what are you doing right now?

[andi9899]

Jan 7, 2024 10:16:18 GMT -5 wvugurl26 said:

One of my goals for 2024 is to come up with stuff we can do. We couldn't come up with anything last night. Winter is not helping of course. Something beyond movies, eating out or going out for a drink. We have a play later this month.

As usual though if the house were ever finally situated we might have more options. I was making progress before my grandma passed and then it stalled out.

Concerts? I've been to a few good ones within the last year.

[andi9899]

Jan 7, 2024 12:33:36 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

Had to go look at the letter again because my brain didn't trust it. Yep approved.

Supposedly we're going to have a snowpocalypse today but it's currently warm enough I was outside with just a Hoodia.

I know this is the Midwest and weather can turn on a dime but I'm skeptical.

Either way I brought my laptop home so I don't have to waste a vacation day if the 8 inches of snow appears. It doesn't I bring it back to work.

Same here. I hope it passes us, T2 doesn't like driving as it is. She'd probably have a fit if she had to drive in a bunch of snow. Luckily my old car which is now her new car is AWD.

[soupandstew]

Jan 7, 2024 15:16:22 GMT -5 The Walk of the Penguin Mich said:

TD is making his homemade egg McMuffins, much, MUCH better tha Rotten Ronnie’s.  I am starting to bake the ginger molasses cookie recipe I wanted to try.  

BTW….I got a flat NO when I told him I wanted a $4000 Bosch Induction stove.     I may just put my own money into this because I’m tired of dealing with this freaking stove.  

Yanno, I might just "forget" how to book dive trips and other stuff for your DH, but I'm petty that way. 

Get the stove and enjoy cooking - it's a big part of life for you and life is way too short to put up with an old, unpredictable stove.

[msventoux]

Jan 6, 2024 23:12:49 GMT -5 toomuchreality said:

Jan 5, 2024 8:41:05 GMT -5 giramomma said:

What's really sad is that I don't think we've even had 5 inches of snow so far. And we live in a state that's supposed to get a good amount of snow.

Same here. I think we've had a skiff of snow twice, this year. So much for, The greatest snow on Earth. Our license plates no longer say that.

I think I need to move to your area.  So far this season has been the snowiest one on record here and something like double our normal snowfall. I am not amused. 

[empress of self-improvement]

I'm ready for the snow to stop falling. Just finished a round of shoveling and am relaxing a little before I go finish the driveway. I got the deck and part of the driveway done. Plus cleaned the foot high snowpile off my car. I just don't see the point in doing the rest of the driveway but I need the exercise so I guess I will. I also need to schlep out the roof rake. I hate snow.

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Jan 7, 2024 15:32:23 GMT -5 soupandstew said:

Jan 7, 2024 15:16:22 GMT -5 The Walk of the Penguin Mich said:

TD is making his homemade egg McMuffins, much, MUCH better tha Rotten Ronnie’s.  I am starting to bake the ginger molasses cookie recipe I wanted to try.  

BTW….I got a flat NO when I told him I wanted a $4000 Bosch Induction stove.     I may just put my own money into this because I’m tired of dealing with this freaking stove.  

Yanno, I might just "forget" how to book dive trips and other stuff for your DH, but I'm petty that way. 

Get the stove and enjoy cooking - it's a big part of life for you and life is way too short to put up with an old, unpredictable stove.

This hurts me as much as him.  While he dives, I take advantage of a fabulous resort.  He doesn’t care where he stays, I do and make sure I’m comfortable if he dives.  If he books it, then I’m sure we’ll get a 2* ‘resort’ where I’m looking at another building rather than the beach/water/sunset etc.

[weltz]

All the talk the other day about crabcakes made me crave crabcakes, so I had to make some.
Old Bay seasoning isn't a thing up here, so I had to make some.

Turned out really good.

[giramomma]

DD1 is jerking her chin a little bit at me.

She wants to see mean girls. I don't want her to go see it on a night we're supposed to get another 6" of snow.

She's not keen on other options.

[minnesotapaintlady]

I had to bail on a party at the neighbors early. My cousin's daughter was giving me a headache. She is like 8 and has to talk constantly, which by itself isn't the worst, but her voice is so painfully shrill and she has zero volume control. I needed an hour alone to decompress before running to town to get Carrot.

[soupandstew]

Since more than a few here are looking at a new stove, I want to share an unpleasant experience we had when we ordered our last one.  Delivery and installation day finally arrived, the guys disconnected and removed the old unit, and brought in the new one.  And then they said they could not install it because it was self-cleaning and local code prohibits installing a self-cleaning oven in proximity to ordinary sheetrock or unshielded wood cabinets because of the high temps generated during the cleaning cycle.  Our options were to remove/replace the regular sheetrock on the wall behind the stove with a special heat-tolerant version and install panels of heat resistant material on the adjacent cabinets or get a range without the self-cleaning feature.  Replacing the sheetrock etc. would have required hiring a contractor and entailed many weeks of delay without any cooking capability.  They re-installed our old stove (for an additional charge of course) and took the new one back (restocking charge).  We had to order another unit without the self-cleaning feature and pay a second delivery and installation fee.  

Although at the time I was pretty unhappy, ultimately I was glad that they didn't just hook things up and leave us facing a potentially life-threatening fire.  I have become pretty savvy at reducing oven spills and cleaning them up when they do occur which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

[azucena]

Jan 7, 2024 16:22:26 GMT -5 The Walk of the Penguin Mich said:

Jan 7, 2024 15:32:23 GMT -5 soupandstew said:

Yanno, I might just "forget" how to book dive trips and other stuff for your DH, but I'm petty that way. 

Get the stove and enjoy cooking - it's a big part of life for you and life is way too short to put up with an old, unpredictable stove.

This hurts me as much as him.  While he dives, I take advantage of a fabulous resort.  He doesn’t care where he stays, I do and make sure I’m comfortable if he dives.  If he books it, then I’m sure we’ll get a 2* ‘resort’ where I’m looking at another building rather than the beach/water/sunset etc.

Annual diving cost compared to stove cost?

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Jan 7, 2024 17:23:50 GMT -5 azucena said:

Jan 7, 2024 16:22:26 GMT -5 The Walk of the Penguin Mich said:

This hurts me as much as him.  While he dives, I take advantage of a fabulous resort.  He doesn’t care where he stays, I do and make sure I’m comfortable if he dives.  If he books it, then I’m sure we’ll get a 2* ‘resort’ where I’m looking at another building rather than the beach/water/sunset etc.

Annual diving cost compared to stove cost?

About the same.  

[azucena]

That would be my justification...not that you need it bc stove is daily use.

[Pink Cashmere]

Jan 7, 2024 16:33:39 GMT -5 minnesotapaintlady said:

I had to bail on a party at the neighbors early. My cousin's daughter was giving me a headache. She is like 8 and has to talk constantly, which by itself isn't the worst, but her voice is so painfully shrill and she has zero volume control. I needed an hour alone to decompress before running to town to get Carrot.

Sounds like Kiddo, except his voice isn’t shrill. But constantly talking and lack of volume control, yep that’s him. 

Even though I can’t go home to get away from it, I can and do, go in another part of the house or send him to another part of the house, as needed, when I can’t take it anymore. But that’s not the same as being at a gathering at someone else’s home, with someone else’s child being the perpetrator, and nowhere to escape to, besides just leaving. Of course Kiddo is technically “someone else’s child” to me too, but when he’s at our house, I treat him like he’s mine, which means I tell him when his endless talking about random stuff is making me want to throw my ears in the backyard. These days, he thinks it’s funny when I start talking about taking my ears off, but that usually helps him hush with all the constant, random chatter, because he has learned that the next thing is that either I’m going to leave the space or he is.

I don’t mind him talking like a normal person or having conversations with him, but I don’t need a play by play description of everything we see on tv or outside, plus every other random thought that pops into his head that is just comments…… like that wall is gray, gray is an okay color, but did you know walls can be other colors and I’ve seen walls that were painted other colors, like blue or yellow. Yellow is a nice color, I have a shirt that has some yellow in it. I wore it last Tuesday when I went to the grocery store with my Mom. But I don’t have a lot of shirts with yellow in them, it’s not really my favorite color anyway. A boy at my school wears a lot of shirts with yellow in them. I don’t know why he wears all those shirts with yellow in them. I also don’t really like purple. I see you don’t have a lot of purple stuff around the house. It’s a good color, but I don’t really like it. I don’t have any purple shirts. And did you know I just saw FIVE ants crawling around on the deck? I tried to step on them, but 3 of them got away. They ran down between the boards on the deck before I could step on all of them. Did you know there are gaps between the boards on the deck that ants can run down? I bet it’s probably a LOT of ants under the deck, but I’m not going to go under the deck to see, because there’s no telling what else is under there. It’s probably spiders and bugs down there, since bugs like to hide in places like that. Did you see that squirrel that just ran across the yard?

All of that to say, I completely understand, from experience with Kiddo, how that can wreck your nerves.

[azucena]

Going to find out tonight how well Mrs Doubtfire translates to a musical tonight.

Snow coming tomorrow night and likely heavy accumulation in the batch that comes thurs.

[steph08]

Went sledding with two of my friends and their kids. I'm not sure the last time I had so much fun. We were outside for about 2.5 hours and the kids were good, even if they whined about having to walk back up the hill.

We went sledding on a plot of land my parents own down the street from their house. I wanted to build our house there, but it is in a "town" (aka a village ith less than 500 people) and my DH didn't want to be around so many people. Sigh. I like where we live now and the proximity to everything, but it would be nice to be close to my parents and my friends/their kids (they live across the street from my parents in the same town). It is 10 minutes further from everything though.

[Opti]

Jan 7, 2024 16:05:56 GMT -5 empress of self-improvement said:

I'm ready for the snow to stop falling. Just finished a round of shoveling and am relaxing a little before I go finish the driveway. I got the deck and part of the driveway done. Plus cleaned the foot high snowpile off my car. I just don't see the point in doing the rest of the driveway but I need the exercise so I guess I will. I also need to schlep out the roof rake. I hate snow.

How much snow have you gotten?

[Opti]

Tuesday is supposed to be two to three inches of rain which is bad because flooding. Not looking forward to that, lots of waiting and being stranded due to flooding with NJ transit busses in the recent past. Maybe the river crests could be nice to me and it will be OK?

I'm also hoping most of the snow melted along my walk to the bus stop and not much will be water covered.

[giramomma]

We are under a winter storm watch, now.

We also just made a hunger games reference. Poor Dh had no clue. We weren't even like finishing sentences and we all knew what we were talking about. It was a very fun moment.

[toomuchreality]

Jan 7, 2024 15:43:20 GMT -5 msventoux said:

Jan 6, 2024 23:12:49 GMT -5 toomuchreality said:

Same here. I think we've had a skiff of snow twice, this year. So much for, The greatest snow on Earth. Our license plates no longer say that.

I think I need to move to your area.  So far this season has been the snowiest one on record here and something like double our normal snowfall. I am not amused. 

I would not like that either. I have actually quite enjoyed the last few years. Although last winter we were making up for all the snow we didn't get in the Great Salt Lake.

I don't care for getting a lot of snow. Esp since I don't snow ski anymore. Its just cold and miserable.


Stay safe and warm!

[chiver78]

meh. it's been "snowing" for a few hours now, but there's only about a half inch of slush on my car.   

[andi9899]

Jan 7, 2024 17:34:00 GMT -5 The Walk of the Penguin Mich said:

Jan 7, 2024 17:23:50 GMT -5 azucena said:

Annual diving cost compared to stove cost?

About the same.  

Then it's a no brainer. The stove will last for years, so it's way more cost effective.

[empress of self-improvement]

Jan 7, 2024 18:11:01 GMT -5 chiver78 said:

meh. it's been "snowing" for a few hours now, but there's only about a half inch of slush on my car.   

Shush you. My snow pile on the car was about 8 inches maybe. It's been knocked off and just as I was getting my jacket on to go finish my driveway, neighbor next door snow-blowed it. I love my neighbors! I did rake off the edge of the roof on one side and knocked off the icicles. Unfortunately, that doesn't help my issue where I'm missing some shingles and forgot about them. Oh well. Off to shower to warm up.

[Pink Cashmere]

I am confused, even though my brain says I shouldn’t be confused and Mister is just an asshole.

I think I shared here a few weeks ago some of the conversation he and I had where he said he would pay all the bills, and for me to just run the household. Although there was further clarification needed, at the time I explained to him how I use to shop sales and stuff to keep us stocked up on basic groceries and household supplies. All of that got depleted during 2023 when I didn’t have the income to keep up with it, and we ended up running through everything I had stocked up on.

He had already said before that conversation, that he wanted our kitchen, pantry and freezers and household supplies to be stocked again like they use to be. So during the conversation a few weeks ago, I told him that the way I shopped to make that happen back then, was to buy multiples of things when I found a deal, and the initial costs to get it going was more than he was use to paying on quick runs to the store for a couple of items, and the cost to maintain it meant that sometimes I spent a bit of money on things that were on a good sale, but imo, it all evened out overall because we weren’t always running to the store because we were out of something we regularly use and then paying full price for it. He said he wanted me to go back to doing what I use to do and he would pay for the shopping, that is part of what he meant about wanting me to run the household.

So a couple hours ago, he said he had to go pick up an order he’d made at Target. I was surprised and asked what he’d ordered. He said that when he started doing his laundry this morning, he noticed there wasn’t much left in the laundry detergent container over the washing machine. 

First of all, he’s been an asshole since Thursday. I do laundry on Mondays and I wash his clothes when I wash mine, just because I think it’s silly and a waste of appliance use and energy to run the washer and dryer just washing my clothes when he has laundry that can be washed and dried along with mine. So it was further proof that he has a hair up his ass that he did his laundry today, since I always wash his clothes when I’m doing laundry. And I want the record to also show that he has literally NEVER washed not one item of my clothing, the few times he’s had this hair up his ass and washed his own clothes.

Anyway, there were already THREE containers of laundry detergent and 2 containers of Downy on the shelf in the garage, where we have kept extra household products since 2020. He says he didn’t think to look in the garage. I say that’s BULLSHIT. Even YD knows that if laundry detergent in the house is running low, to go look on the shelf in the garage for more.

Mister is talking out of both sides of his mouth, and that is pissing me off even more than the other stuff he’s been doing to piss me off. He knew good and damn well that there was probably some more laundry detergent in the garage. So WTF was that really about?

He is cooking spaghetti to go with fried catfish fillets for dinner. He is using tomatoes for the sauce, that I grew, diced and froze, myself. 

But he seems hell bent on trying to make it seem like I don’t contribute anything to the household, and sometimes, even to his life, ever since he got it in his head that I’m some kind of gold digger or whatever. It is true that I didn’t contribute as much to the household financially after my money got funny, but the way he is acting, even if I win the lottery tomorrow, I would handle it differently than I would have just a few years ago, when I thought we were real partners in life. Back then “we” would’ve won the lottery. Tomorrow, that would be my way out of what I feel has become a bad situation for me. I would probably give him a little something, just because I really do love him and there are some memories of good times, but it wouldn’t be half, like it would’ve been a few years ago. 

[andi9899]

Jan 7, 2024 17:35:32 GMT -5 Pink Cashmere said:

Jan 7, 2024 16:33:39 GMT -5 minnesotapaintlady said:

I had to bail on a party at the neighbors early. My cousin's daughter was giving me a headache. She is like 8 and has to talk constantly, which by itself isn't the worst, but her voice is so painfully shrill and she has zero volume control. I needed an hour alone to decompress before running to town to get Carrot.

Sounds like Kiddo, except his voice isn’t shrill. But constantly talking and lack of volume control, yep that’s him. 

Even though I can’t go home to get away from it, I can and do, go in another part of the house or send him to another part of the house, as needed, when I can’t take it anymore. But that’s not the same as being at a gathering at someone else’s home, with someone else’s child being the perpetrator, and nowhere to escape to, besides just leaving. Of course Kiddo is technically “someone else’s child” to me too, but when he’s at our house, I treat him like he’s mine, which means I tell him when his endless talking about random stuff is making me want to throw my ears in the backyard. These days, he thinks it’s funny when I start talking about taking my ears off, but that usually helps him hush with all the constant, random chatter, because he has learned that the next thing is that either I’m going to leave the space or he is.

I don’t mind him talking like a normal person or having conversations with him, but I don’t need a play by play description of everything we see on tv or outside, plus every other random thought that pops into his head that is just comments…… like that wall is gray, gray is an okay color, but did you know walls can be other colors and I’ve seen walls that were painted other colors, like blue or yellow. Yellow is a nice color, I have a shirt that has some yellow in it. I wore it last Tuesday when I went to the grocery store with my Mom. But I don’t have a lot of shirts with yellow in them, it’s not really my favorite color anyway. A boy at my school wears a lot of shirts with yellow in them. I don’t know why he wears all those shirts with yellow in them. I also don’t really like purple. I see you don’t have a lot of purple stuff around the house. It’s a good color, but I don’t really like it. I don’t have any purple shirts. And did you know I just saw FIVE ants crawling around on the deck? I tried to step on them, but 3 of them got away. They ran down between the boards on the deck before I could step on all of them. Did you know there are gaps between the boards on the deck that ants can run down? I bet it’s probably a LOT of ants under the deck, but I’m not going to go under the deck to see, because there’s no telling what else is under there. It’s probably spiders and bugs down there, since bugs like to hide in places like that. Did you see that squirrel that just ran across the yard?

All of that to say, I completely understand, from experience with Kiddo, how that can wreck your nerves.

Is it like watching Rainman? Maybe he's just highly intelligent and has more information in his brain than he knows what to do with.

[lurkyloo]

I’m thinking of trying blue apron, the meal kit service.  Any commentary or experiences to share?  I’m desperately bored with our dinner rotation and need to do better than the phoning it in.  Difficulty:  three very picky and orthogonal eaters…but I’m mostly out of executive function by dinner making time and the veggie content is dipping ever lower 

Babysitter is down with covid, fingers crossed she has a mild case and didn’t pass it to us.  Also bah bc it’s right after we discontinued asking her to mask in the house   I’ll have to dip out of a meeting Mon to do school pickup and his IEP meeting is going to conflict with pickup Tues, and he had a babysitter supervised playdate Friday and I had to let them know. Aaaarrrggggh.  At least we’ve had our boosters?

I don’t want to call in any favors to have someone else pick him up in case of exposure     We’ll test him before school and he is pretty much the last masker standing anyway.  Yes, I know my mental gymnastics are quite impressive 

[lurkyloo]

Jan 7, 2024 15:16:22 GMT -5 The Walk of the Penguin Mich said:

TD is making his homemade egg McMuffins, much, MUCH better tha Rotten Ronnie’s.  I am starting to bake the ginger molasses cookie recipe I wanted to try.  

BTW….I got a flat NO when I told him I wanted a $4000 Bosch Induction stove.     I may just put my own money into this because I’m tired of dealing with this freaking stove.  

I think you should go on a cooking strike since your equipment is subpar.  You put a huge amount of effort into cooking and meal planning already and those persistent stove issues would drive me bonkers.

Or you could buy the ugliest toaster oven and induction standalone burner you can find and take up all the counterspace until he caves?

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

I made the creamy vegetable soup from my Dollywood cookbook.

So easy and so good!

[lurkyloo]

DS is pissing me off sooo much lately.  Couple days ago he casually remarked “I guess I’m lazy like you”.   Not sure if it’s good or bad that it was a post Christmas remark, pre Christmas I might’ve returned all his presents for a lump of coal.

[soupandstew]

Jan 7, 2024 18:34:43 GMT -5 Pink Cashmere said:

I am confused, even though my brain says I shouldn’t be confused and Mister is just an asshole.

I think I shared here a few weeks ago some of the conversation he and I had where he said he would pay all the bills, and for me to just run the household. Although there was further clarification needed, at the time I explained to him how I use to shop sales and stuff to keep us stocked up on basic groceries and household supplies. All of that got depleted during 2023 when I didn’t have the income to keep up with it, and we ended up running through everything I had stocked up on.

He had already said before that conversation, that he wanted our kitchen, pantry and freezers and household supplies to be stocked again like they use to be. So during the conversation a few weeks ago, I told him that the way I shopped to make that happen back then, was to buy multiples of things when I found a deal, and the initial costs to get it going was more than he was use to paying on quick runs to the store for a couple of items, and the cost to maintain it meant that sometimes I spent a bit of money on things that were on a good sale, but imo, it all evened out overall because we weren’t always running to the store because we were out of something we regularly use and then paying full price for it. He said he wanted me to go back to doing what I use to do and he would pay for the shopping, that is part of what he meant about wanting me to run the household.

So a couple hours ago, he said he had to go pick up an order he’d made at Target. I was surprised and asked what he’d ordered. He said that when he started doing his laundry this morning, he noticed there wasn’t much left in the laundry detergent container over the washing machine. 

First of all, he’s been an asshole since Thursday. I do laundry on Mondays and I wash his clothes when I wash mine, just because I think it’s silly and a waste of appliance use and energy to run the washer and dryer just washing my clothes when he has laundry that can be washed and dried along with mine. So it was further proof that he has a hair up his ass that he did his laundry today, since I always wash his clothes when I’m doing laundry. And I want the record to also show that he has literally NEVER washed not one item of my clothing, the few times he’s had this hair up his ass and washed his own clothes.

Anyway, there were already THREE containers of laundry detergent and 2 containers of Downy on the shelf in the garage, where we have kept extra household products since 2020. He says he didn’t think to look in the garage. I say that’s BULLSHIT. Even YD knows that if laundry detergent in the house is running low, to go look on the shelf in the garage for more.

Mister is talking out of both sides of his mouth, and that is pissing me off even more than the other stuff he’s been doing to piss me off. He knew good and damn well that there was probably some more laundry detergent in the garage. So WTF was that really about?

He is cooking spaghetti to go with fried catfish fillets for dinner. He is using tomatoes for the sauce, that I grew, diced and froze, myself. 

But he seems hell bent on trying to make it seem like I don’t contribute anything to the household, and sometimes, even to his life, ever since he got it in his head that I’m some kind of gold digger or whatever. It is true that I didn’t contribute as much to the household financially after my money got funny, but the way he is acting, even if I win the lottery tomorrow, I would handle it differently than I would have just a few years ago, when I thought we were real partners in life. Back then “we” would’ve won the lottery. Tomorrow, that would be my way out of what I feel has become a bad situation for me. I would probably give him a little something, just because I really do love him and there are some memories of good times, but it wouldn’t be half, like it would’ve been a few years ago. 

Sometimes it's hard to find the boundary between being an unobservant male dumbass and being a deliberately hateful jackass.  If you find it, please let me know.  Either way, it's no bueno