Okay, I hope you guys don't mind but I'm going to rant about my family a little bit. I'll spoiler-tag it so you can choose not to read if you don't. It's pretty boring anyway:
So, before my mother passed away, she was doing online foodshopping for my grandmother. My grandmother would give my mother $20 every two weeks, and every two weeks my mother would hop on Shoprite.com and put an order in for her.
Before my mother passed away, my mother asked if I would do it instead of her because my mother was bedridden and just couldn't do it anymore. I didn't want to, but my grandmother promised me the $20 so I said yes. I mostly did it to keep my grandmother off my mother's back, because my grandmother is a very annoying, tactless, selfish person. In fact, one of my stipulations was "I will do this as long as you do not contact my mother about it in any way. You can deal directly with me. Part of why I'm doing this is so my mother doesn't have to think about it anymore." I thought that was reasonable.
She agreed, although she did, of course, bring the job up to my mother multiple times.
Anyway, in February my mother passed away. It's now October and I've continued doing the shopping for my grandmother all this time, however I never really intended to do it this long and definitely not "forever." I was just doing it to alleviate the burden from my mother. The $20 was nice, but not important.
Fast forward to about two months ago. My grandmother started making passive aggressive comments every time I came over to get her shopping list (the way it worked was this: I would come over, get a physical list from her and the $20, and then go home and put the order in through the website). The comments were all of this nature: "This is so expensive. I feel like I should rip the $20 in half and just give you $10." She said it with kind of a goofy smile, but I knew exactly what she was saying and where it was coming from. She wanted to stop giving me $20 and start giving me $10 instead.
I just smiled back, said nothing, and took the $20. Why seek out a confrontation? I knew she would eventually come right out and say it. Well, two weeks ago she did. She said that she was only giving me $10. I said "well, then I am not doing it." She was kind of flummoxed, but I explained that it wasn't a job I enjoyed (I really loathe it, to be honest), it isn't a job I expected to do for this long, and I frankly don't have the time anymore no matter what I am getting paid for it. Even $20 wasn't enough at this point and $10 certainly wasn't either.
So I told her I would do it that last time because I didn't want to leave her high and dry that week and I would do it for the $10, but that it would be the last time. I explained to her very calmly and diplomatically the reasons I no longer wanted to do it. She had a lot of rebuttals. said "but you probably make more than I do with your unemployment." And a lot of "what are you so busy doing?" She has this way of making you feel like you don't own your own time or money. Well, I'm sorry but I do and I don't have to answer to her about anything.
So, I left with $10, the shopping list, and I did the job right away. I called her and told her it was done.
She calls me last night and I missed the call. I call her back just now. I knew what it was going to be about, but just in case it wasn't I decided I'd better call her in case something was wrong. Even though I don't like her, she's still my grandmother.
But no, it was about this. She says "I was calling just to see if you had changed your mind at all about the shopping."
My answer: "No, I'm sorry, but I'm busy today and tomorrow-" (she needs her shopping for Tuesday) "-and I can't."
Her: "Do you think your sister can handle it?"
Me: "No, not really. I don't think any of us here are going to be able to do this for you, sorry."
Her: "What if I gave you $20 instead?"
Me: "No, I'm sorry. Like I explained two weeks ago, it's not really about the money anymore. I can't do it."
Her: "I'm always there for you." (Yes, she really said this.)
Me: "Sorry."
Then she huffed and said "well, I'm disappointed" and hung up.
The reality is, my uncle (her son) is a dick and whispers in my grandmother's ear all the time. This is the uncle that never came to visit my mother in the hospital and did not show up at her funeral. I have no doubt that the "give Drez $10 instead of $20" came from him and not from her. I am not going to dance to their puppetmastering, and especially not to his. He is dead to me.
I know this is all small change really. But it's the principle of the matter, like it's a goddamn power struggle. At the end of the day, I didn't want to do it anyway. $20 is like two days' worth of lunches. But the way she went about this, plus the fact that I hate doing it in the first place, plus the fact that I don't really like my grandmother, plus the fact that I think this mostly came from my asshole uncle whispering in her ear. I guess this is a lesson to both of them: Don't screw around with me. I hope she gives HIM the job to do now. Because it sucks and he should do it.
I know I wrote a lot about something that probably looks insignificant but well this was kind of a big thing for me. It's the first step toward cutting shitty family out of my life. I loved my mom dearly, but her family was the worst and I really don't want anything to do with them anymore.
Is that bad? Can I just flat-out distance myself from one-half of my extended family? I really dislike them.
Boyfriend and girlfriend start working here at the same time. They only have one car and work slightly different schedules, boyfriend starts after girlfriend does. Girlfriend gets fired for attendance (late too many times). Boyfriend still employed. Now boyfriend is being dropped off by girlfriend, and is now showing up late. Girlfriend is going to get him fired for the same reason she got fired.
Why do some people find it so hard to show up to work on time?
I used to be like this. But one day I decided that being late for work all the time was a drag and I didn't like how it made me feel so I stopped and now I'm early all the time. Well, now I'm unemployed but I *was* early all the time.
Another reason: No matter how good your metro system is, getting a ride somewhere is so much nicer. It's like one million times nicer than having to deal with mass transit. So a lot of people will gladly skirt that line of tardiness for a ride.
Okay, I hope you guys don't mind but I'm going to rant about my family a little bit. I'll spoiler-tag it so you can choose not to read if you don't. It's pretty boring anyway:
So, before my mother passed away, she was doing online foodshopping for my grandmother. My grandmother would give my mother $20 every two weeks, and every two weeks my mother would hop on Shoprite.com and put an order in for her.
Before my mother passed away, my mother asked if I would do it instead of her because my mother was bedridden and just couldn't do it anymore. I didn't want to, but my grandmother promised me the $20 so I said yes. I mostly did it to keep my grandmother off my mother's back, because my grandmother is a very annoying, tactless, selfish person. In fact, one of my stipulations was "I will do this as long as you do not contact my mother about it in any way. You can deal directly with me. Part of why I'm doing this is so my mother doesn't have to think about it anymore." I thought that was reasonable.
She agreed, although she did, of course, bring the job up to my mother multiple times.
Anyway, in February my mother passed away. It's now October and I've continued doing the shopping for my grandmother all this time, however I never really intended to do it this long and definitely not "forever." I was just doing it to alleviate the burden from my mother. The $20 was nice, but not important.
Fast forward to about two months ago. My grandmother started making passive aggressive comments every time I came over to get her shopping list (the way it worked was this: I would come over, get a physical list from her and the $20, and then go home and put the order in through the website). The comments were all of this nature: "This is so expensive. I feel like I should rip the $20 in half and just give you $10." She said it with kind of a goofy smile, but I knew exactly what she was saying and where it was coming from. She wanted to stop giving me $20 and start giving me $10 instead.
I just smiled back, said nothing, and took the $20. Why seek out a confrontation? I knew she would eventually come right out and say it. Well, two weeks ago she did. She said that she was only giving me $10. I said "well, then I am not doing it." She was kind of flummoxed, but I explained that it wasn't a job I enjoyed (I really loathe it, to be honest), it isn't a job I expected to do for this long, and I frankly don't have the time anymore no matter what I am getting paid for it. Even $20 wasn't enough at this point and $10 certainly wasn't either.
So I told her I would do it that last time because I didn't want to leave her high and dry that week and I would do it for the $10, but that it would be the last time. I explained to her very calmly and diplomatically the reasons I no longer wanted to do it. She had a lot of rebuttals. said "but you probably make more than I do with your unemployment." And a lot of "what are you so busy doing?" She has this way of making you feel like you don't own your own time or money. Well, I'm sorry but I do and I don't have to answer to her about anything.
So, I left with $10, the shopping list, and I did the job right away. I called her and told her it was done.
She calls me last night and I missed the call. I call her back just now. I knew what it was going to be about, but just in case it wasn't I decided I'd better call her in case something was wrong. Even though I don't like her, she's still my grandmother.
But no, it was about this. She says "I was calling just to see if you had changed your mind at all about the shopping."
My answer: "No, I'm sorry, but I'm busy today and tomorrow-" (she needs her shopping for Tuesday) "-and I can't."
Her: "Do you think your sister can handle it?"
Me: "No, not really. I don't think any of us here are going to be able to do this for you, sorry."
Her: "What if I gave you $20 instead?"
Me: "No, I'm sorry. Like I explained two weeks ago, it's not really about the money anymore. I can't do it."
Her: "I'm always there for you." (Yes, she really said this.)
Me: "Sorry."
Then she huffed and said "well, I'm disappointed" and hung up.
The reality is, my uncle (her son) is a dick and whispers in my grandmother's ear all the time. This is the uncle that never came to visit my mother in the hospital and did not show up at her funeral. I have no doubt that the "give Drez $10 instead of $20" came from him and not from her. I am not going to dance to their puppetmastering, and especially not to his. He is dead to me.
I know this is all small change really. But it's the principle of the matter, like it's a goddamn power struggle. At the end of the day, I didn't want to do it anyway. $20 is like two days' worth of lunches. But the way she went about this, plus the fact that I hate doing it in the first place, plus the fact that I don't really like my grandmother, plus the fact that I think this mostly came from my asshole uncle whispering in her ear. I guess this is a lesson to both of them: Don't screw around with me. I hope she gives HIM the job to do now. Because it sucks and he should do it.
I know I wrote a lot about something that probably looks insignificant but well this was kind of a big thing for me. It's the first step toward cutting shitty family out of my life. I loved my mom dearly, but her family was the worst and I really don't want anything to do with them anymore.
Is that bad? Can I just flat-out distance myself from one-half of my extended family? I really dislike them.
Family issues are the worst. But what I don't understand is that you say it's long and a terrible job to go online and enter a shopping list? I never used that website, but it seems like it'd take less time than it takes to physically do the shopping, which doesn't take that long IMO.
Distancing yourself from half of your family is never a good thing, but sometimes it's what you have to do to not hate them more.
Okay, I hope you guys don't mind but I'm going to rant about my family a little bit. I'll spoiler-tag it so you can choose not to read if you don't. It's pretty boring anyway:
So, before my mother passed away, she was doing online foodshopping for my grandmother. My grandmother would give my mother $20 every two weeks, and every two weeks my mother would hop on Shoprite.com and put an order in for her.
Before my mother passed away, my mother asked if I would do it instead of her because my mother was bedridden and just couldn't do it anymore. I didn't want to, but my grandmother promised me the $20 so I said yes. I mostly did it to keep my grandmother off my mother's back, because my grandmother is a very annoying, tactless, selfish person. In fact, one of my stipulations was "I will do this as long as you do not contact my mother about it in any way. You can deal directly with me. Part of why I'm doing this is so my mother doesn't have to think about it anymore." I thought that was reasonable.
She agreed, although she did, of course, bring the job up to my mother multiple times.
Anyway, in February my mother passed away. It's now October and I've continued doing the shopping for my grandmother all this time, however I never really intended to do it this long and definitely not "forever." I was just doing it to alleviate the burden from my mother. The $20 was nice, but not important.
Fast forward to about two months ago. My grandmother started making passive aggressive comments every time I came over to get her shopping list (the way it worked was this: I would come over, get a physical list from her and the $20, and then go home and put the order in through the website). The comments were all of this nature: "This is so expensive. I feel like I should rip the $20 in half and just give you $10." She said it with kind of a goofy smile, but I knew exactly what she was saying and where it was coming from. She wanted to stop giving me $20 and start giving me $10 instead.
I just smiled back, said nothing, and took the $20. Why seek out a confrontation? I knew she would eventually come right out and say it. Well, two weeks ago she did. She said that she was only giving me $10. I said "well, then I am not doing it." She was kind of flummoxed, but I explained that it wasn't a job I enjoyed (I really loathe it, to be honest), it isn't a job I expected to do for this long, and I frankly don't have the time anymore no matter what I am getting paid for it. Even $20 wasn't enough at this point and $10 certainly wasn't either.
So I told her I would do it that last time because I didn't want to leave her high and dry that week and I would do it for the $10, but that it would be the last time. I explained to her very calmly and diplomatically the reasons I no longer wanted to do it. She had a lot of rebuttals. said "but you probably make more than I do with your unemployment." And a lot of "what are you so busy doing?" She has this way of making you feel like you don't own your own time or money. Well, I'm sorry but I do and I don't have to answer to her about anything.
So, I left with $10, the shopping list, and I did the job right away. I called her and told her it was done.
She calls me last night and I missed the call. I call her back just now. I knew what it was going to be about, but just in case it wasn't I decided I'd better call her in case something was wrong. Even though I don't like her, she's still my grandmother.
But no, it was about this. She says "I was calling just to see if you had changed your mind at all about the shopping."
My answer: "No, I'm sorry, but I'm busy today and tomorrow-" (she needs her shopping for Tuesday) "-and I can't."
Her: "Do you think your sister can handle it?"
Me: "No, not really. I don't think any of us here are going to be able to do this for you, sorry."
Her: "What if I gave you $20 instead?"
Me: "No, I'm sorry. Like I explained two weeks ago, it's not really about the money anymore. I can't do it."
Her: "I'm always there for you." (Yes, she really said this.)
Me: "Sorry."
Then she huffed and said "well, I'm disappointed" and hung up.
The reality is, my uncle (her son) is a dick and whispers in my grandmother's ear all the time. This is the uncle that never came to visit my mother in the hospital and did not show up at her funeral. I have no doubt that the "give Drez $10 instead of $20" came from him and not from her. I am not going to dance to their puppetmastering, and especially not to his. He is dead to me.
I know this is all small change really. But it's the principle of the matter, like it's a goddamn power struggle. At the end of the day, I didn't want to do it anyway. $20 is like two days' worth of lunches. But the way she went about this, plus the fact that I hate doing it in the first place, plus the fact that I don't really like my grandmother, plus the fact that I think this mostly came from my asshole uncle whispering in her ear. I guess this is a lesson to both of them: Don't screw around with me. I hope she gives HIM the job to do now. Because it sucks and he should do it.
I know I wrote a lot about something that probably looks insignificant but well this was kind of a big thing for me. It's the first step toward cutting shitty family out of my life. I loved my mom dearly, but her family was the worst and I really don't want anything to do with them anymore.
Is that bad? Can I just flat-out distance myself from one-half of my extended family? I really dislike them.
Yo I may be a little drunk right now so I am going to be all kinds of frank.
A vast majority of the extended half of my family on my father's side has pretty much been trying to bleed my mother dry as an extension of his generosity. Since he died this summer we simply cannot afford to give relative X Z dollars to fix whatever but she keeps doing it. If she does not they bad mouth her and all kinds of other crazy manipulative people shit.
I have completely cut them out of my life. I distance myself in every way possible because there is nothing loving going on. It's just people using people and in your situation Drez being used in a moment when you are vulnerable is terrible. So do not let it happen.
At no point did I actually tell them fuck right off with their madness but I sure as hell have started to ignore their phone calls and just say "okay".
Okay, I hope you guys don't mind but I'm going to rant about my family a little bit. I'll spoiler-tag it so you can choose not to read if you don't. It's pretty boring anyway:
So, before my mother passed away, she was doing online foodshopping for my grandmother. My grandmother would give my mother $20 every two weeks, and every two weeks my mother would hop on Shoprite.com and put an order in for her.
Before my mother passed away, my mother asked if I would do it instead of her because my mother was bedridden and just couldn't do it anymore. I didn't want to, but my grandmother promised me the $20 so I said yes. I mostly did it to keep my grandmother off my mother's back, because my grandmother is a very annoying, tactless, selfish person. In fact, one of my stipulations was "I will do this as long as you do not contact my mother about it in any way. You can deal directly with me. Part of why I'm doing this is so my mother doesn't have to think about it anymore." I thought that was reasonable.
She agreed, although she did, of course, bring the job up to my mother multiple times.
Anyway, in February my mother passed away. It's now October and I've continued doing the shopping for my grandmother all this time, however I never really intended to do it this long and definitely not "forever." I was just doing it to alleviate the burden from my mother. The $20 was nice, but not important.
Fast forward to about two months ago. My grandmother started making passive aggressive comments every time I came over to get her shopping list (the way it worked was this: I would come over, get a physical list from her and the $20, and then go home and put the order in through the website). The comments were all of this nature: "This is so expensive. I feel like I should rip the $20 in half and just give you $10." She said it with kind of a goofy smile, but I knew exactly what she was saying and where it was coming from. She wanted to stop giving me $20 and start giving me $10 instead.
I just smiled back, said nothing, and took the $20. Why seek out a confrontation? I knew she would eventually come right out and say it. Well, two weeks ago she did. She said that she was only giving me $10. I said "well, then I am not doing it." She was kind of flummoxed, but I explained that it wasn't a job I enjoyed (I really loathe it, to be honest), it isn't a job I expected to do for this long, and I frankly don't have the time anymore no matter what I am getting paid for it. Even $20 wasn't enough at this point and $10 certainly wasn't either.
So I told her I would do it that last time because I didn't want to leave her high and dry that week and I would do it for the $10, but that it would be the last time. I explained to her very calmly and diplomatically the reasons I no longer wanted to do it. She had a lot of rebuttals. said "but you probably make more than I do with your unemployment." And a lot of "what are you so busy doing?" She has this way of making you feel like you don't own your own time or money. Well, I'm sorry but I do and I don't have to answer to her about anything.
So, I left with $10, the shopping list, and I did the job right away. I called her and told her it was done.
She calls me last night and I missed the call. I call her back just now. I knew what it was going to be about, but just in case it wasn't I decided I'd better call her in case something was wrong. Even though I don't like her, she's still my grandmother.
But no, it was about this. She says "I was calling just to see if you had changed your mind at all about the shopping."
My answer: "No, I'm sorry, but I'm busy today and tomorrow-" (she needs her shopping for Tuesday) "-and I can't."
Her: "Do you think your sister can handle it?"
Me: "No, not really. I don't think any of us here are going to be able to do this for you, sorry."
Her: "What if I gave you $20 instead?"
Me: "No, I'm sorry. Like I explained two weeks ago, it's not really about the money anymore. I can't do it."
Her: "I'm always there for you." (Yes, she really said this.)
Me: "Sorry."
Then she huffed and said "well, I'm disappointed" and hung up.
The reality is, my uncle (her son) is a dick and whispers in my grandmother's ear all the time. This is the uncle that never came to visit my mother in the hospital and did not show up at her funeral. I have no doubt that the "give Drez $10 instead of $20" came from him and not from her. I am not going to dance to their puppetmastering, and especially not to his. He is dead to me.
I know this is all small change really. But it's the principle of the matter, like it's a goddamn power struggle. At the end of the day, I didn't want to do it anyway. $20 is like two days' worth of lunches. But the way she went about this, plus the fact that I hate doing it in the first place, plus the fact that I don't really like my grandmother, plus the fact that I think this mostly came from my asshole uncle whispering in her ear. I guess this is a lesson to both of them: Don't screw around with me. I hope she gives HIM the job to do now. Because it sucks and he should do it.
I know I wrote a lot about something that probably looks insignificant but well this was kind of a big thing for me. It's the first step toward cutting shitty family out of my life. I loved my mom dearly, but her family was the worst and I really don't want anything to do with them anymore.
Is that bad? Can I just flat-out distance myself from one-half of my extended family? I really dislike them.
Yo I may be a little drunk right now so I am going to be all kinds of frank.
A vast majority of the extended half of my family on my father's side has pretty much been trying to bleed my mother dry as an extension of his generosity. Since he died this summer we simply cannot afford to give relative X Z dollars to fix whatever but she keeps doing it. If she does not they bad mouth her and all kinds of other crazy manipulative people shit.
I have completely cut them out of my life. I distance myself in every way possible because there is nothing loving going on. It's just people using people and in your situation Drez being used in a moment when you are vulnerable is terrible. So do not let it happen.
At no point did I actually tell them fuck right off with their madness but I sure as hell have started to ignore their phone calls and just say "okay".
Thanks, DUE.
Switch: SW-7690-2320-9238Steam/PSN/Xbox: Drezdar
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ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
Drez.
You're doing the right thing by doing what you need to do for you.
Family can be a support network, and distancing yourself from them can cut that off... but that doesn't sound like the case in this situation. This sounds like cutting bullshit out of your life.
You don't have to hate them, and you don't have to fight them... you can just not be involved.
Family drama is the worst kind of drama because even if you don't like them and have all kinds of reasons to not like them, they are still family.
I don't much care for my Dad's side of the family, or my Mom's brother for that matter, but I still feel pangs of guilt when I think about how long it's been since I have seen to talked to any of them. Of course, then I think about how often they try to contact me (never) and that assuages the guilt a bit.
So yeah, I feel for you Drez. Does this grandmother of yours have no redeeming qualities at all?
So we get stiff once in a while. So we have a little fun. What’s wrong with that? This is a free country, isn’t it? I can take my panda any place I want to. And if I wanna buy it a drink, that’s my business.
Family drama is the worst kind of drama because even if you don't like them and have all kinds of reasons to not like them, they are still family.
I don't much care for my Dad's side of the family, or my Mom's brother for that matter, but I still feel pangs of guilt when I think about how long it's been since I have seen to talked to any of them. Of course, then I think about how often they try to contact me (never) and that assuages the guilt a bit.
So yeah, I feel for you Drez. Does this grandmother of yours have no redeeming qualities at all?
Dcmbr
The way you feel is exactly how I felt until something sudden and terrible happened. Unfortunately there are times in life when you have no choice but to see your family members not as family but as human beings.
The picture is not always what you hoped it would be.
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21stCenturyCall me Pixel, or Pix for short![They/Them]Registered Userregular
I hate family troubles. My maternal grandmother died about... 2 or 3 years ago and we got our part of the inheritance last summer.
There was a falling out between my mother and grandmother over several things, one of them being, from what I heard (she never was very clear and I never asked because I didn't want to cause her pain), my grandmother siding with other people in the family against a gay family member. So things got a bit ugly for several years and I never saw her. Me and my sister were her only grandchildren, though, and it counted for something.
And then, something like 4 years before she passed away, she was diagnosed with dementia. Apparently she had a alcohol problem which greatly exacerbated it. My mom took care of her mother for her last years, even volounteering at the geriatric care place and junk. Problem is, during her last lucid years, she was tricked by some woman who took care of her into writing that woman's daughter in her will. She made that woman her executor.
It took years, she tried to sue my mother over "money she was loaned", it was pretty ugly. In the end, the executor spent a lot of money on herself for the execution of the will, got my grandmother's jewelry, but my part of the family got our share of the inheritance. The largest share. Grandma was pretty dang rich. My mother won't tell us how she got that money, though. She was pretty dang selfish and miserly, though.
Okay, I hope you guys don't mind but I'm going to rant about my family a little bit. I'll spoiler-tag it so you can choose not to read if you don't. It's pretty boring anyway:
So, before my mother passed away, she was doing online foodshopping for my grandmother. My grandmother would give my mother $20 every two weeks, and every two weeks my mother would hop on Shoprite.com and put an order in for her.
Before my mother passed away, my mother asked if I would do it instead of her because my mother was bedridden and just couldn't do it anymore. I didn't want to, but my grandmother promised me the $20 so I said yes. I mostly did it to keep my grandmother off my mother's back, because my grandmother is a very annoying, tactless, selfish person. In fact, one of my stipulations was "I will do this as long as you do not contact my mother about it in any way. You can deal directly with me. Part of why I'm doing this is so my mother doesn't have to think about it anymore." I thought that was reasonable.
She agreed, although she did, of course, bring the job up to my mother multiple times.
Anyway, in February my mother passed away. It's now October and I've continued doing the shopping for my grandmother all this time, however I never really intended to do it this long and definitely not "forever." I was just doing it to alleviate the burden from my mother. The $20 was nice, but not important.
Fast forward to about two months ago. My grandmother started making passive aggressive comments every time I came over to get her shopping list (the way it worked was this: I would come over, get a physical list from her and the $20, and then go home and put the order in through the website). The comments were all of this nature: "This is so expensive. I feel like I should rip the $20 in half and just give you $10." She said it with kind of a goofy smile, but I knew exactly what she was saying and where it was coming from. She wanted to stop giving me $20 and start giving me $10 instead.
I just smiled back, said nothing, and took the $20. Why seek out a confrontation? I knew she would eventually come right out and say it. Well, two weeks ago she did. She said that she was only giving me $10. I said "well, then I am not doing it." She was kind of flummoxed, but I explained that it wasn't a job I enjoyed (I really loathe it, to be honest), it isn't a job I expected to do for this long, and I frankly don't have the time anymore no matter what I am getting paid for it. Even $20 wasn't enough at this point and $10 certainly wasn't either.
So I told her I would do it that last time because I didn't want to leave her high and dry that week and I would do it for the $10, but that it would be the last time. I explained to her very calmly and diplomatically the reasons I no longer wanted to do it. She had a lot of rebuttals. said "but you probably make more than I do with your unemployment." And a lot of "what are you so busy doing?" She has this way of making you feel like you don't own your own time or money. Well, I'm sorry but I do and I don't have to answer to her about anything.
So, I left with $10, the shopping list, and I did the job right away. I called her and told her it was done.
She calls me last night and I missed the call. I call her back just now. I knew what it was going to be about, but just in case it wasn't I decided I'd better call her in case something was wrong. Even though I don't like her, she's still my grandmother.
But no, it was about this. She says "I was calling just to see if you had changed your mind at all about the shopping."
My answer: "No, I'm sorry, but I'm busy today and tomorrow-" (she needs her shopping for Tuesday) "-and I can't."
Her: "Do you think your sister can handle it?"
Me: "No, not really. I don't think any of us here are going to be able to do this for you, sorry."
Her: "What if I gave you $20 instead?"
Me: "No, I'm sorry. Like I explained two weeks ago, it's not really about the money anymore. I can't do it."
Her: "I'm always there for you." (Yes, she really said this.)
Me: "Sorry."
Then she huffed and said "well, I'm disappointed" and hung up.
The reality is, my uncle (her son) is a dick and whispers in my grandmother's ear all the time. This is the uncle that never came to visit my mother in the hospital and did not show up at her funeral. I have no doubt that the "give Drez $10 instead of $20" came from him and not from her. I am not going to dance to their puppetmastering, and especially not to his. He is dead to me.
I know this is all small change really. But it's the principle of the matter, like it's a goddamn power struggle. At the end of the day, I didn't want to do it anyway. $20 is like two days' worth of lunches. But the way she went about this, plus the fact that I hate doing it in the first place, plus the fact that I don't really like my grandmother, plus the fact that I think this mostly came from my asshole uncle whispering in her ear. I guess this is a lesson to both of them: Don't screw around with me. I hope she gives HIM the job to do now. Because it sucks and he should do it.
I know I wrote a lot about something that probably looks insignificant but well this was kind of a big thing for me. It's the first step toward cutting shitty family out of my life. I loved my mom dearly, but her family was the worst and I really don't want anything to do with them anymore.
Is that bad? Can I just flat-out distance myself from one-half of my extended family? I really dislike them.
Family issues are the worst. But what I don't understand is that you say it's long and a terrible job to go online and enter a shopping list? I never used that website, but it seems like it'd take less time than it takes to physically do the shopping, which doesn't take that long IMO.
Distancing yourself from half of your family is never a good thing, but sometimes it's what you have to do to not hate them more.
The reason it's annoying to do the shopping online has more to do with my grandmother than with the actual shopping. Like if I was doing my own food shopping, it would be mostly fine. It's doing someone else's food shopping that is annoying.
But the website is also shitty.
The problem is this: She looks through the Sunday circular and makes out a list based on that. Then she hands the list to me. Anywhere from 1 to 50% of the things on her list aren't actually on the circular, they are just things she thought of.
Then I get to the online circular and I start trying to match her scrawl with what's actually in the circular. The pages often don't match up, and I have to go hunting through the entire circular.
And then I have to deal with the website itself. The search function is tetchy. Sometimes it works great, sometimes it doesn't find the item that I *know* is on the site no matter how I look for it. And sometimes clicking on an item that is CLEARLY being advertised on the circular doesn't actually bring me to that item.
My grandmother and I have had arguments over price (they sometimes run Wednesday through Friday deals that she won't take advantage of for getting the deal on a Tuesday and I explain this to her but she says "just tell them I want the discount anyway.") I've explained to her that this is just a website where you pick items and place an order but she either doesn't understand the concept or doesn't want to. We've had arguments about her lack of description. "Ice cream" doesn't tell me anything. There are like 50 flavors of ice cream. Pretty much any time there is a variety of flavors, she doesn't actually specify the flavor. But of course when I call her she has a specific flavor in mind, so it's not like she was actually leaving it up to me.
There are plenty of other reasons. The reality is, it was one of the most frustrating, annoying things in the world to do and I used to really dread doing it every weekend. I'd rather slap my dick around for two hours for free than do that for $20.
Oh and two weeks ago I explained to her how frustrating it was and I reminded her about all the arguments we've had about it and I actually said "I think it'll be better for our relationship if I stop doing this now as it seems to create tension."
Family drama is the worst kind of drama because even if you don't like them and have all kinds of reasons to not like them, they are still family.
I don't much care for my Dad's side of the family, or my Mom's brother for that matter, but I still feel pangs of guilt when I think about how long it's been since I have seen to talked to any of them. Of course, then I think about how often they try to contact me (never) and that assuages the guilt a bit.
So yeah, I feel for you Drez. Does this grandmother of yours have no redeeming qualities at all?
To be honest, I don't even think my mother liked her. So a part of me actually feels like I'm betraying my mother when I continue to help my grandmother.
I do know this: My mother got sucked into my grandmother's unending stream of guilt trippy bullshit and if there's one thing my mother would have wanted to pass on to me as an inheritance it would be to not get dragged into the same kind of relationship. So I refuse.
To be honest, I don't even think my mother liked her. So a part of me actually feels like I'm betraying my mother when I continue to help my grandmother.
So we get stiff once in a while. So we have a little fun. What’s wrong with that? This is a free country, isn’t it? I can take my panda any place I want to. And if I wanna buy it a drink, that’s my business.
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21stCenturyCall me Pixel, or Pix for short![They/Them]Registered Userregular
I do know this: My mother got sucked into my grandmother's unending stream of guilt trippy bullshit and if there's one thing my mother would have wanted to pass on to me as an inheritance it would be to not get dragged into the same kind of relationship. So I refuse.
Yeah, enabling someone to guilt-trip you is bad, it makes them think it's okay to do it. Don't let 'em do it. Don't be like me, don't go and tell them "You can't guilt trip me anymore" and then get immediately guilty and retract the statement before walking home, humiliated.
I do know this: My mother got sucked into my grandmother's unending stream of guilt trippy bullshit and if there's one thing my mother would have wanted to pass on to me as an inheritance it would be to not get dragged into the same kind of relationship. So I refuse.
Yeah, enabling someone to guilt-trip you is bad, it makes them think it's okay to do it. Don't let 'em do it. Don't be like me, don't go and tell them "You can't guilt trip me anymore" and then get immediately guilty and retract the statement before walking home, humiliated.
That's kind of what I did last week. I decided to "be nice" and do the job for $10.
But I also decided to use it as an opportunity to explain why I would never do it again, so I feel like I kind of evened out in the deal.
It made me feel better about telling her no today.
And coming to chat and posting about it made me feel better about it too.
Switch: SW-7690-2320-9238Steam/PSN/Xbox: Drezdar
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HakkekageSpace Whore Academysumma cum laudeRegistered Userregular
All this family talk reminds me of how much I miss my maternal grandparents. They were the best. Every other member of my extended family on both sides, are p much on the "suck" side of the spectrum.
So we get stiff once in a while. So we have a little fun. What’s wrong with that? This is a free country, isn’t it? I can take my panda any place I want to. And if I wanna buy it a drink, that’s my business.
It's your life, do what you want. Family is suppose to support one another and help each other out, not be selfish vultures and try to make other family members feel like shit.
So we get stiff once in a while. So we have a little fun. What’s wrong with that? This is a free country, isn’t it? I can take my panda any place I want to. And if I wanna buy it a drink, that’s my business.
So we get stiff once in a while. So we have a little fun. What’s wrong with that? This is a free country, isn’t it? I can take my panda any place I want to. And if I wanna buy it a drink, that’s my business.
Posts
"Wow, I am soooooo not dizzy at all."
no it felt great.
i talk as if i am a child with terrible self-confidence and debilitating introspection in certain situations and she noticed that. . .
then she said it was a neat thing? blew my tiny mind.
yeah that's about it
minus the auditory and visual hallucinations. also the lassitude.
Before my mother passed away, my mother asked if I would do it instead of her because my mother was bedridden and just couldn't do it anymore. I didn't want to, but my grandmother promised me the $20 so I said yes. I mostly did it to keep my grandmother off my mother's back, because my grandmother is a very annoying, tactless, selfish person. In fact, one of my stipulations was "I will do this as long as you do not contact my mother about it in any way. You can deal directly with me. Part of why I'm doing this is so my mother doesn't have to think about it anymore." I thought that was reasonable.
She agreed, although she did, of course, bring the job up to my mother multiple times.
Anyway, in February my mother passed away. It's now October and I've continued doing the shopping for my grandmother all this time, however I never really intended to do it this long and definitely not "forever." I was just doing it to alleviate the burden from my mother. The $20 was nice, but not important.
Fast forward to about two months ago. My grandmother started making passive aggressive comments every time I came over to get her shopping list (the way it worked was this: I would come over, get a physical list from her and the $20, and then go home and put the order in through the website). The comments were all of this nature: "This is so expensive. I feel like I should rip the $20 in half and just give you $10." She said it with kind of a goofy smile, but I knew exactly what she was saying and where it was coming from. She wanted to stop giving me $20 and start giving me $10 instead.
I just smiled back, said nothing, and took the $20. Why seek out a confrontation? I knew she would eventually come right out and say it. Well, two weeks ago she did. She said that she was only giving me $10. I said "well, then I am not doing it." She was kind of flummoxed, but I explained that it wasn't a job I enjoyed (I really loathe it, to be honest), it isn't a job I expected to do for this long, and I frankly don't have the time anymore no matter what I am getting paid for it. Even $20 wasn't enough at this point and $10 certainly wasn't either.
So I told her I would do it that last time because I didn't want to leave her high and dry that week and I would do it for the $10, but that it would be the last time. I explained to her very calmly and diplomatically the reasons I no longer wanted to do it. She had a lot of rebuttals. said "but you probably make more than I do with your unemployment." And a lot of "what are you so busy doing?" She has this way of making you feel like you don't own your own time or money. Well, I'm sorry but I do and I don't have to answer to her about anything.
So, I left with $10, the shopping list, and I did the job right away. I called her and told her it was done.
She calls me last night and I missed the call. I call her back just now. I knew what it was going to be about, but just in case it wasn't I decided I'd better call her in case something was wrong. Even though I don't like her, she's still my grandmother.
But no, it was about this. She says "I was calling just to see if you had changed your mind at all about the shopping."
My answer: "No, I'm sorry, but I'm busy today and tomorrow-" (she needs her shopping for Tuesday) "-and I can't."
Her: "Do you think your sister can handle it?"
Me: "No, not really. I don't think any of us here are going to be able to do this for you, sorry."
Her: "What if I gave you $20 instead?"
Me: "No, I'm sorry. Like I explained two weeks ago, it's not really about the money anymore. I can't do it."
Her: "I'm always there for you." (Yes, she really said this.)
Me: "Sorry."
Then she huffed and said "well, I'm disappointed" and hung up.
The reality is, my uncle (her son) is a dick and whispers in my grandmother's ear all the time. This is the uncle that never came to visit my mother in the hospital and did not show up at her funeral. I have no doubt that the "give Drez $10 instead of $20" came from him and not from her. I am not going to dance to their puppetmastering, and especially not to his. He is dead to me.
I know this is all small change really. But it's the principle of the matter, like it's a goddamn power struggle. At the end of the day, I didn't want to do it anyway. $20 is like two days' worth of lunches. But the way she went about this, plus the fact that I hate doing it in the first place, plus the fact that I don't really like my grandmother, plus the fact that I think this mostly came from my asshole uncle whispering in her ear. I guess this is a lesson to both of them: Don't screw around with me. I hope she gives HIM the job to do now. Because it sucks and he should do it.
I know I wrote a lot about something that probably looks insignificant but well this was kind of a big thing for me. It's the first step toward cutting shitty family out of my life. I loved my mom dearly, but her family was the worst and I really don't want anything to do with them anymore.
Is that bad? Can I just flat-out distance myself from one-half of my extended family? I really dislike them.
I used to be like this. But one day I decided that being late for work all the time was a drag and I didn't like how it made me feel so I stopped and now I'm early all the time. Well, now I'm unemployed but I *was* early all the time.
Another reason: No matter how good your metro system is, getting a ride somewhere is so much nicer. It's like one million times nicer than having to deal with mass transit. So a lot of people will gladly skirt that line of tardiness for a ride.
it's probably better for you in the long run
Fuck em.
Yes.
Incest is the answer.
Family issues are the worst. But what I don't understand is that you say it's long and a terrible job to go online and enter a shopping list? I never used that website, but it seems like it'd take less time than it takes to physically do the shopping, which doesn't take that long IMO.
Distancing yourself from half of your family is never a good thing, but sometimes it's what you have to do to not hate them more.
Check out my site, the Bismuth Heart | My Twitter
Yo I may be a little drunk right now so I am going to be all kinds of frank.
A vast majority of the extended half of my family on my father's side has pretty much been trying to bleed my mother dry as an extension of his generosity. Since he died this summer we simply cannot afford to give relative X Z dollars to fix whatever but she keeps doing it. If she does not they bad mouth her and all kinds of other crazy manipulative people shit.
I have completely cut them out of my life. I distance myself in every way possible because there is nothing loving going on. It's just people using people and in your situation Drez being used in a moment when you are vulnerable is terrible. So do not let it happen.
At no point did I actually tell them fuck right off with their madness but I sure as hell have started to ignore their phone calls and just say "okay".
Thanks, DUE.
You're doing the right thing by doing what you need to do for you.
Family can be a support network, and distancing yourself from them can cut that off... but that doesn't sound like the case in this situation. This sounds like cutting bullshit out of your life.
You don't have to hate them, and you don't have to fight them... you can just not be involved.
I am in no way a paragon but I know exactly what you mean when it comes to that feeling of obligation.
I don't much care for my Dad's side of the family, or my Mom's brother for that matter, but I still feel pangs of guilt when I think about how long it's been since I have seen to talked to any of them. Of course, then I think about how often they try to contact me (never) and that assuages the guilt a bit.
So yeah, I feel for you Drez. Does this grandmother of yours have no redeeming qualities at all?
Dcmbr
The way you feel is exactly how I felt until something sudden and terrible happened. Unfortunately there are times in life when you have no choice but to see your family members not as family but as human beings.
The picture is not always what you hoped it would be.
And then, something like 4 years before she passed away, she was diagnosed with dementia. Apparently she had a alcohol problem which greatly exacerbated it. My mom took care of her mother for her last years, even volounteering at the geriatric care place and junk. Problem is, during her last lucid years, she was tricked by some woman who took care of her into writing that woman's daughter in her will. She made that woman her executor.
It took years, she tried to sue my mother over "money she was loaned", it was pretty ugly. In the end, the executor spent a lot of money on herself for the execution of the will, got my grandmother's jewelry, but my part of the family got our share of the inheritance. The largest share. Grandma was pretty dang rich. My mother won't tell us how she got that money, though.
I try not to think about it too much.
Check out my site, the Bismuth Heart | My Twitter
The reason it's annoying to do the shopping online has more to do with my grandmother than with the actual shopping. Like if I was doing my own food shopping, it would be mostly fine. It's doing someone else's food shopping that is annoying.
But the website is also shitty.
The problem is this: She looks through the Sunday circular and makes out a list based on that. Then she hands the list to me. Anywhere from 1 to 50% of the things on her list aren't actually on the circular, they are just things she thought of.
Then I get to the online circular and I start trying to match her scrawl with what's actually in the circular. The pages often don't match up, and I have to go hunting through the entire circular.
And then I have to deal with the website itself. The search function is tetchy. Sometimes it works great, sometimes it doesn't find the item that I *know* is on the site no matter how I look for it. And sometimes clicking on an item that is CLEARLY being advertised on the circular doesn't actually bring me to that item.
My grandmother and I have had arguments over price (they sometimes run Wednesday through Friday deals that she won't take advantage of for getting the deal on a Tuesday and I explain this to her but she says "just tell them I want the discount anyway.") I've explained to her that this is just a website where you pick items and place an order but she either doesn't understand the concept or doesn't want to. We've had arguments about her lack of description. "Ice cream" doesn't tell me anything. There are like 50 flavors of ice cream. Pretty much any time there is a variety of flavors, she doesn't actually specify the flavor. But of course when I call her she has a specific flavor in mind, so it's not like she was actually leaving it up to me.
There are plenty of other reasons. The reality is, it was one of the most frustrating, annoying things in the world to do and I used to really dread doing it every weekend. I'd rather slap my dick around for two hours for free than do that for $20.
Oh and two weeks ago I explained to her how frustrating it was and I reminded her about all the arguments we've had about it and I actually said "I think it'll be better for our relationship if I stop doing this now as it seems to create tension."
Cue today's conversation.
To be honest, I don't even think my mother liked her. So a part of me actually feels like I'm betraying my mother when I continue to help my grandmother.
I know that's fucked up, but whatever.
That sucksssssss.
Yeah, enabling someone to guilt-trip you is bad, it makes them think it's okay to do it. Don't let 'em do it. Don't be like me, don't go and tell them "You can't guilt trip me anymore" and then get immediately guilty and retract the statement before walking home, humiliated.
Check out my site, the Bismuth Heart | My Twitter
That's kind of what I did last week. I decided to "be nice" and do the job for $10.
But I also decided to use it as an opportunity to explain why I would never do it again, so I feel like I kind of evened out in the deal.
It made me feel better about telling her no today.
And coming to chat and posting about it made me feel better about it too.
NNID: Hakkekage
All this family talk reminds me of how much I miss my maternal grandparents. They were the best. Every other member of my extended family on both sides, are p much on the "suck" side of the spectrum.
me too.
No worries. Everyone needs rant time.
Are you still throwing up Hakkes?
We should do another D&D phalla. Who's in charge of administering that now? @Elki ?