all parenting decisions, but blame your child's spouse for making them.  However, remark how pleasant your grandchildren are.

5) Complain you never see your grandchildren, then when you do, go do random shit instead of spending time with them.*  In fact, complain about all the natural consequences of your choices.

6) Never change any family foods, traditions, or observances (ham and midnight church!  Noooo).

7) Don't listen to or respect the preferences of your child or their spouse. Respond to differences as a personal attack.  Don't ever ask them anything. Push every boundary.

8) For bonus points, openly favor your child's sibling, and prioritize them in your life. Your child's spouse won't find this unacceptable at all!**

9) Complain endlessly, but never listen to anyone else's life.  This is an excellent principle for relationships in general!

10) Finally, despite all these things, be bewildered about why your child AND your child's spouse neither like nor respect you, and why they never come to your house.

(They're not terrible people!  But I don't have to put up with constant belittling and disrespect.  Dr. S sets boundaries and abides by them, but it's exhausting to do that all day every day while managing the self-absorbed planning, the biting dog, and the assumption that Dr. S is still bound by gratitude, affection, and dependence.  NOPETOPUS!  Never going back there for more than one day! Dr. S takes the kids out of obligaton- to our children, that is. )

* For example!  Go look at houses for sale near Lake Whatever. All morning. No, really.  This really happened.
** Military, with black ops.  And ditto, this really happens.  See also: Sepsis Plus Trip to Alabama, But Not Seeing Only Granddaughter.    

More Snippeting

I feel there might be a less confusing way to phrase this sentence about a transgender teen:  "Ayden grew up a tomboy and in sixth grade thought he was a lesbian."

Maybe this would be a good opportunity to write a sentence without pronouns, newspaper people.  Because you can be correct and still ridiculous.

Also, I really really, really dislike the word tomboy.  It implies that sports, hammers, trousers, and playing in the mud are at best non-normative and at worst transgressive for little girls.  What the actual fuck, society?

(Just to be clear, I am suggesting they write "Ayden always gravitated towards sports and construction equipment, and eventually became aware of an attraction to girls." OR WHATEVER. But 'he was a lesbian' is always going to sound ridiculous, which distracts from the story.  Much like reading 'she always wanted to wear dresses' about a transgender teen who previously identified as or was assigned male, it makes the reader confused rather than thoughtful.)

A Brief Prayer

Creator, grant me the courage to help my children succeed at school, the wisdom to answer other parents with kindness, and the patience to not stab people proposing 'Psychology Today' as a reputable evidence-based source.

The Ugly Israeli (Tourist)

The Ugly Stereotypical Tourist! We've all met them, and perhaps we've been them: the person from the flatlands who shrieks in the Louvre "Harold, I can't read this menu!  It's in FRENCH!"*  Or the big city dweller who scoffs at everything, and is constantly to be found saying "In Big City the bagels are superior.  Oh yes, we have a church just like Sacré Cœur there." The (black) Philadelphian who is shocked that there are black people living in the rural South.**

I'm sure there is overlap between all groups of unpleasant tourists.  And by no means are all tourists unpleasant!  Some understand that each place has its own rich cultural and legal history, and that perhaps its inhabitants will get pissy if they criticize every single damn thing.  In other words: It's rude to insult people when you are a guest in their home.

Well, friends, I introduce to you The Ugly Israeli. (Several of them were introduced to me last month!) Who:

• Thinks that all persons not living in cities are ignorant hippie throwback kibbutzniks. 
• Thinks they are therefore qualified to reeducate such people. For example: "You really need to go to a gym to exercise.  That [cutting up a 50 foot tree] work won't keep you healthy."
• Has no conception of the fact that they live in a country the size of New Jersey.  
• With the population of NOVA.
• And therefore there's a hell of a lot of country to deal with.
• Thinks spending a week on the east coast has taught them all about Americans, and makes sweeping and inaccurate generalizations every two minutes.  "Americans don't have charcoal grills!  Americans don't cook! Americans don't drink tea!  Americans....." Really?  REALLY?
• Must be continually be reminded that driving through three medium sized states is the distance from Tel Aviv to FUCKING BAGHDAD. And there are fifty states. 
• Has a national memory that is 65 years long.  Has no concept of legal frameworks arising over 250 years and thinks all your laws and customs are stupid.
• Related: suggests you 'just change the Constitution'.  IF ONLY WE HAD THOUGHT OF THAT.
• Endlessly harps on American racism.  
• Argues incessantly.
• Doesn't know how to stand in line.
• Actually literally insults you in your actual literal home. 

* True story.  I saw it with my own eyes.
** Ditto.  I even tried to keep a straight face.

Week of Peevishness 5

Hypocrites!  Republicans who take food stamps. (Nobody should go hungry, but neither should they walk out clutching their EBT cards and declaiming against everyone ELSE who receives this benefit.). Democrats who evade taxes.  Libertarians who oppose marriage equality but support state sanctioning of straight people getting married.  Members of the military who oppose government health care (VA system and DoD/tricare are the biggest payor provider in the country and 9.1 million vets were enrolled in the VA system alone in 2014).  People who get their knickers in a twist about some aspect of modern medicine (edit: by which I mean, like people who won't vaccinate, or who think Science Can't Show Anything) and yet willingly take antibiotics.

Some days, I'm pretty sure that I just hate people.

Your turn for annoyance!  It's one of those weeks. No complaints too petty.

Week of Peevishness 4

#4: People who decide to do something (home school!  concealed carry!) and then decide that not only is it the best thing for them but then decide they must convince the whole world that it is the best thing of all things.  Frequently accompanied by a tiresome desire to convert all persons in the vicinity to the One True Path.  Look, if homeschooling (or being a Seventh Day Adventist/ vegan/ Holier Than Thou I Don't Feed My Child Sugar Just Dates And Fruits  And Honey) is great for someone else's family, great. I don't want to homeschool; the thought gives me hives.  And when someone tells me my kid's school, which their kid has never attended, will ruin his life because of some half baked article they read about Boys Don't Get Enough Movement, I get a little annoyed. (He's fine, by the way.)

Tell me how your nearest and dearest have confused What I Want with True Religion!

Week of Peevishness 3

Bad Weddings Bingo!

Bride cries
Inappropriate toasts
Drunk uncle
Three people who aren't on speaking terms
You wish something would catch fire
FREE SPACE: Mother cries
Ambulance is involved
Run out of liquor
After the wedding you aren't on speaking terms with the bride
 Inappropriately dressed guest
Dog eats something
Something spills everywhere
 So much liquor you couldn't possibly run out
Someone gets lost
Officiant offends everyone
You can't eat anything
 Mother loses it
Small child loses it
Rain!
Officiant offends you
Inappropriately dressed bride
Bride cries with rage
Ring bearer won't
 Something catches fire
 Someone starts an argument

 (I have this as a PDF and will add the link one of these days. Current I am off at the wedding. Pray for me, dear readers, to the deity-of-patience of your choice.)

 Your turn! Favorite bingo-worthy family moments? Additions to a bingo card of Horrible Family Events?

Week of Peevishness 2

#2: things I haven't said to Sister 2 but want to:

"You were an annoying little shit for pretty much all the years of your first marriage.  Let's not do that again, mmmmkay?"

"Do you remember all those screeds on Americans Are So Materialistic while you stuff your two suitcases per person, or just while going through Customs?"

"If you ever send me those screeds again I'm going to retaliate with 'Israelis* are so hypocritical' and 'Nobody gets to criticize American racism unless they live here because you don't know what it's like'.**  Seriously, let's NOT do that again."

And what would YOU like to say to your relatives?

* I don't actually believe this.  Making a point about her past behavior.
** Likewise!  'Nobody gets to criticize Israel's (racist, apartheid, illegal) treatment of Palestinians because you don't live here.'. Mmm, right. 

Week of Peevishness

#1: People who say they're going to go 'research' something, by which they mean use Google or possibly read abstracts BUT without any of the background necessary to distinguish between JAMA and the Journal of East Indian Natural Herbal Biological Remedies. On average, people with no scientific training know nothing about science and research,* so they will read an assortment of blog posts and conclude that all Category C medications MUST NOT be taken in pregnancy!  Well, I feel they're as qualified to do a literature review as *I* am to referee a paper on epistemology.


(Note to the reader: I have to look up what epistemology means every time. In my head it's something to do with letters.  Yes, I know, that's epistolary. Same with hermeneutics: I know it has a meaning but my brain doesn't store it.)

What's your pet peeve this week?

* Some do, of course!  But not everyone with a college degree knows the difference between data from Motherisk and data from, say, Andrew Wakefield. 

FMB: On Friendship (4)

An unfortunate encounter with a new-faculty-spouse-in-town reminded me that  I have a reflexive revulsion for persons too stupid or irresponsible to vaccinate their damn children, and years of listening to idiots have pushed me towards the belief that there is only one right choice!  Delayed is better than not at all but the reasoning is idiotic.  Not only do I not want my children - particularly the baby - around unvaccinated children, but I see the issue as a litmus test for social responsibility, passing acquaintance with the scientific method, and general intelligence.

This person failed.

Dear new mom I met at LLL,

I invited you to our baby playgroup out of kindness because I remember how hard and lonely it is to suddenly go from working full time to a short maternity leave.

You took it upon yourself to invite four people - one of whom I dislike intensely, two of whom I barely know, and one of whom 'just isn't okay with the CDC vaccination schedule' to the house of someone YOU don't even know.  In addition, thirty seconds' thought would tell you that I have MET these people, and perhaps I didn't invite them ON PURPOSE.

It's true that two other moms invited one extra person each- people they know and I don't.  It's also true that they invited these people to their OWN homes.

Way to get yourself rapidly uninvited to, oh, everything in the future.  Learn some manners and a social grace or three.

Yours,

Don't Write And Don't Call

Dear Everyone in 2009,

I'm sorry.  I'm especially sorry if you had non-baby children while I had a baby.  Like all people with their first child, I was crazy.*  I stopped the car every time the baby cried, instead of evaluating whether 1) it was less than ten minutes to get home and 2) whether the child would fall asleep on the way.  I worried endlessly about stupid stuff** and was terrified to let my baby be unhappu, even though usually screaming was the worst that could happen.

I am now amply repaid by my local acquaintances who have recently welcomed first children.  Dear readers, they are insane.


*Though I have never been crazy enough to take a 99th percentile four year old child to the doctor because the child had ONE DAY of diarrhea. 
** Except that time he had pneumonia, when I should have been a tad more worried.

Daily Write It Out: In which my MIL gets on my very last nerve

So I've never really gotten along with my egocentric, toddler tantruming, whiny, entitled in-laws.  Neither does my dear spouse.  And they've always played favorites because Dr. S doesn't play along with their inconsiderate and coercive games. They disrespect every boundary we have.   They have spent the last ten years being rude and disrespectful, and throwing a tantrum every time Dr. S and I establish reasonable adult boundaries (no, a one year old cannot go to dinner at 7 pm; no, the tantruming child does not get ice cream; no, we cannot drive ten hours with a nursing baby but you're welcome to come here, retired people). They have a chronic inability to get that dairy could actually send me to the hospital and are always insisting in going out for a cheeseburger (while I either stay home or starve- in my cosmos, not feeding people is a cardinal sin). They drove down to Alabama for BIL's pilot graduation, but here is 'too far'. The only good thing is that it is Dr. S's job to enforce boundaries and he does with extreme prejudice.  They visit once every year or two; I go along with it because I don't want to cut my boys off from them- for the children's sake.  I mean, one day they'll be gone and I don't want to have to explain why I never let them see grandma and grandpa.

My parents are wonderful, helpful, and reasonable, and only drive us nuts about once a year.  They also understand that dinner is 5:30


So my SIL, who is delightful, is pregnant.  Just a little pregnant.  After many years of infertility, and I'm genuinely delighted.  I very much hope they'll be holding a screaming baby in January.

My MIL has not bothered to come see Sweetpea, her only granddaughter and the third of her three grandchildren (the astute reader will note that I have three kids). But she is already planning to FLY TO KOREA in January.

No, dear, I DON'T think you should take the kids to see them in August after all.

FMB: Familial Snark

My middle sister is trying to start a company aimed at getting school-age girls to love science.  Leaving aside the advisability of this as a solution for gender discrimination - what, you're going to instill a love of discovery and science in them, so that when they get to higher education, they can be extra disgusted at gender bias and outright stupidity? - I mean, good luck, whatever.  Sure, why not!

However, the Evil Book of Faces brings me regular posts by people she's pitching to, which invariably reference how she's 'overcome so much adversity' (and has a PhD and is so smart, which I'm fine with).  Let's review that adversity: married a jerk at age 19; moved abroad; picked a grad lab full of sexist jerks; changed labs; realized spouse was a controlling, borderline abusive, alcoholic jerk; got divorced; did a postdoc; realized postdoc advisor was a sexually harassing jerk; found another job.

In my world, if your own serially poor choices lead you to EVERY SINGLE ONE OF the difficult situations you are 'overcoming', I don't call it adversity.  I call it taking responsibility and time to grow up and, most especially, adulthood.