Polite Paradise

Just to clarify:  we chat with her over FB and Messenger.  She has rarely, if ever, e-mailed either of us.  Once in a blue moon she might call, but it's mainly FB and Messenger.

She was still making suggestions to DH today, and he's become a broken record regarding this topic:  Thanks.  We have the situation under control.  He just keeps repeating it every time she brings up the subject. 

I think I may have posted about my DH's sister back on ehell a couple of years ago.  She has a history of being "helpful" that takes the form of doing research for us, whether we ask for it or not, and even has extended in the past to making phone calls on our behalf to be "helpful."  It's always made me extremely uncomfortable.  I was her target for a while there.  She'd send me information about weather alerts in our area - even with me telling her that we have a top-notch meteorologist who has lived here all his life and knows what he's talking about.  But her stuff came from Weather Channel, and I was supposed to take it as gospel.  I finally set my FB where no one can post on my wall and any tags have to be approved before they show up.  I would tell DH how annoying this was, especially the phone calls on our behalf, and he would just say, "Well, that's just her way of helping."  She lives half a continent away, but she felt it necessary to research things in our area for us.

When we were getting ready to move a couple of years ago, DH and I began excitedly researching the area and finding out all we could about it.  And, of course, SIL had to put in her two cents about what we should do once we got here.  She's never been to this part of the country and likely never will, but she was telling us all about it.  Again, DH didn't see this as annoying.  But he wasn't getting all the stuff sent to him or having to field the phone calls from people she had contacted on our behalf.  Something has come up, however, that's helping him to see just how unhelpful she's being.

Our town had a "clean up day" this past Saturday.  They'd rented a dumpster and had it available for us to bring stuff we needed to get rid of.  They allowed a 4-hour window for us to take things to add to the dumpster.  We had an old couch that had seen better days, and we were hoping to be able to get rid of it during this clean up.  We knew that they'd allowed old broken furniture in the past, so we didn't anticipate any problems.  DH loaded it up in the back of the truck and took it over Saturday morning well within the 4-hour time window.  He got there to find no one there, the area where they'd placed the dumpster chained off, and the dumpster full of what appeared to be construction debris.  With no one there and it being Saturday where city offices were closed and us having no contact information other than the city office, he had no choice but to bring the load back home, where it still sits out in our back yard.  We found a landfill near us that will take the stuff, but we'll have to pay a flat fee for the first ton (we have nowhere near a ton).  Unfortunately, it's a pretty hefty (for us) chunk of money for this late in the month (we each only get paid once a month), so it's going to have to wait until my check comes at the end of the month. 

Last night, DH mentioned that he was chatting with his sister on Messenger.  Shortly after, he came in the room where I was sitting, tossed his phone down, gave an exasperated sigh and said, "Sis is trying to 'help' with the couch."  Yep.  You guessed it.  She had called a few companies on our behalf.  After we'd already talked to some people and discussed it with each other and come to our own plan of waiting until my check comes and then taking this mess to the landfill.  Sis got online and saw that there are Waste Management (the company she deals with on the west coast) offices in this area.  Yeah, there might be some around, but not close to us.  Even if they might allow us to bring things to their dump sites, it's not close to us.  We've found something close to us that will take our stuff; we're just going to have to wait a bit to do so.  DH kept telling her that we had it under control; she kept sending him more information.  I think he finally got kind of blunt with her and told her to stop it - that we have things under control and we have a plan in place to deal with it.

I wanted to say "told ya so," but I didn't.  SIL has a good heart, and she'd give you the shirt off her back if you needed it.  She just goes too far in doing things FOR someone instead of allowing them to figure things out on their own or check to see if they have figured things out on their own.  I think DH had been in the process of telling her about our plans to deal with this when she went off on the tangent of figuring it out for us.

My inclination is not to share information until after the fact.  DH tends to want to talk about what's going on as he finds a solution.  SIL takes any mention of a problem as a cue for her to roll up her sleeves and fix it, even from across the country.  The thing is - we don't need anyone fixing it for us.  We are more than capable of taking care of it ourselves.  With SIL, we just haven't yet found a way to get her to back off and let us do it without possibly hurting her feelings.

Regarding ceiling fans, it's warm UP and cool DOWN.  We run the fans on the lowest setting but pulling air up in winter to circulate warm air.  We have them blowing down at a higher speed to create a "wind chill effect" to make things cooler in warmer weather.

Check this out:

https://www.hansenwholesale.com/ceiling-fans/fan-direction-summer-winter

We have a landline and no plans to get rid of it - something I was reminded of rather forcefully earlier this year... I had a crisis at 3am, and needed to get hold of a member of my family. All my sisters only have cells, and they're either on silent or vibrate at night, so the sound didn't wake them up. Thankfully, my parents still have a landline, so I could get hold of them and get help.

In times of crisis, I never want anybody to not be able to get hold of me, if they need me. The landline stays.

The model of cell phone that DH and I chose has a feature where you can allow certain numbers to ring in even when the phone is in "do not disturb" mode.  Close family can get hold of us at any time, day or night.

There have been only a couple of times in the two years we've lived here that we've had someone knock on our door selling something.  Both times were kids selling something for school.  We have a couple of mutts who create quite a racket when someone even looks like they're going to invade our property, and they can sound pretty scary (in truth, they wouldn't bite a cold biscuit, as the saying goes).  The only other times someone has come to our door have been friends and/or neighbors.  When I'm home alone, it's really difficult for me to corral the dogs and open the door, so I usually just talk through the locked storm door.  Luckily, our two closest neighbors call or come over if they see my DH outside, so it's not much of an issue.  But I'm very loathe to answer the door if we aren't expecting visitors.

Oh, I have one.  Not my own wedding but at that of a family member.  The bride had her step-father walk her down the aisle and give her away because her bio-dad had been a huge jerk to her and, really, not much of a dad.  Step-dad was her "daddy."  She did ask her dad to come to the wedding and have some part in it beyond giving her away, but he declined.  Some of his family (his parents) did attend.  The wedding was held in the garden of a cousin's Victorian home, and the reception was inside the home.  The ceremony went off without a hitch.  The drama began as the family photographs were taken.  My job in the wedding was to sit at the table holding the bride's book for guests to sign and direct them on where to go to wait for the reception to begin.  Things were going pretty well, when the next thing I know, the bride is coming into the house, sobbing uncontrollably, followed by her new husband and her mother.  I heard some yelling out in the garden area, but I didn't know what was going on.  I later got the story from my mother.  It turned out that, when family pictures were made, the photographer called for the bride's family.  Her parents, siblings, their spouses, and her maternal grandparents all were in the picture.  Her step-grandmother (step-dad's mom) was in the picture too, as she was as much a part of the bride's life as any of the rest of them.  The paternal grandparents stayed in their seats.  At some point, the grandmother stood up and threw a wall-eyed hissy fit at being "left out."  They weren't "left out"; they'd just stayed seated instead of going up and being in the picture.  Grandma also ripped the bride up one side and down the other - AT THE WEDDING - for not having her bio-dad walk her down the aisle.  There had been plenty of time leading up to the ceremony for any of them - bio-dad or his parents - to voice objections about it.  This had been over 40 years ago, so the details are a bit fuzzy.  I do know that he didn't bother attending, for whatever reason.  I may be a bit biased regarding him and how he'd treated the bride's mother (leaving her when she was barely pregnant with their daughter - the bride - to be with some other woman), but I do know that he and his second wife weren't the best in how they treated his daughter.

The grandparents left soon after the melt-down, and it took a while to get the bride calmed down and consoled enough that the reception could continue.  But continue it did.  That couple will soon celebrate 44 years of marriage.  They have three kids and ten grand-kids.

I'll just say that I'm a retired English teacher and leave it at that.

Quote from: BLZbub on May 25, 2018, 08:32:48 am

I forgot to reply to this...

Quote

people are brainwashed to think they run their own businesses.

This is what is so sad. My Monat friend always posts about how she is an entrepreneur and a small business owner. NO YOU'RE NOT. You are a salesperson for Monat. You don't have to worry about inventory or payroll or any of the millions of other things real business owners have to do.

I hate that. YOU ARE NOT A BUSINESS OWNER. YOU ARE NOT AN ENTREPRENEUR. You are almost certainly losing money as a salesperson for a company that, at least in this case, is facing a class action lawsuit because their crappy product is giving people chemical burns on their scalp and making them lose their hair!

Yeah, they aren't entrepreneurs.  DH and I took an entrepreneurship class (Ice House) through our county's Office for Economic Development.  These people peddling the different versions of snake oil are NOT entrepreneurs.  Not even close. 

Regarding my own experience, I have three different FB friends who do Young Living.  One of them just mentioned it briefly and told us to PM her if we were interested or had questions.  That was it.  She doesn't clog up her friends' newsfeeds with sales pitches.  I don't think she really makes a ton of money doing it; it's just something she enjoys.  That's okay.  The second of the three friends actually invited me and several other ladies from our community to a "ladies' night out" for a fun time, or so we thought.  She did tell us that she was having someone come and teach us how to make some personal care items for ourselves using essential oils and that kits would cost us $10.  I thought, hey! that sounds like fun, and that's not much money, so I agreed to go.  It was fun, for the most part.  The presenter was a representative from Young Living and she did say, right off the bat, that there would be no pressure to buy anything.  So, beyond the money I paid for my kit to make hand cream, lip balm, and room spray, I spent not a penny.  Soon after the get-together, I got a FB friend request from the presenter.  She'd seemed nice, so I accepted.  I really wish I hadn't.  She is bombarding me with FB "parties"!  Once, she even called me and tried to talk me into buying oils.  I won't do it because we have cats and I am not really sure which oils are toxic to them and which aren't.  We had a bad experience last year by using a "natural" (in other words, mostly essential oils) flea treatment from PetSmart on our cats.  Within a few hours of doing so, they were all getting sick.  DH and I got them all bathed and got the mess off them before things got too bad, and everyone recovered okay.  Our furkids are our family, and we just aren't going to use anything in our house that might make any of them sick.  I told her that.  Her response was to tell me to go ahead and try some of the oils she was selling and see.  She said that some vet had told her that, if an oil is okay, a cat will go to it, and they stay away from the ones that are toxic.  Well, they can't stay away from something toxic if you're diffusing that mess into the air in your home and they breathe it 24/7!  I've just started ignoring her "invitations" and clicking "can't go."  I really think this woman expects to be the sole support of her family by doing this and that she will be able to quit her day job.  Friend #2 (the one who invited me to the get-together) has started doing them too.  At first, she was doing the FB "parties" and stuff, but she's stopped.  Now it's just the occasional "PM me if you're interested or have questions" kind of thing.  I also don't think she's making a lot of money with it but rather having fun with it.  Over the years, I've had a couple of other people do Jamberry and Lularoe (or whatever - the crappy clothes that fall apart).  I've not heard anything about their sales in quite some time.