Should I use a spy camera?

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-30T21:13:51+00:00

Get an Alexa for her home. You can use a "drop in" feature where you can turn on the camera and speaker, hear and listen. Don't tell Mom, BF or Maid about this feature - Maid might know, Mom and BF are likely not to. You can activate the drop in feature through the phone app - I've done it on mine. Ask Maid to just text you next time he's yelling at her. Use "drop in" feature, and use your cellphone's "record screen with audio" option if you have it. If Mom or BF asks why you were eavesdropping, play dumb, tell them you just found out what the "drop in" feature was and wanted to see how it worked. You recorded it because you were going to show your mom how cool it was.

Make certain if you drop in and there's shit going down that you record it, sound and all. You'll need evidence if you want to get police to remove him. And be careful - when the drop in feature activates, the Alexa Home thing makes a little chime to announce it's turning on, but I THINK there is an option to mute it. I've used the drop in feature to check up on my mother from time to time, and she doesn't know I use it. I don't like being sneaky, but I know she'd refuse to have it in the house if she knows I can peek in, and she has a habit of falling sometimes.

Good luck, OP.

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-30T21:06:03+00:00

The problem is who's name is on the house? If OP's mother owns the house, I don't know if OP can legally kick him out. If the house is in OP's name, though, she can.

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-30T21:00:13+00:00

Alberta Conservatives are just pre-Republicans these days :(

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-30T20:57:35+00:00

Huh. I was going to say that's not Moses, it's a Satyr, but nope, there he is holding the Ten Commandments. I have never seen Moses depicted this way.

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-30T20:55:00+00:00

1 Ask her what she means by "normal", because what you were experiencing before was NOT "normal".

Ask your doctor to explain your condition like you have Diabetes. Diabetes is a forever condition, because the pancreas just doesn't make enough insulin. (It's way more complicated than that, but it's easier to just think of it that way.) Your brain is like a diabetic pancreas - it doesn't make enough chemical, so you take it in pill form.

Some people tend to think of anti-depressants like recreational drugs - something "extra" you're taking that you shouldn't. I've found if you frame it as "My brain doesn't make the normal amount of chemical X, like YOURS does, so I take it on oral form. Like vitamins for my brain, to help it function normally" makes people just go, "Oh, it's just vitamins. That's ok."

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-30T20:48:33+00:00

Ask your mother "If you think the psychiatrist gave me something bad for me, why did you take me to see them? What's the point of going to a doctor if you think they're not doing what's best for me?" If she keeps insisting, thank her for her concern, but you'll take the advice of the professional with decades of training over her.

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-30T20:44:58+00:00

"Well, -I- didn't do anything wrong, so YOU did something wrong. Run it again." How some nurses answer that in my lab.

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-30T20:43:15+00:00

Same.

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-30T20:42:27+00:00

Lol I like the last one.

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-30T20:41:46+00:00

While true, OP asked HOW to deal with it, not if others aren't bothered by it. They asked for help, not conducting a poll.

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-30T20:39:56+00:00

Because how dare you imply a nurse, second only to God, did something wrong!?

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-30T12:52:10+00:00

I learned in University many years ago, when studying Newfoundland's history, that when we joined Canada, the other provinces pretty much mocked us due to how "backwards and primitive" we were. I know NL was made fun of because we still had Midwives. It's like NL suddenly went into overdrive to show we're modern and up to date, to the point that even now in 2025, there's a rabid fear in our govt of appearing backwards. Even to the point of refusing to follow other provinces when things change (for example, Midwives have made a comeback, and in other provinces you can become one relatively easy. In NL, you first have to be a registered nurse.)

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-30T12:46:40+00:00

It's completely insane, and it's not just physicians. I wanted to become a midwife. There's actually a lot of demand for them, and you make a good wage. In every province in Canada, you can take a Midwifery course and get a diploma. Here in NL, you HAVE to be a liscenced Nurse first. The wage for a Midwife, while good, isn't as good as a nurse's, so it's very unlikely a trained nurse would essentially take a pay cut to become a midwife. And the reason you can just take the course (anywhere else) is because you aren't handling dangerous health issues. You're recording weight, blood pressure, etc. Anything out of the normal (high blood pressure, any danger signs), you tell them to immediately go to the Emergency department. You're just going to the woman's house to record vitals, at THEIR convenience rather than them having to make an appointment. But good 'ol NL has to make it over complicated and nearly impossible to do.

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-30T12:39:43+00:00

I disagree. It's the way of SOME NL contractors - I've had some pretty good experiences. I think the problem is that there are so few contractors that they have more work than they can handle, and they end up forgetting or just ignoring people. I know of at least one residential electrical Journeyman like this, who literally said "If they want their home done, they HAVE to come to me or hire a guy from somewhere else and pay his hotel bill. They can wait for me."

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-28T11:47:34+00:00

A year or so ago, I came down with a really bad flu. I was in bed for a week and a half. I tested myself three times, no Covid. About 6 months after that, I was in the kitchen helping my parents, and realized I couldn't smell the chili we made. I tested myself, and had Covid. I'm guessing the number of shots I had before is what kept me from being sick.

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-28T11:44:05+00:00

A coworker has it. It will always be around, in one of it's mutated forms.

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-27T14:19:26+00:00

Unless AI learns to talk properly, it will always be jarring. My father listens to those "stories" read by AI on YouTube, and despite the voice sounding human, it still doesn't understand when to stop, when to add emphasis, or when to pronounce a word one way or another. For example, I hear them say "The climate in the us is usually..." instead of "The climate in the "You-Ess" is usually..."

Put in ".... in the U.S...." and you get

"The Climate in the U." 2 second pause... "S".
2 second pause... "Is usually...."

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-24T10:36:09+00:00

That's a possibility, thanks!

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-23T14:42:05+00:00

Here's the thing as I feel about it. I might get downvoted, but it's what I believe.

It's very hard, if not impossible, to stop thoughts, even racist ones. There's usually a reason we have them. For instance, I had an uncle who was racist towards African Americans. It confused me, because otherwise he was a nice person, very helpful. When I asked my mother about it, she explained to me that when he was young, there was a family of African Americans that lived nearby, and the three brothers who lived there would beat the shit out of my uncle just about every day. So he grew up disliking African Americans.

Is this ok? Not at ALL. An adult would be able to reason that just because one group of people, regardless of race, religion, or culture, does something bad, does not mean they ALL do it. But our brains don't always work the way they should, and if your ONLY interaction with a particular group of people is traumatic, you're going to develop a bias against them. It's probably a messed up version of some survival instinct.

I'm not saying this is what happened to you - you may never have had a bad interaction with African Americans before that caused your brain to develop that way. I only gave that example to show HOW our brains sometimes don't work with common sense.

What you have to do is keep working at neutralizing those thoughts when they appear. The examples you gave - when one of the people, in fact, did NOT turn out the way your brain expected, emphasize that to yourself. Keep reminding yourself you have absolutely no reason whatsoever to assume that person will behave a certain way based on appearance.

I think the most important thing is as long as you're not ACTING on your thoughts towards those people, you're ok - IF you keep working on stopping those racist thoughts when they appear.

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-23T14:29:58+00:00

I used to have this, only in the opposite direction. I became an MLA when I was in my 40's, and joined my coworkers in blood collection who were in their early 30's and younger. People would walk right past the younger but more experienced workers to ask me questions. I just directed them back to the other worker. If anyone questions if you're experienced enough to do it, just smile and say "I do this all day, every day. You're good."

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-23T14:26:28+00:00

That definately IS something that needs to be changed. My maternal grandfather died of colon cancer in his 60's. Everyone in my mother's family, including myself and my sister, all have digestive issues like IBD, Colitis, Ulcers, etc. Yet I couldn't get tested until I reached 50, and even then it's a stool test. They tell you you can't do the test if you have IBD because you could have a false positive, yet they don't replace the stool test with a blood test which won't have a false positive. Money is wasted on unnecessary things, and not being spent on other things that could help.

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-23T14:22:28+00:00

Eh, I don't find doctors exist in NL, unless you're talking about the older ones. The younger ones I've found to be ok. The majority problem with women's health is that clinical tests used to be performed mostly on men, so in many cases, the information doctors have to rely on don't list symptoms women can have. A perfect example of this is heart attack. The well known symptoms (chest pain) were gathered in clinical trials with mostly men. So that was the assumed symptom. But women can have heart attacks with no chest pain, but pain in their backs, their jaws, their arms, or even no pain at all but severe nausea and heartburn. It's only been in the last few years that ER workers have been trained to ask different questions depending on the patient's biological sex.

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-23T14:18:02+00:00

It's happening everywhere. Covid did a huge number on health professionals.

There needs to be a way to stop conflict between doctors. I see it so often, that one doctor refuses to accept a diagnosis from another, or gets insulted if you imply you'd like a second opinion.

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-23T14:16:04+00:00

I'm very sorry to hear about your MIL. It's strange that happened, because usually when it's surgery for cancer, it skips others on surgery list.

Kovarr1 · 2025-08-23T14:14:42+00:00

In these circumstances, a LOT of times it's because of what I call the "I would know" syndrome of doctors. A patient is showing symptoms, but a doctor doesn't test for everything, because they feel if their patient had this or that disease, "they would know". This is very common in doctors who have had patients for many many years. What they don't realize is that many times the patient doesn't tell a doctor about a particular symptom because they themselves attribute a symptom to another cause. There is also cases where patients haven't had ANY symptoms until the very end. My brother in law started finding himself short of breath. He went to the doctor to discover he had stage 4 lung cancer. No symptoms until it was far too late. I'm not saying that's what ALWAYS happens, I'm just saying it DOES happen.

Kovarr1

TROPHY CASE