The Trivial Complaints Thread... number 2!

[Beth3346]

i once had a dream that Bruce Willis murdered me. and also one that Trump poisoned me in Las Vegas. I have no strong feelings about Bruce Willis but i do have strong feelings about Trump. Those dreams are scary. even though mine were a little absurd it was really upsetting.

i can also relate to the parents being children thing. my parents are doing ok for their ages I guess. but sometimes it really hits me that I have to look out for them way more now. and my dad especially has a more difficult time accepting that he can't do things the way he did back in the 70s. sometimes he pouts a little and my mom gets angry. sometimes she gets frustrated and starts crying. she's been really emotional lately. this was especially apparent when we went through the process of moving them close to us. trying to explain in demand housing markets was difficult. no you can't think about it for 2 weeks. yes housing prices are too high. welcome to the world i've been living in for years!

also does anyone else feel like these changes in their parents happen quickly. my mom has always been pretty emotional. but in the last 6 months or so she just seems a lot more frail. she doesn't want to do much. then she gets upset when i ask her if she wants my help with stuff.

[Taffeta]

My mother's definitely got more stubborn. Actually, no. Scratch that. I notice because now she sometimes listens to me She's always been stubborn in ridiculous ways. She's the kind who will constantly remind you of her paper cut but completely overlook when she's bleeding internally. As a mother she's always been a great advocate...you should have seen her take apart the smug person in my PIP tribunal a few years ago. I call her the rottweiler. But it can be difficult to get her to do anything she doesn't want to and that hasn't ever changed.

I am better at persuading my Dad to do stuff sometimes than my Mum is. Mum thinks it's daughter bias.

My mother is 74 and my Dad is 79 as of this year.

[Rainlove The Pegasus]

Ok... Here is my complaint.

I had swimmers ear in my right ear last sunday. it went away last tuesday. felt good tht it wouldnt move to the opposite ear. Nope. So i now have swimmers ear in my left ear (yay me, NOT!). my mom gave me ear drops this morning. feeling like crap all day. and then got a sick feeling stomach about 30 min ago. Earlier I tried a q tip in my ear to see what i could get out. all that i got out was a tan bit of earwax or something nasty.  . I cant go in water till thursday evening. i snacked on some doritos and have a diet coke for my stomach. currently laying on my bed waiting for this ear infection to leave and never return. 

[Ponyfan]

I can relate to having older parents also.  My dad practically threw a fit this weekend because he wanted to watch something on TV and I wanted to do something else.  He says he doesn't get mad about things but that's not true.  To keep the peace, I had to put off what I was going to do.  I asked my mom later if I had acted like my dad did if she would have told me to quit being a brat because not everyone wanted to do what I wanted, and she said she would have.  She doesn't dare say that to him though. 

My mom is bad about turning burners or the oven on and thinking she turned them off.  I'll come along later and find them still on with nothing cooking.  Then I have to ask her if she meant to leave it on. 

Many times I've had to throw away dirty paper plates, put silverware in the sink etc... because I'll think my parents have done it and I walk in to the kitchen and find it hours later.  I know everyone forgets things sometimes, but it seems to happen more than it should.

My mom will panic if she can't find something and sometimes it's because she put it down and forgot where she put it.  I've tried to tell her that she needs to write down where she puts stuff, so she'll remember but she just laughs it off and says she doesn't need to do that.


Ponyfan

[BlackCurtains]

Ugh, I had a stomach ache last night. I don't know what it was from because I've just been drinking smoothies. I left the skin on the zucchini but I washed it really well. That's the only thing I can think of.

I'm with the rest of you with ageing parents. Mine are both 74. I worry about them a lot. Especially with the way they fight with each other. My dad gets so worked up over every little thing. My mom told me yesterday that the power was off over there for a couple of hours. I guess my dad wouldn't stop complaining the entire time. He spends way too much time watching Fox News and YouTube, he doesn't have anything else to do. So when those options are taken away he throws a fit. He also doesn't understand that the modem needs time to come back online. So the power will come on, but the internet will still be down. I've told him countless times, you have to wait, I can't do anything, just wait. Then he goes into his rant about how modern technology makes everything worse and why can't anything be simple and blah blah blah.

My mom will also leave burners and the oven on. Then my dad will get on her case and say she can't cook anymore. Then a couple days later he'll ask if she's making anything for dinner

[Beth3346]

omg what's with parents leaving burners on? once when i was at my parent's house my dad turned on the burner and walked out of the kitchen. about 30 seconds later i smelled gas. he had turned on the burner without checking that the flame actually lit! i'm so glad i was over there. i'm still freaked out and they insist on having a gas stove. when i try to tell them it's not great for health and environmental reasons my dad just says that gas was supposed to be better and now it's electric so why listen to newer research? he's so oil and gas brained sometimes.

my mom is in her 70s and my dad is in his early 80s. for their age they're pretty good with technology. but they don't understand that when they have internet outages here and there it's an issue with the company and not something I can fix. we use the same company and also have outages that last maybe a minute. when i tell my dad it's not something worth trying to fix he looks at me like i'm just being lazy. he just needs to refresh the web page and it will load. literally these outages are barely noticeable. they don't have much to do so they really fixate on little problems. also they still insist on watching live TV and still mute during commercials or flip the channels between 2-3 shows. and it's like old sitcoms that they can just stream. but they refuse to search on the streaming services.

i'm feeling very anxious today. like nauseating anxiety.

[Pokeyonekenobie]

My sister and her 3 younger kids may be moving in with us.  Like, possibly within the next 2 weeks.  I already don't feel like I have enough room and when they're here for the summer I don't get any crafting/art stuff done.  I've been looking for an apartment or an affordable house but no luck on either front.  My dad has already agreed to clear out his stuff from his hobby room downstairs and put it in one of his 3 sheds outside (one of which is almost bigger than our house) or the garage.  I understand why, but I'm a little bit annoyed by it because I've been saying for years that I don't have any space for my hobbies (I pour resin in the bathroom and paint sitting on my bed) and his response is always that I have too much stuff.  Apparently it's super easy to clear out his room and he has space for it all on the shelves in the big shed.

My next step may be to get a storage unit and make trips into town whenever I need anything.  I'm not sure I would be allowed to get an insulated shed for the back yard because my dad needs the space to turn the truck around when he's got a trailer attached to it.

I love my family but I need space to exist, too.

[Ponybookworm]

Pokey here's hoping things work out for you xxx

[BlackCurtains]

I'm sorry Pokey, that sucks. I remember doing my arts and crafts on a little side table while sitting on my bed. It was a challenge.

I saw a storage thingy yesterday... lemme see if I can find it. Here it is - https://www.createroom.com/products/dreambox
Expensive, but it seems like it'd be worth it. I live on my own in a small apartment and I would like one

The storage unit is a good idea too. I've thought of getting one myself for the stuff that's still at my parent's house. Oh! Have you considered a POD? But if you can't put up a shed, I doubt you'd be able to get a POD.

Anyway, I sympathize about no room to do stuff. Also about family encroaching. I hope things go well and you can find a solution ^^

[Lady Frostbite]

I put out dried grasshoppers into the bird feeders (since a packet was pretty cheap). They are so grossssssss 

[Ponyfan]

I can also relate to not having enough space for hobbies. I like to diamond paint but the only place I really have that's big enough to work on it is the kitchen table.  Most of the time the table is needed for meals and I feel bad taking the table up with my diamond painting if it's close to mealtime. Sometimes I'm able to get it out on the weekends but I wish I had a permanent space where I could leave it out and work on it whenever I wanted instead of having to put it away each time.  I'd probably get a lot more done that way.

My mom needed to go somewhere and the place had moved to a different location.  My dad tried to find the new location on his phone but the Maps app told him it was at the same place.  At one point he gave his phone to me and told me to call the place we were looking for.  I thought it would be okay to look up the address instead, so I did that.   I told him the address, but he went too far.   I also told him that we needed to go back up the street because we had obviously passed it.  He pulled in to a parking lot and said "Give me the phone!" looked up the same address and then turned around.  It made me feel like he didn't think I knew what I was doing.   I was already feeling low about some other stuff and him acting like that didn't help.

I saw a cute lamp the other day at the store but the store I was at today didn't have it in stock.  I was hoping the new lamp might cheer me up.


Ponyfan

[Taffeta]

I really don't have enough space either. As you guys know, I came home temporarily after my PhD and got trapped here through COVID, so now I'm trying to reorganise, and get to a point where I can move out. That means a lot of sorting and this morning I had to vacuum up a couple of recent dead bugs which I hate.

On the parent subject, my Dad did once try to microwave something for 7 mins instead of 70 seconds. He isn't very good with the microwave. Things don't usually get left on here, though, as mother is very compulsive about checking and rechecking plugs and such. We don't leave anything plugged in overnight bar the fridge.

Last night I told tales on my parents to my sister *lol*. I told her that they had a workman over without wearing masks and she agreed with me. She still wears a mask when they have a workman over, and she's asthmatic, but not immunocompromised like Mum is.

[BlackCurtains]

I had a very disturbing dream about my sister My sister was crying and upset because she was lost, so I told her to find our grandmother who she was very close to. I gave her something in the dream, a piece of jewelry? I can't quite remember. But I told her to use that to find grandma and that she would feel better when she found her. It's going to stay with me all day It's really hard for me because I don't believe in an afterlife or anything like that, but these dreams with my sister are so real and this one is upsetting because why was she lost? Isn't the afterlife supposed to be perfect? I don't know but it makes me cry.

[Beth3346]

@BC

[BlackCurtains]

Thanks Beth

I decided not to tell my mom about that dream. It did stay with me all day, thought about my sister a lot. Tomorrow is her birthday too. She would be 54.

Anyway, today was very non-productive for me. I'm getting another headache too. And for the second time today my cat has made the apartment stinky. I usually have automatic air fresheners but haven't been able to afford them. I got those gel cone ones instead and they smell nice if you're next to them but they don't do anything, certainly not covering odor.

Speaking of not affording things... my dad gave me my monthly money today and already $200 of it is gone between essentials from Walmart and Amazon, plus some birthday gifts for my mom. I ran out of my OTC medicines and a bunch of supplements at the same time. That's what drove the price up. A bottle of vitamin C is almost 10 dollars. I needed that, B complex, Magnesium and Ginseng. Probably ~$35 right there. Then I had to order cat food and treats and I'm going to start my cat on Cosequin. Everything in my cart was on sale and my total was still $68. UGH. I wanted to buy some wool locks for felting but it might need to wait now.