Shoot the Wall (A.K.A. The Rant Thread)

[besleybean]

Yeah, you have to be a lightweight like me.

I seem to tackle the garden the same way I do my hair:

my sister used to say i don't so much brush my hair as tickle it!

 

My rant is the usual:  the same non story about a Cumberbatch divorce has re-surfaced on the internet.

I was kind of hoping that particular piece of filth had crawled off and died.

Bloody click bait.

[Arcadia]

I actually enjoy the physicality of gardening, I just don't have the time to do it. I figure by the time I retire, though, I'll be too feeble to enjoy the physicality....  

[besleybean]

I only wish I'd taken before and after photos of mine...

However, I have booked in my gardener!

[Van Buren Supernova]

On 7/5/2019 at 2:01 PM, Carol the Dabbler said:

It depends on how big your garden is and how you go about tending it, I think.  When I'm able to keep up with my modest garden and keep it well mulched, it's no great amount of work -- but I didn't have time to do that for the past three years, so my garden is now a miniature jungle.  I'm sloooowly getting it cleared, but most of the rest of that work will now have to wait till the weather's cooler.

Consider that I live in city, not elf forest, my garden is just 7x5 meter, but the constant need of trimming (for those big thorny branches, sweeping, weeding), is annoying. The rest I do enjoy, I only wish I have Thanos's back, literal back because I need new spine!

 

Oh yah, to prove that I'm unbearable, on my fast track to be grumpy person, here are things that annoy me from one trip to fast food chain:

- They only open one register so there was a significant queuing time, the reason I was there was to have a quick meal. It's called fast food for a reason!

- The cashiers are forced to up-sell sets, and merchandizes (that has nothing to do with food) and that take big amount of time for each transactions.

- The menu they are famous with are not available. This is not a one time thing.

- The wash basins are dirty and scattered with food crumbs, consider that you would eventually use hand for fries, burger or chicken, and it's absolutely necessary to wash hands, this is disgusting.

- The put hashbrown/scrambled eggs or other things in paper sleeve/pocket, when it was still hot. Therefore they became hard and stuck to the paper, making it unappetising and you are losing half of them to the sticky paper.

[Arcadia]

I have to admit I've never encountered anything like that around here. As much as I don't really like fast food, I have to admit they are pretty darn well run places. But in other places I've been … yeah, I know what you mean. Maine is the worst, it takes forever to get served up there. I suspect the problem is usually under-staffing … they just don't have enough people around willing to take those kinds of jobs.

Around here, even the fast food places have to pay higher than minimum wage if they want to attract enough employees. But they can afford to, because their volume of sales is so high. McDonald's, for example, is always busy. On a little lonely country road in Maine … not so much.

[Artemis]

Had an hour-long lecture from my mother this weekend about how I need to have a baby before it's too late, because it would give my life purpose.  So that was fun. 

 

[Arcadia]

Oh, aren't those lovely? My mom never did that to me, but a few "friends" did. Sheesh.

[Fantasy Lover]

Funny, I had the following conversation with a stranger twice a few years ago:

Stranger: "Do you have children?"
Me: " I'm a bit too young for that."
Stranger: "How old are you?"
Me: "I'm twenty-two."
Stranger: That doesn't mean anything, I know someone who had a kid at that age.
Me internally: just because I have a womb and teenage pregnancy is a thing doesn't mean everyone develops a maternal a instinct by the age of 16.

[T.o.b.y]

Yeah, I remember those conversations... And now that I have a kid, they're still happening because apparently it's unacceptable to only produce one offspring. When I say that I think I am a bit old now to get pregnant again, I get "but XYZ had a baby at 40!" When I point out that the birth was a complicated nightmare - oh, just have a planned cesarean the next time. But I don't really want any more kids - you're a bad parent, only children develop terrible personalities. Um... I am an only child -" that explains everything" stare. 

[Carol the Dabbler]

But your kid's children won't have any cousins! 

[T.o.b.y]

11 hours ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

But your kid's children won't have any cousins! 

The way things are going right now, it seems to me like they'll have other problems... If they ever exist at all. 

[Fantasy Lover]

Yeah, I remember those conversations... And now that I have a kid, they're still happening because apparently it's unacceptable to only produce one offspring. When I say that I think I am a bit old now to get pregnant again, I get "but XYZ had a baby at 40!" When I point out that the birth was a complicated nightmare - oh, just have a planned cesarean the next time. But I don't really want any more kids - you're a bad parent, only children develop terrible personalities. Um... I am an only child -" that explains everything" stare. 

What I hate even more than people insisting that not having/wanting children makes someone selfish, is the insistence that only children are antisocial loners. If anything I consider being a only child an advantage, it makes me better at dealing with loneliness and less dependent of others.

[Carol the Dabbler]

1 hour ago, Fantasy Lover said:

What I hate [....] is the insistence that only children are antisocial loners.

Doesn't sound like the only children that I know.  They seem to vary, just like anybody else.

[Arcadia]

One of my best friends is an only child, and she's perfectly normal. Except for being my friend, of course; that's a bit weird.  

[Van Buren Supernova]

I'm doubting the parenting abilities of those who keep pressuring others to have kid or more kids, especially when they use persuasion like 'it's easy/not that hard' ' you'll figure it out'  'there will be a way' for financial worries and reason that it'd be investment for our old age etc. I think they ARE the selfish ones for thinking bringing another person to this world and creating a life is just a small and ordinary matter that everyone should do.

On the other side, I'm currently meeting my family for our annual gathering, and last Sunday I was dragged (I voluntarily let them this time) to bigger family gathering for the memory of our grandpa-grandmas. I managed to avoid this for more than a decade, because I don't like relative telling me how to live my life and make use of my reproduction assets. This time, I have known that they have been changing stance, so I actually even had a lot of positive feedbacks about my childless decision, from relative who used to tell me otherwise. And that feels good. 😛

Well, everyone but one person. She is My cousin, who is deaf and mute, who was actually very close to me when we were kids. We grew up apart very differently with very different mindset. It's sad to say that she didn't have high education because the limitation of facility for special education that she needed, and strong family aspiration that she has. She couldn't have children of her own, and with her husband, who is also deaf and mute, with help of in laws they arranged for her to adopt a kid, which she has a lot of difficulty to control and understand now (I observe main difficulties sadly lies on different mindset of the parents because of their limitation and interference of their in laws), so much so that she (my cousin) actually ran away from home in some occassions. 

And yet, she asked me baby question and called me lazy. Lazy.

And she forced me to socialize with her daughter, which she obviously looked uncomfortable and unwilling to do, same here, and cousin looked really surprised maybe? when I told her I don't want to do that and that I actually do not want anything to do with kids. Please include the scenes of my other cousin's kids that I don't know running around the house screaming and knocking things around whose(?) parents thinking they are adorable.

But I'm not mad, not even annoyed. I actually feel sad for her, especially after being apart and leading our own different lives for so long, this is another thing she learns about me, all our childhood similarity goes down the drain fast, rained with acid and burned with fire. And oh well, she is religious as well. I must be that cousin from hell which is nothing like her memory of us 

[Carol the Dabbler]

28 minutes ago, Van Buren Supernova said:

I'm doubting the parenting abilities of those who keep pressuring others to have kid or more kids, especially when they use persuasion like [....] it'd be investment for our old age etc.

You can't really argue with that -- the older adults in my family do rely on their kids for help after a certain point, which makes me wonder who (if anyone) will be there for me later on.  BUT I still don't see that as a major argument for having kids, just more of a bonus if one does decide (for other reasons) to have kids.

55 minutes ago, Van Buren Supernova said:

This time, I have known that they have been changing stance, so I actually even had a lot of positive feedbacks about my childless decision, from relative who used to tell me otherwise. And that feels good. 😛

You'll probably be getting even less pressure as the years continue to go by.  It will finally occur to people that you're getting to the age where it's not particularly safe (or even possible) to have kids.  That can take more time than you might expect, though -- for a while, my mother kept sending me clippings about women who had babies at my age, but she apparently ran out of applicable clippings, eventually.

1 hour ago, Van Buren Supernova said:

She is My cousin, who is deaf and mute, who was actually very close to me when we were kids.  [....]  It's sad to say that she didn't have high education because the limitation of facility for special education that she needed....

I'm just wondering -- how do you communicate with her?  Do you use sign language, or write notes, or -- ?

[Van Buren Supernova]

On 8/6/2019 at 11:47 PM, Carol the Dabbler said:

You'll probably be getting even less pressure as the years continue to go by.  It will finally occur to people that you're getting to the age where it's not particularly safe (or even possible) to have kids. 

I think I'm there. Age wise, it's still possible and not uncommon, but the two biggest reasons they stop pressuring me is from seeing how their kids don't actually care for them or I had stopped seeing people who annoyingly did so. Staying far away helps a lot.

On 8/6/2019 at 11:47 PM, Carol the Dabbler said:

I'm just wondering -- how do you communicate with her?  Do you use sign language, or write notes, or -- ?

I learned very simple sign languages, enough for communication and we did some simple lips reading as well. There are a lot of practical hand signs too and when everything else fails, we used writing. But writing was almost never used, it's more to describe something new that was too technical to explain. We were inseparable back then, so maybe that's why we could communicate easily, for others, it probably looked like we were just doing something gibberish.

[besleybean]

I have been trained in both BSL and Makaton.

[Carol the Dabbler]

I was astonished to learn that there's more than one sign language -- apparently ASL is quite different from the British version.  I've never heard of Makaton, but that must be different as well or it wouldn't have another name.

Since formal sign languages for the deaf originated quite some time ago, though, it's only to be expected that they would have started out locally, then gradually spread to an entire country.  It's probably too much to expect a global language any time soon, any more than there's a global spoken language.

[besleybean]

Makaton was created especially for children with special needs.

[Artemis]

I’m having a hard time.  It’d be a lot to post about, but I just... *sigh*.

Life is hard.

 

[Caya]

[T.o.b.y]

On 8/15/2019 at 11:35 PM, Artemis said:

I’m having a hard time.  It’d be a lot to post about, but I just... *sigh*.

Life is hard.

 

Hang in there. Going through a bit of a rough patch myself right now. I won't say I feel you because obviously I don't, realistically speaking, but hey. You get the sentiment (hopefully).

[Fantasy Lover]

I started my internship this Monday, my work is boring, tedious and asinine and most of my colleagues aren't really talkative and it turns out that working full time is extremely exhausting, and I have to do this for two more weeks! It's my first week and I'm already 100% done with it, the next two weeks are going to suck, a lot! Help me.

[Carol the Dabbler]

7 hours ago, Fantasy Lover said:

I started my internship this Monday, my work is boring, tedious and asinine and most of my colleagues aren't really talkative and it turns out that working full time is extremely exhausting, and I have to do this for two more weeks! It's my first week and I'm already 100% done with it, the next two weeks are going to suck, a lot! Help me.

What sort of work are you learning?  And what comes next, after you complete your internship?