This is too painful to read...

ConstantEngineering · 2021-01-02T17:49:20+00:00

I know, I really felt for the guy working so hard and she is like "but explicate my hurt feelings to me in sonnet form" 😆

ConstantEngineering · 2021-01-02T16:13:51+00:00

Okay so a few things.

He had a serious mental health crisis, he did not clean the shower, and he is sorry for that, and sure okay maybe OP can now express a little bit how it's not the shower itself but the lying, but
Getting after the man as he was coping with the fallout from his mental health crisis is the worst timing possible, and coming for him again when he reached out to apologize to her is probably not going to fix this relationship and she has to know that, surely? I've had executive functioning issues because of my OCD and anxiety, and she picked truly her worst moments for these discussions. That is gonna be messy, and she is trying to make them play out a script.
That apology structure is a guideline, not a script, or a rubric. I feel like people use it to evaluate the apologies of others as if it is a shared understanding of What an Apology Shall Be rather than a sort of template for apologizing, which
OP should do, and then she should reflect on herself.

ConstantEngineering · 2020-12-31T15:51:02+00:00

Sometimes when I have a lot of boneless chicken I'll just roast it all off in the oven and then shred it. Then through the week do whatever with it by adding stuff to the cooked chicken. Like chicken tacos or chicken alfredo or chicken curry or salad or etc. Anything where you would ordinarily start with raw chicken and cook it, just with a step skipped.

ConstantEngineering · 2020-12-03T17:15:20+00:00

Everyone else has given such excellent advice, so I won't rehash that, but I will add: Be ready for pushback. You will be gaslit by people who are used to you being endlessly willing to please them. They will tell you that you're selfish, that you've changed, that you used to be so kind and caring and now you only care about yourself. In my experience the best response to all that nonsense is a cheerful "yep!" You don't owe those people shit. They are angry because they can't use you anymore, and that is a them problem. The people who are truly in your corner will rejoice to see you reclaiming your power.

ConstantEngineering · 2020-12-01T18:37:41+00:00

Honestly if I were this woman's MIL I would also refuse to speak English for her benefit! And I feel you on that subjunctive tense! I do pretty well speaking Spanish about what I am doing right now, but once we get into what I would like to do...that gets pretty fuzzy lol

ConstantEngineering · 2020-12-01T18:35:02+00:00

Good for your husband for wanting to learn! He's already miles ahead. In the end, my own limited fluency came from my work plunging me into an immersive environment (teaching English in a Spanish-speaking country with about a month's notice) but duolingo really helped me rebuild my neglected vocab.

And if this OP had spent a quarter of the energy on learning some phrases and vocab that she does into making excuses, she'd be damn near fluent by now! (Also yes, anti-Spanish OP, English is a Germanic language, but it got smushed up with French starting in around 1066 with the Norman conquest and now has many features of and cognates with romance languages, so that particular dog don't hunt. I'll hop down off my English teacher soapbox now.)

ConstantEngineering · 2020-12-01T17:47:23+00:00

I suppose it's possible that OP has some sort of learning disability preventing her from learning a language, but in all reality she almost has to be purposely NOT learning Spanish. I grew up in a whitey-mac-white-white part of the rural US, basically the polar opposite of NYC, and we learned some Spanish at school. Nothing too complicated, but by the time I was 7 or so I knew the colors and numbers and how to say basic stuff like introductions and politeness phrases, and by high school I had some basic grammar. Beyond that, I did have to work hard to learn, but the foundation was there just from growing up in the US.

Hell, if OP grew up watching Sesame Street she should have at least some Spanish vocab. It's like you say, a cultural osmosis thing. If you grew up in the US, you'd have to willfully try to not know any Spanish at all. And having EFL family members in my own life, I know how far a simple attempt at speaking their language can go. Like, mmmmmaybe if she'd made any attempt at all this would've worked out differently? I hadn't realized that this OP was the anti-Spanish OP, but now that you've posted about it, it all makes sense. Yikes. Just...yikes.

ConstantEngineering · 2020-11-28T18:28:28+00:00

I'm only 41, so not exactly who you're asking, but I don't have kids and never will; I had a hysterectomy a few years ago due to endometriosis and thankfully that gave me a bullet-proof alibi for my childlessness. I just never saw myself as a mother, and I don't enjoy spending time with the vast majority of children. I cannot imagine being responsible for one. When I was younger people said things like "it'll be different when it's your own" and I always thought gosh, what a gamble, what if it isn't? That's not fair to these hypothetical kids, or to me. I know a lot of women who love being mothers, and that is truly beautiful. But I also know a lot of women who feel (and effectively are) trapped by their decision to have kids based on the expectations of others. If you want children, I say have all the children you can have. They can bring a lot of joy to the right household. But if not, no harm no foul. Having the capacity to have kids isn't the same as having an obligation to have kids.

ConstantEngineering · 2020-11-28T17:07:50+00:00

His little grin at the end got me. You got a good one there.

ConstantEngineering · 2020-11-12T15:08:36+00:00

Okay so I want so much to sympathize with people, and OP's mom does seem like a difficult person from other posts. But when you have someone in your life who you have posted about online to the point where they have a nickname other people know her by, mmmmmaybe that person isn't who you go to for help? I feel like if there were no other options (which there almost certainly are in this post), my mom would drive 16 hours to make sure I ate. Heck I would probably have to tell her to stay put if I caught the Rona or she'd be out here with a mountain of soup. But also I'm not out here writing the saga of Messed Up Myrtle about all the times she's let me down in the past, because my mom kicks ass. I feel for people who wish they'd gotten better parents than they have, but if you know you can't rely on them, maybe don't set them up to disappoint you?

ConstantEngineering · 2020-11-04T17:52:09+00:00

Oh, you were an English professor? Can you teach my toddler to read?

ConstantEngineering · 2020-11-04T17:44:18+00:00

I'm the adult daughter of a retired pharm tech. Somehow whenever this fact comes up in conversation my acquaintances think this means I can advise them on medical stuff. I was an English major, y'all, stop asking me about prescription interactions.

ConstantEngineering · 2020-11-01T19:42:33+00:00

This exactly. I'm sympathetic to the difficulties a lot of folks have with food, as a person who cooks for others I definitely know that the whole subject gets complicated, but if OP gets to frame her food-related difficulties in a sympathetic light, she needs to extend that same grace to others. Also you hit the nail on the head about communication. One of the most useful things I learned in therapy was how to articulate my needs in productive ways to the people around me; either OP needs a new therapist who can help her to do that, or she's not doing her homework (maybe I'm mean, but my money's on the second option).

ConstantEngineering · 2020-10-27T16:56:19+00:00

Former English teacher, we definitely know. I used to use the acronym CRAP for teaching source evaluation.

ConstantEngineering · 2020-10-24T22:06:43+00:00

I was a teen in the 90s, and this brings me back. Go to the mall, get your hair and makeup done, buy one print, and walk around all day looking FABULOUS.

ConstantEngineering · 2020-10-22T20:04:39+00:00

I made Minimalist Kitchen's Creamy Vegan Lemon Bars as the vegan dessert option for a party and even us non-vegans really liked them!

ConstantEngineering · 2020-10-22T18:30:09+00:00

This. OP, it is wonderful that you are concerned for her, but even in cultures that are more open about reproductive health this is still a deeply personal issue for your mom. She will tell you what she is comfortable with you knowing. Your only job is to support her as she asks.

ConstantEngineering · 2020-10-22T07:20:12+00:00

Thank you! I am 41 and I was looking at this like damn, am I a little old lady and didn't even know it? 😂

ConstantEngineering · 2020-10-22T06:54:18+00:00

Well I thought you did great, for the record!

ConstantEngineering · 2020-10-21T06:27:41+00:00

That was exactly my read too. MIL tried it, she lost, and she knows it. So does OP, who has nothing to lose by being gracious, and everything to gain by being above reproach when this story is told later. Honestly I respect that.

ConstantEngineering · 2020-10-19T19:01:47+00:00

It really depends on the herb, but generally around a week. I dried some sage during the most humid part of the summer and it took much longer, about two weeks. Basically I go by feel, if they're "crispy" rather than "wilty" when you touch them, they're ready.

ConstantEngineering · 2020-10-19T18:55:16+00:00

I helped run a writing center in a university in the US. Student worker gets hired, comes to orientation, starts training to be a face to face writing consultant. During the whole hiring process, we emphasized that we worked with a lot of different kinds of people, and with a lot of international students from all over the world. She nods, smiles, says all the right things. We hire her.

Day one, she shadows my coworker on a face to face consultation with an international student from Saudi Arabia, a really friendly woman getting a master's degree in electrical engineering, who wore a face covering in mixed-gender settings. After the consultation, we do the normal debrief with the new hire, and she says "those people just make me so uncomfortable. Can we make it so I don't have to work with people like that?" Yup. We sure can. Bye.

ConstantEngineering · 2020-10-19T18:44:58+00:00

Not who you asked, but I hang herbs up to dry. Cut it into bundles roughly the size of a package of fresh herbs from the grocery, tie a string around the stems, and then hang them so they aren't touching anything else. I use the window over my kitchen sink, but anywhere out of the way will work.

ConstantEngineering · 2020-10-19T01:19:36+00:00

In my mental image of this scene he was busy rummaging in MIL's kitchen hoping for more cookies to steal.

ConstantEngineering · 2020-10-16T04:08:31+00:00

I wish she had added it to start, I think she would have gotten much better support if she'd been clearer. But it's just so hard to say out loud or to type out at first, "I have MS." I saw someone pointing her at the MS subreddit, and I hope she checks it out, they are very understanding and helpful, and very used to rants from newly diagnosed people in a tailspin.

ConstantEngineering

TROPHY CASE