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What low-stakes drama is going on in your circles right now?
Specifically low-stakes.
I’m sure many of us have been having more than our our fill of high-stakes stuff recently.
Think: minor, inconsequential, petty, mundane, etc.
Your “circles” can be home, work, school, friends, gym, library, grocery store, Discord server — anything really.
Somebody used "null" as a tag and it broke the front page of a website.
Ah, you must work for the Wall Street Journal then!
My husband and I bought a bed for our dog.
It was too small for him, and he didn’t like using it.
We agreed to give it away to some cat owners we know.
As soon as we did this, our dog started regularly lying on the bed.
It’s like he knows.
He totally does, do you plan to get a bigger one for him? Imagine if you did and he still laid on the smaller one. lol
We had actually already gotten him a bigger version of the bed (which he loves), but that’s in a different spot in the house.
We did a switcheroo where we took the “cat bed” and replaced it with a different bed from elsewhere in the house that he wasn’t using (he’s, uh… kind of spoiled 😂). We’re hoping he didn’t notice, and it doesn’t seem he has, because he seems to like the switched bed just the same.
I think that means it’s more about the location of the bed than the specific bed itself. Either way, I hope we can get away with the heist! We’ll see how things pan out.
Update:
My dog has a favorite toy. We had gone to a pet store one time and we were walking him on leash, when he grabbed the toy right off the shelf and wouldn’t put it down. Literally carried it in his mouth for the rest of the time we were there. Got bothered when we had to hand it to the cashier to scan it.
Every night before he goes to bed, he locates it and brings it to bed with him. When he changes sleeping positions during the day, he’ll often bring it with him. If he’s ever away from our house (like when he does sleepovers with my in-laws), when he comes back, the first thing he does is locate his favorite toy.
He loves it. It’s adorable.
Anyway, yesterday he tucked his toy into the switcheroo bed and then sat next to it, off of the bed, watching over it as it “slept.”
So, if he thinks the new-but-actually-old-and-just-relocated bed is good enough for his favorite toy, and it looks like he does, then that’s a strong vote of confidence.
Thank you so much for this story.
Absolutely adorable!
Used to have two dogs, one large and one small. We bought a larger bed for the big dog when he got bigger. The small dog would kick him out of it, so we had to get two big beds in the end.
Parenting is a horn of plenty for this.
We had a seemingly endless family meeting last night because our two boys, who each have a room of their own but choose to sleep in the same room (technically the older boy's room), both feel entitled to sitting in front of the central heating vent in the bedroom because "it's the best one." No option was a winner, so we settled on a joint resolution to just do what the parents say tonight simply because we insist.
Lots of talks about private spaces, compromise, shared resources, ownership vs stakeholding, etc. We'll see tonight what they came up with in the past 24 hours as possible solutions.
Too much fun. XD
/// Update ///
Absolutely nothing. Not even mentioned. A win for peace and quiet enjoyment of the residence.
My sister and I used to raise this kind of petty argument to a fine art. Like pouring milk and one cup had an ounce more than the other and we'd quibble over it for 15 minutes. Or cutting a candy in half and one piece was a miniscule bit larger than the other and a long debate would ensue.
One day, in a stroke of brilliance, my father figured out the "Solomon solution". One kid pours, the other chooses which cup they want. One cuts the candy, the other chooses a piece.
I think he solved 1000 arguments with that one trick.
I’m one of five kids, and my parents did the exact same thing. Having not just one sibling who could “win” but up to FOUR raised the stakes significantly.
Suffice it to say: to this day, we are all exceptionally good at cutting things into equal portions. My husband is a fantastic home cook and baker and does pretty much everything himself, but he always turns things over to me to cut because I’ll do it so precisely.
Also one of 4! We unfortunately followed the squeaky wheel rule, so the eldest and the baby seemed to win out over us middle children with "fewer needs."
It's funny now though!
The whole time I was reading your comment, I was thinking "I have the perfect solution for you" which was exactly the one your father suggested. It really is the perfect option when dividing something equally between two.
There is a small problem with the "one cuts one chooses" strategy if you always make the same kid cut - you penalize them by making every mistake cost them and benefits the other kid.
You have to switch up who cuts so that one kid is not always given the crappy end of the deal.
I agree that switching up is a good idea, but I think the strategy was formed for contexts in which it's generally not difficult to get roughly equal portions when you're genuinely trying, even as a child. Its principal focus is to prevent a bad actor from dividing things unevenly for their own benefit, which it accomplishes rather well.
yeah for example this was absolutely NOT effective when my brother and i were fighting over who got the corner part of the cornbread. Whichever piece had the corner would be chosen no matter what (and cutting diagonally ruined the entire piece of cornbread).
While we aren't actually serious about it, my wife and I still divide things in a way that accounts for this. Rather than the chooser getting to look at both options and pick what is wanted, the chooser picks blindly. This normally takes the form of the portioner asking "left or right?" after the items are already divided, but before seeing them.
Ah yes, “I cut you choose” is what we called that when I was growing up. Very effective indeed
I am now invested in this saga and would appreciate updates if anything changes
Perfect!
A low stakes solution for a low stakes problem is to let children resolve things by having them do absolutely nothing.
My friend is a lover of all woodland creatures great and small. Which is why, in this stark winter when it hit -30c and there was so much snowfall that it was difficult for them to feed, that he put out some feed for the local wild deer. He does it every day and the deer have started coming out when he whistles. He lives on 30 acres of land on the edge of a rural subdivision so they just walk in from the nearby forest.
But some people living nearby have noticed a few more deer in the area and are complaining about it on fb. One neighbor believes that's why his trees are getting eaten. Another thinks that it will attract cougars. Its kinda funny how some get their shorts in a knot but people do love to complain. Course no one has mentioned that there are another neighbor's horse corrals just a few hundred feet away and the deer are often out there eating the horse feed.
Oh well. Drama ensues.
The timing on this thread is perfect, the most petty, unimportant drama ever happened 2 weeks ago and I'm still trying to get all parties involved to let it go... the the point of making one of them literally sing "Let It Go" from Frozen for me. If you listen to the lyrics, it turns out that song is more of a "fuck you" anthem than a "let bygones be bygones" song, which was unexpected.
It was my partners birthday and we were celebrating up at her parents mountain home for a little ski weekend. Two of our friends were carpooling with another two friends - who had a 4x4 SUV to get through any potential sketchy snow - and were due up a few days after us. Well, the two friends who were set to drive started giving inklings they might bail, with texts to the group thread like "ooh, I hear the weather might be too bad to come up" or "oh, a work thing just popped up"; all while being unresponsive to our texts and the texts/calls of the friends they were supposed to be driving. They ended up bailing and not really telling anyone.
So now the friends who they were supposed to drive are pissed, even though there were other folks who were coming up for a different trip but to the same area from where that could drive them - so they made it. And my partner was frustrated because since they didn't come she could have invited other friends as well. All understandable, but, you know, stuff you can let go.
Here is the frustrating petty part. The couple who bailed wouldn't really cop to doing anything wrong and everyone else isn't letting it go. They all said the apology wasn't sincere enough. So now everyone feels awkward around each other, and I'm here in the middle being like - none of these things are big deals and barely changed the weekend. Can you 2 apologize and can the rest of you just accept that it wasn't great but that we love these friends and just let it go?
It's like being 15 again. We're old, we don't need no low-stakes drama!
I mean, promising to drive people and then bailing last minute without telling those folk is fairly shitty. I am not sure if it is a big big deal, but it is a deal of some sorts. So, I guess it does belong in this thread...
Yeah, this feels more like one of those "it's not a big deal but it shows you don't care about me and that makes it a big deal" things. Especially in a time when everyone is sick of everyone else bailing on fucking everything.
Yeah, it's pretty common behavior and they do it to everyone. They are give you the shirt off their back but also chronically late people. I've kind of baked the expectation into my life when I hang out with them it has to be when I don't have hard time requirements, no relying on ride, etc - so I've never felt particularly burnt by it. I kind of accept it as one of their weird quirks. I get why it's frustrating, it just seems like an easy one to move on from.
Sounds like this might be a final straw situation then. It's one thing when they themselves are late, another when that lateness impacts someone else. It worked out this time because your other friends were able to find another ride.
Just think if they didn't have that other ride. All the weekend plans just gone down the drain. Would you be happy if you were looking forward to a trip, and then couldn't go at all because the drivers just dropped out without a word?
I totally get them being frustrated, it's a total dick move. I am on board with that. It would have been much worse if there wasn't an alternative. However, those friends have since buried the hatchet. They took a similar path as me, as long as the "perpetrating" friends owned up to it, didn't make excuses, and are just honest about needing to bail - they can let it go. That and they also just wont rely on them for rides anymore.
I kind of feel like everyone has annoying little ticks and we all kind of learn to live with them to make friendships work. Some people are flaky, some people are bossy, some people double book, etc... As long as you know those traits and expect them you can kind of mitigate it. We've all been friends for a while so I'm just surprised that everyone took it as badly as they did. I can see from the comments here and in real life that I am a real minority in thinking this shouldn't be a big deal. So maybe wrong thread :)
I kind of consider this a decent deal. It's not big big. But it does show disrespect for other people's time. And if you're supposed to be good friends, you wouldn't want to do that to them.
It also depends on how often they've done it. Once is kind of okay. But if it's a pattern, I'd get pretty sick of it too.
Yeah, that's fair. To me this couple does similar stuff a lot. Like when we hang out I just make sure I'm fully flexible because things likely wont happen at the prescribed time, and I have a lot of room for flexibility in my life so it doesn't bother me. I would be pretty pissed if I was our friends who lost out on a ride, but I also don't think I would have relied on them in the first place. Funnily enough those friends have buried the hatchet and are back on good terms with the others. The only one who is still upset by it is my partner.
This reminds me of a situation from college, so forgive me for replying with my own story.
I invited my roommate to a concert out of town (~3 hour drive, and he was going to drive us). He was really psyched but then leading up to the show, he got scheduled to work and couldn't get out of it. It was a bummer, but no big deal. I made alternate arrangements with another friend.
Anyway, he found out I was still going and got really pissed for some reason. Even more confusing, his girlfriend was the one who was trying to make me feel bad about going. I still to this day can't understand this. It sucked that he couldn't go, but I was still free and wanted to go, so finding a new way to do it seemed harmless.
Call me petty but usually I just remember these things as a sort of get out of jail free card for later. Like if I feel like flaking last minute on something I said I would do with them, or I don't want to do a favor that I said I would do, now I can bail on my commitments to them without any moral qualms, all I have to do is use one of their cards. There are definitely people with whom I have more "cards" than I could ever use, but it makes me feel better and less resentful of these people to have my imaginary cards. Instead of getting mad or starting an argument with them I just add a card to their tally.
I have the very same reasoning. Like if I put up withsome who is late all the time then it's ok if I'm late with them. If not I can roll out a "dude, you can't show up late all the time and be mad when I am" with confidence.
Tonight, I sat down to record a "let's play" video for my YouTube channel (which I just started and have no idea what I'm doing). I got through about an hour of gameplay and decided to pause the recording as I went about some of the more mundane grinding in the game so as to save viewers the boredom. I then got back into the swing of things, did some semi awesome stuff that took about another hour, and only then did I realize I hadn't hit record again.
So, I spent an hour tonight talking to nobody on my headset. The drama is all me lol.
It won’t save you from longer sessions, but retroactive “oh that was sick, I wish I was recording” buttons do exist with some recording software.
I’ve got Nvidia Shadowplay myself, and with a kinda crappy bitrate I can save the past 20 minutes of footage with a shortcut
That's actually really helpful! I'll see if my software has the ability for future sessions.
That was the one thing I really liked about playing some games on Series X, I could hit a button to record the last minute or 30 seconds or whatever if something cool happened.
A while back I thought I'd make a youtube channel focusing on the sort of longer form content I'd been enjoying at the time. Made my first video and was pretty happy with it. 0 views. Like not a single person watched it that I didn't give a direct link.
I wasn't expecting instant success, but it was especially discouraging and I basically gave up there.
Months later and I think to check on it. It's got like 20 more views and one very encouraging comment. I think maybe I'll give it another go, put together a few more videos. Then I realize I can't remember any of the account info or passwords I used. I wrote it all down when I started, but I long since cleared it out.
I know an account with one video and one subscriber isn't exactly a huge loss, but I'm still feeling pretty dumb about the whole thing.
We have a shared whiteboard att work. In numerous occasions I've put a marker pen there but it always goes missing. I'm pretty sure I know who's taking them, so I talked to her about it. She just laughed and said something along the lines "I don't know, maybe it's me, I always lose my pens."
I asked some other colleagues who uses the whiteboard and they just always have a marker in their pocket. So basically the whole team has had to adjust to her kleptomania. I just wonder if she got a drawer full of pens somewhere...
Obviously the next step is to set up a booby-trapped pen that will explode and cover the thief in ink if used.
Pen taped to string. String attached to very loud 'assault alarm' hidden under whiteboard. Arm anyone in the near vicinity with a pool noodle to attack the thief when the alarm sounds.
You're hired! I'm not sure what your job position is... but I know it's absolutely mission critical.
“Stockloss specialist” is about as good a job title as any, right?
I used to work in a lab, and all of our office supplies (pens, scissors, staplers, etc.) were always disappearing. Our coordinator finally bought replacements in hot pink, and they magically stopped disappearing. We never figured out who it was, but we had our suspicions.
More of an addendum to a high-stakes drama but we recently let my Mom into my daughter's life after some true drama last year that I won't go into since it's too serious for this thread.
Until now (15 months + the pregnancy), she has only had my mother-in-law (who lives in the same town) and my step-mom (1200 miles away, and step) as grandmas. My step-mom is mostly a little bit more thoughtful about her clothing purchases and more in line with our values like second-hand/thrift purchases and less, but higher-quality cotton clothing over polyester mass-produced crap.
So far, the only person buying us cheap, mass-produced one-time-use clothing has been my MIL, who can't be reasoned with so we've just accepted the fact that we're going to receive some dumb holiday outfit whenever something comes around that she feels like going on Amazon for. We don't worry about it too much because we can just donate it when we're done and hopefully it will get more use with someone else.
However, now that we've let my Mom back in our lives, the problem has gotten much worse. We are now receiving competing cheap outfits for every holiday, and it's getting a little frustrating for someone who abhors waste like me. My wife is a little less bothered - she can be a little more "mainstream" about things like dressing up your baby in an outfit just for a picture, which is basically the epitome of waste-culture to me.
I'm not sure how to get it to stop, because as I mentioned I think my wife has a little bit of cognitive dissonance in the situation where she's justifying the waste with like "we're not the ones buying it" but accepting it feels just as trashy to me. I am trying to broach the subject occasionally but no one seems to care, or acts like I'm just being a spoil-sport.
Maybe I'm just more sensitive about it because it's specifically my daughter and I'm the one that's going to have to explain all the heaping piles of trash and the garbage patch and climate change to her.
As someone with a mother who will outright sulk if I say I don't want gifts, my recommendation is to redirect her gift-giving impulse into things you'll feel better about. If you can say in advance what you'd appreciate and she'll buy those things, excellent. When she does give you cheap tat, don't give it any emotional space in the room, positive or negative. Her gift of a tiny 100% synthetic lion onesie vanishes into a closet with a minimum of commentary. She's giving you things with a desire for recognition or appreciation, and if they just drop below the surface with nary a ripple, she won't be getting any reinforcement for her poor behavior.
This is quite good advice. My mother in law is a compulsive giver of shitty gifts, but it's her way to show that she cares about us. I simply told her that I would love to get more wool socks and now that's what I get. We're both happy.
Yeah, I'm definitely trying to go the route of "if you want your gifts to be appreciated, give gifts people will appreciate." She historically likes to make other people out to be difficult, so the hard part is getting to the next step of, "if your gift isn't going to be appreciated, don't send it."
Yeah, her reactivity to lack of appreciation is why I recommend a lack of reaction. If she puts up a fuss about a quiet thanks and a lack of additional response it's her that's being difficult.
Clothes you don't like are the best for not giving a shit about paint stains and damage from other activities.
Great point!
We have a family friend who is the ex-girlfriend of a brother. There's no bad blood there and everyone likes her, so she's always invited to family events.
Since brother broke up with girlfriend, girlfriend has had a string of boyfriends; she brings them by to these events and then weeks or a couple of months later, there's a new one. Having talked at length with girlfriend, it seems fairly clear to me that she is often after men who are unavailable and once they begin to show some interest or stability, they're dropped in favor of new hotness.
None of this is particularly bad, but it has gotten to the point where the last several boyfriends that come around, I simply ignore. Not rudely, I'm cordial, but I'm a type of person who tries to talk to and get to know people as soon as I meet them and it's become clear to me that this is wasted effort, as I will never see them again.
A few months ago, she found new boy, who she is very enamored with. We were having a night out several months ago and I got to sit and chat with girlfriend solo for a bit and her enthusiasm for new boy is nice, but raised some red flags for me. Specifically, girlfriend has changed some aspects about herself to accommodate boy, aspects which she never had a strong opinion about in the past. Suddenly, girlfriend won't tolerate crass humor anymore (which she often participated in in the past) and she's becoming beholden to boyfriend, where she will come to some events, but never without him and will often leave early.
There are some more aspects to it, but suffice it to say, boyfriend is rubbing the family the wrong way and no one feels enthusiastic about him. Most of us (large family) feel very annoyed at girlfriend as well, feeling that she's being inauthentic and changing everything about herself. This weekend at a Girls Night, my sister in law drunkenly did say some shit about him to girlfriend, but that about as far as its time. But no one really likes the dude or particularly trusts him; he's been perfectly nice, but we're all eager to see him go.
My 4 year old says he wants to be a big boy and grow up strong. So he would like to stop washing his hands after going potty because it's what grown ups do. I mean he's not wrong.
I think the grown-ups in his life might need a bit of a talking-to if that's what he's learning by example! I'm no epitome of cleanliness but washing your hands after using the bathroom seems like the bare minimum to me.
We are very diligent and consistent with how we reinforce washing hands. We are doing our best but he is going through a phase. With him being 4 he is just trying to push his boundaries and test us as his parents. Also we both wash our hands way too much as it is, especially after using the restroom. I also believe he doesn't like washing his hands because he has mild eczema on his hands.
Yeah, that's totally valid, especially given his age and the eczema. I was just a little worried by the bit where you said he wasn't technically wrong!
You haven't paid much attention in a public Men's restroom, I take it. If kiddo paid attention in there, I wouldn't fault him for assuming adults don't wash their hands.
I haven't used many men's restrooms (I'm trans masc, but I don't pass as male enough to feel comfortable trying that out and about), so I've been able to be blissfully ignorant so far.
Well, from the stats (and anecdotes) it seems like the most passing thing you can do is "not use soap." I have legitimately had men tell me they only wash their hands if someone is watching.
yeah I think I'm fine with not passing if the alternative is never using soap 😂
Yeah I figured my way of making a joke about people's poor hygiene habits didn't come out right. All good!
Gotta ask, why is he not wrong?
My data on this is purely anecdotal, but I’m sure that other guys here can back me up with their own experiences: the number of men specifically who do not wash their hands in public restrooms is genuinely unbelievable.
Like, a shocking amount.
Typing this up made me curious what the actual numbers are, so a quick search led me to this article, which has some real numbers from a couple of different studies:
Honestly, I thought it was at least 25%.
Anecdotally, 15% seems wildly low. I'd maybe go on even thirds for no wash/just water/soap&water. At least post-COVID (it is done, right?) I've seen a larger percentage of men at least hit the hand sanitizer on their way out.
I thought it was low at first too, but then realized that "washes without soap" is including the people that pass their hands under the water for a split second and then walk out.
Which I don't count as washing your hands at all, but the people doing it probably do.
People in studies lie about slightly embarrassing things all the time.
Yeah, this is why I prefer to live in a world of ignorance and try and avoid seeing people I know in public bathrooms, too many men do not wash their hands (and older men tend to be the worse culprits of this in my experience)
I gotta stop shaking hands so much
I'm part of a pub karaoke group chat.
One of our founders privately raised concerns that some of the conversations and memes being shared on the WhatsApp group had gotten too inappropriate and were chasing people away. I've definitely contributed a bit to this but I'm far from the worst offender, and I honestly wish that they would have told me if anything I posted was causing problems. I tried to mediate the situation, proposing we make an alternate "after dark" group chat which people could choose to join. She (and another one of the admins who agreed with her) was for the idea, but the other regulars pushed back against it because they loved the banter. Ultimately, she decided to leave.
Weirdly enough, I haven't seen her nor her boyfriend at any karaoke night since. I wonder if that's the real reason she's disappeared. Our humor hadn't really been a problem for her beforehand.
Some of the memes being shared were offensive or otherwise dirty. A recent example included one about Jimmy Savile (deceased British TV personality who was posthumously outed as a serial pedophile.)
This is exactly why back in my pub team game days our strategy was to come hot out of the gate with the offensive shock humor.
One of our favorite strategies was to create team names using the formula "what if the principle actors in horrific public tragedies started a pop band?" So, "Osama bin Laden and the Twin Towers of Power," or "Dale Earnhardt's Crash Course in Racing." Some were similar in construction but a little less deliberately awful in tone, such as "George Soros and the Gay Agenda."
At least no one could complain that they were blindsided by the poor taste.
My roommate recently got a new puppy. My cat can't stand the new puppy smell, and hisses at anyone who has just been petting the pup, then hides under the nearest chair. So I'm going to have angry furniture for the next few weeks, until she gets used to the little guy.
(The puppy is oblivious and happy. My older dog thinks we just got her a dog of her own, and is in love. It's adorable.)
"Hooman... how dare you do this to me. We had a pact. A bond. And now you've broken it. And not just in any way, you broke it over a DOG. Not a cat or another human, no, a DOG. Your humiliation of my affection is abhorrent. And you will pay. Mark my words... you cheating bastard."
100% accurate.
I have the olds. My single vision glasses are no longer working for me when it comes to phone and e-reader viewing (damn you, iPhone). So now I have progressives. For those who don't know, these are like slapping funhouse mirrors on your eyeballs. I have felt like I wanted to vomit twice so far. Listen, I get it, it's hell getting older and it does beat the alternative, but... is this really the best we can do? We put people on the moon, created vaccines, split the atom, etc. We can't fix my crappy eyes with magic lenses? Sigh.
Well actually... my dad needed glasses for reading and a different pair for long distance, and his solution was lens-replacement surgery — basically an eye doctor replaces the lens in your eyes (the little bulge in front of your pupils) with an artificial lens that automatically expands and contracts based on the ambient light.
So now instead of glasses for reading and long distance, his eyes automatically adjust based on brightness — if he needs to read something, he just needs to make sure it’s brightly lit (nothing over the top, just a regular reading lamp is enough for him to read the newspaper) and if it’s too bright and he needs long distance vision, he just puts on sunglasses and that reduces the light coming into his eyes and they adjust for distance!
So like... magic lenses do exist, but they aren’t lenses that go in frames that sit in front of your face. They’re magic lenses inside your eyeballs
I am both amazed and horrified. Off to google I go! Thank you.
You’re very welcome, I hope you find something that works for you!
I think he was initially considering laser but I think that only corrects for short or long distance, but not both. And then he heard about the fancy artificial lenses!
Have you considered getting a different contact lens for each eye and wearing an eyepatch that you swap between tasks?
Probably not, because the loss of depth perception isn't worth it but well... I wanted to be a smartass.
No joke, I knew a woman who got a reading lens in one side of her glasses and a long distance one in the other, and just squinted one eye at a time. She was wild.
I've actually heard of multiple people doing this deliberately! You don't even necessarily need to squint, as your brain can learn to "swap eyes" on its own, at least in some circumstances. My eyes are different prescriptions (both nearsighted), and I was able to avoid getting glasses for quite a while because my brain would switch to my better eye to view things at a distance without me consciously thinking about it. Only once my better eye got more nearsighted as well did I need to cave and get glasses.
Yes! It’s called monovision and it does work very well in some patients but not so well in others, so before an eye surgeon will offer it permanently with an in-eye lens they have you try out contact lenses with different focal lengths to see if your brain can tolerate it.
Don't feel old about this - I "won" the crappy eyes lottery and have been wearing bifocals/multifocal progressives since age 16 for severe astigmatism.
Your brain will adapt to the funhouse mirror effect with time, but it may also be worth going back to your optometrist and verifying that you actually received glasses with the prescription given. I've gotten bad lenses with incorrect height for the optical zones and lenses set in frames with the wrong interpupillary distance.
The biggest concern with bifocals and progressive lenses is risk of falling. Though the study I linked deals with elderly people, the prismatic effect when you look downwards is a real problem on stairs and steep slopes. Hold handrails and use extra caution placing your feet until you are well adapted to your new prescription, and any time you update it.
I've been advised that it's not worth the costs and risks of lens replacement until you get cataracts. Lens replacement doesn't always eliminate the need for glasses, especially if you also have variable astigmatism.
Wish I had better news, but it's what happens when you have a body.
This is really good advice. Thank you! I will consider checking that PD again. Fist bump Astigmatism friends!
Fellow recently started using progressives user here. I felt exactly like you described the first couple of months, to the point where I really was regretting not getting regular bifocals. However, at around the 6-month mark, I had a very sudden shift in my vision where perceptually everything was just clear, and I no longer noticed the varying levels of distortion. It really is something else, once your vision adapts to the changes. Now, wearing my progressives, it just feels like I have good vision again. It's quite a trip. So if you can push through, you will be rewarded!
Ugh. I'm pretty sure you are right. I think I'll give this a try next year. Just too much going on in my life to go funhouse mirror mode right now. Thanks for the encouragement though!
Omg. I have so many, but they have to be kept under wraps. I’m caring for my octogenarian cranky parents. He had a stroke about ten years ago and while he’s make incredible progress recovering, this retired former builder and military man has difficulty regulating his frustration.
Yesterday he was storming around kind of pissed off at his wife and I both and as he began to try and explain why he realized mid-sentence he was saying it was because we had talked to each other in his presence. You could hear his simmering frustration pivot from us to himself.
Edit: I adore them, and this is hard, but it’s also so so true that (in the words of Perry Ferrell) elderly are like children. I just have to be very careful to hide my amusement in the moment.
Other low-stakes drama- literally “the soup is too hot”, “you’re using the wrong knife”, “the led bulb is the wrong shade of white”, and “how do I get to Netflix?” -the last one is weekly at least.
This, in my opinion, is the highest stakes of drama. You monsters with your cold white LEDs.
The company that owns my townhome complex (and many other properties, mostly apartments) sent out a letter recently reiterating that working on cars is not allowed on the property (while also saying that non functioning or leaking cars are not allowed, so how do you fix a leak?). Despite my landlord explicitly having seen me work on cars before and not having had a problem with it, I'm now convinced that I'll be evicted even though I'm a fantastic tenant and even though the letter was clearly a generic letter sent to all their properties and aimed more at apartments than townhomes. So I did spark plugs this week and guess what? Nothing happened, lol. I'm buying a house this summer anyways, so what do I even care, I guess I'm just paranoid.
Secondarily, my company is forcing us to return to office tues-thur starting next week (after having us all work from home for the last 5 years). I'm too exhausted to fight it at the moment with me trying to improve my health (hitting the gym heavily), having surgery soon, and buying a house this year, so I plan on being as petty as I can possibly be about it. I'm going to abuse the fuck out of the snacks and drinks they provide us, if people come up to my desk unannounced, I'm just going to stare at them for 5 seconds with my headphones on and then go back to work, and I'm going to shit on company time. Any other suggestions of things that might bring me some joy that don't actually endanger my employment?
My ultimate act of pettiness is to decrease everyone's productivity. We're jokin'. We're talking about Wordle. We're goofin' over coffee. You're telling me your feelings. Oh, we only got 30 minutes of work done today because we were too buy "collaborating?" Thank god we're in the office! I bring in doughnuts so my coworkers have a 15 minute talk around the break room (and I guess in the long game, get diabetes and/or overweight/lethargic?). End of a meeting? I think not! Have 5 dumb questions!
Ironically, I get my work done just fine, as I'm the one scheduling my sabotages. Double irony, everyone likes how friendly and welcoming I am.
I suspect that’s what it will be like regardless if people do it on purpose or not. I do actually like my direct team and won’t mind whiteboard sessions with them, but it’s everything else that’s just distracting for me. Our CEO even said “I know we will probably get less done, but I want us all in the office again to “recreate the magic of 2019””, the dude is so out of touch with how normal employees operate. We’ve been doing pretty good for 5 years being WFH, time to fuck it up because our CEO wants to be like Starbucks (ignore that they just performed massive layoffs and ruined lives so the stock number goes brrrrrrr).
Yeah, my strategy is unfortunately just kind of office life but turned up to 11. Once I made a choice to participate in "office culture" I was amazed how little my coworkers get done. Alternatively, I am also incredibly pro-worker, so I don't care if they get anything done (and I'm not their boss!)
Speaking of bosses, sorry yours is so out of touch. I'm not sure what "magic of 2019" was... Seems like everyone is getting real dumb about RTO though. The Ohio governor just signed an order that all state employees have to return to office after selling off a large portion of state-owned office space last year.
The 2019 bit is that we're a relatively young company (only about 12 years old) and 2019 was one of our good years where we had substantial growth and our leadership is apparently connecting that with working in the office vs work from home instead of, y'know, the million other factors. We're actually doing fairly well financially right now too and he wants to force us all back into a cramped office where we are guaranteed to get less work done, but he somehow thinks that putting us in a room and making us be friends will make us produce "the best work of our lives" (the best work of my life has been ever since I went work from home lmao). He's so fucking privileged and out of touch and just doesn't know what problems normal people deal with. We have to consider commutes because we don't work 7am to 7pm like a psychopath, we have to pay for child care, we're already dealing with so much stress from politics and the economy in the US and they picked now to make us work in an office? It sucks, but I'm trying to make the best of it because I'm still more privileged than the majority of americans and I try to keep that in mind. Not that I'm not entitled to my own problems, too, but at least I'm in a position where I can be looking for a house and not stuck renting forever, for example.
This is the way. Being petty to others stuck in the same situation just makes a bad situation worse... (Recently had to deal with a co-worker who intentionally drenched themselves in cheap shitty perfume every morning before work).
Since I'm rambling here's what I don't get. Companies could be saving $$$$ not renting out office space. If they can ?just? crack the code on feeling like they're managing their work force effectively. I feel like every tech co has tossed in the towel essentially declaring "We've tried nothing and it didn't work!!! Back to the office" I keep telling myself that some orgs out there are going to crack that code and have a huge financial advantage over the office dinosaurs, and that's how the war will be won (probably 2 months after I retire).
Off the top of my head, some executives may be invested in reits which could go bad at scale if office buildings aren't collecting rents to cover secured debt.
City governments are concerned about tax revenue and downtown businesses that support office workers.
I'm not even sure what the drama is because I tend to not bother with that stuff, but my aunt sent us really uncomfortable clothes early February as Christmas gifts and then blocked all of us so when I called to say thank you it went straight to voicemail and I haven't heard anything since.
Also apparently my aunt's wife told my mom that she's always hated her, but I don't see what that has to do with the rest of us