Time for a VENT thread!

I'm so sorry. She sounds awful. Settling an estate is hard enough without drama.

My vent is just pure frustration. My mom's short term memory is getting worse pretty quickly. She is having trouble managing the washing machine in her assisted living building. I told her I would do her laundry when I was there yesterday. My sisters have been helping, too. So, she is obsessed with getting the machine set to the quickest possible wash, which is fine. BUT, she kept hitting the power button, which of course reset everything each time. I am not exaggerating when I say she hit the power button about 15 times. AARGHH! I finally got her to let me complete the next loads.

Can you make her a diagram of the proper buttons to push?  I would have suggested you put labels on the machine itself but it sounds like it is a shared machine.  Do you think she would follow your written directions?  Maybe even add a photo of the machine’s panel and mark it by number or something?  That has to be really frustrating for both of you.

Oh that sucks. I am SO thankful my sister and I are in total agreement that nothing will get an argument from either one of us. My sister is currently the executor of her will but with the current situation with her getting cancer, I need to make sure that I am the backup as we both don't want the step siblings come in and make trouble. So thanks for starting this so that I can talk to my mom and sister to be sure I'm backup (I might be and just didn't know).

But I would give everything to her if she asked. She wouldn't. We both are level headed and we will make it work. Oh and I wouldn't even question her on anything she was appointed to do. Mom is fair. So the only thing we need to worry about is the other step siblings. They shouldn't dip their toes into her stuff but you never know.

There are instructions on the wall. Literally 4 steps, except that she wants the quicker wash setting. She really can't follow instructions due to her short term memory issues. 

We have done this for her microwave. I had to take away her aluminum foil and replace it with waxed paper. I placed a huge label on the waxed paper that says microwave.

My current vent. There are no dog groomers in my area. I have been using a mobile groomer and the first appointment was wonderful. She did a perfect job on my pup. We set up a standard appointment. Only it was a guy, not the original woman that came. Fine, I would give him a try. He didn’t do as nice of a job as the owner did, especially with trimming his nails. The very last appointment, he cut the top of his head weirdly. There was a short gouge on half of his head. Like an inch difference between the two sides. Ok, I understand that dogs can be squirmy, but I am upset that he didn’t say anything. He had to have seen this. It was too much of a mistake to miss it. And of course, I didn’t realize it was actually cut like that until later that evening. I thought it was just laying funny, which has happened before. He is a Maltipoo and his hair is curly so sometimes it looks funny but when I get the comb and comb him, I can fix the curly spot with a spritz of water.

The more I thought about it, the more irritated I got. So I figured it is time for a new groomer. But I can’t find one in the entire city. I have my own grooming tools and usually groom him myself, but like so many other things, the grooming stuff is still packed! So I have to let this guy groom him again, at least until I find my own tools. But, I will have a talk with him about the quality of the last cut. I probably should call to see if the woman owner can groom him instead.

I think you are doing the right thing by not responding.
You’ve already communicated this to her & the matter is settled.

I just want to applaud the way you worded this. "I" statements and clear boundaries. Well done.



Given that this has happened before, you have every right to be ticked. Don't back down in communicating your displeasure to them. They deserve to squirm this time.

cakediva I would be irritated to be left off the list of doners, as well. Dessert for that many people is a huge effort (and expense), and you deserve to be recognized.

My vent:
(I am trying to be vague since it's work related.)
My job requires a specific task to be complete before public hearings. It is an extremely time consuming and tedious task, but not hard or difficult. Until now, employees were responsible for completing this task for their own projects. A few weeks ago, my manager informed my team that our two technicians will be completing this task and gave us specific instructions for how to communicate our needs to the techs. A meeting was scheduled between project managers and techs to review the task, step-by-step instructions were given, visuals were used, then our manager completed the task with our techs to show them how to do it. One tech no-showed the meeting and the other looked so annoyed/pissed during the meeting that I knew this was going to be a problem.

Fast forward to last week, and I sent a "heads up" email to our techs to expect a follow up email with attachments to complete this task, with a due date of the next day... no response. A few hours later I sent the task to the techs via email... no response. Before the end of the day, I sent a third email... no response. I CC'd my manager in all three emails and this process was exactly how the PMs were told to communicate with the techs.

The following day was super busy for me and I realized at 12:30 that I hadn't heard anything from the techs or received confirmation that this task had been completed. I approached one of the techs in her cubical and she told me "it was really rude for you to give that task to me yesterday, I have my own projects to work on, and it's not getting done" before shutting her door in my face. I. Was. Livid. This task is vital to my job and the repercussions if it doesn't get done are huge! My director must have seen the look on my face because he asked what happened and jumped in to help, but it still took me 4 hours to finish. I had to push a meeting and my manager had to cover for me in another meeting so I could get it done.

My director sent an email to our techs, my manager, and another manager and told everyone that this task is not optional, and ignoring emails and ignoring the assigned task is inexcusable. It's been a week since this happened, and it still makes me mad!

Anyway, vent over.

Your mom was very clear and you're following her orders to the letter. Time to block your sister and stop reading her messages. If she is that worried she can contact the lawyer. You marshaled the assets and she has the accounting. Enough said and done. Your words were perfectly said, but it'll be up to you to enforce your boundaries w/your sister. She will get angrier and don't be surprised if the amount of email increases for a bit. Once she sees that you are really not going to respond she'll give up and either call the lawyer or give up on you. Stand your ground!

mommaho I’m so glad your sister is blocked and you can move on in peace.

I get full recognition evening of - that’s never been an issue. I also do place setting cookies with the logo of the dinner sponsor on them - I put my logo sticker on the back 😊

Since my vent, the Director of BBBS has emailed to apologize for the oversight, the person doing socials has emailed to apologize, and today the President of the Board called to are sure I was ok and things were good.

yesterday they did a big dessert sponsor shout out and now I’m on the website as well.

mommaho I could have almost written your post word for word, only my grifting sibling was also the executor. My other siblings and I really had to just let so much of her shenanigans go because it would only have drawn things out even more than it already was (probate took four years, if that tells you anything). I don’t blame you one bit for cutting ties, and I can tell you from personal experience that my life is so much more peaceful as a result so you likely won’t regret that decision for a single minute either.

Now for what I need to vent about today. The forecast is unseasonably warm and DH wanted to take off on his motorcycle for an event today which would normally be unheard of at this time of year. He’s been going stir crazy lately, so hey dude, whatever floats your boat. That’s not what has me unhinged today. While he was gone, our big 80# lab had a seizure which has never happened before. Scared our DD, and literally scared the crap out of the dog who proceeded to poop all over the floor in the hall (thankfully fully tiled, but ugh) and then he was still flopping around right in it. We were able to confine the dog to the hall so the poop wouldn’t get tracked onto anywhere there was a rug or carpet. In the hall though there was poop everywhere, all over the floor, all over the dog. It was BAD and it smelled even worse. I was just trying to keep the dog calm so he wouldn’t hurt himself until he got through it.

I was freaked out because our vet is an hour’s drive away and it’s Saturday and I know they close early. I called the local vet but they were already closed, called our regular vet but no one answered, and the dog seemed to be okay at that point so I called DH hopping he would come home to help me out in case I did end up having to take the dog to the emergency vet ($$$$) because the house was a horrific mess. His response was, “What do you want me to do? I’m 40 minutes away!” Obviously, I want you to stop your play date and come the F home! 🤬

I left the mess in the hall and barely managed to get the kennel averse dog into the main floor bath shower (which has a smaller footprint than his actual kennel which he refuses to go in on a good day). He did NOT want to go in there and it’s barely big enough for me to go in and pull him in too which wasn’t working plus he was covered in poop. He kept sitting down resisting, smearing even more poop all over in the bathroom too. It took me an hour to get the dog into the shower and shampooed. He was still soaking wet even after I toweled him off as much as I could so I didn’t want to let him go in the rest of the house.

Meanwhile, there was still poop smeared all over the floor in the hall, water and poop all over the floor in the bathroom, and DD was holed up in her room gagging and trying not to puke because the entire house stunk so bad. It took me another 40 minutes to clean up now dried poop off the floor with bleach spray and then steam mop everything. I finally got ahold of someone at our vet and she basically just said to keep an eye on the dog and not to worry about bringing him in unless he had another episode, and to keep track of the details if he did. 

Needless to say, I’m still pretty pissed off and the next time DH calls me with one of his so-called “emergencies” expecting me to drop everything and run to his aid, I’m probably going to remember this and tell him to just figure it out himself because I’m too busy having fun to deal with his problems. 😤 (Fingers crossed, so far the dog seems okay at this point although he’s been much quieter today since all this went down.) And before anyone asks why didn’t my kid help, she sort of did by getting me towels, shampoo and some other things I didn’t realize I needed until I was holed up in the bathroom with a poop covered dog. But she’s not so great in stressful situations like this and she doesn’t have the extra muscle I needed to make the dog go where I wanted him to go when he didn’t want to do it.

ETA: If it was June and not March, I probably would have just taken the dog outside and hosed him off, but I still wouldn’t have any way to contain him out there while I was doing it. All of our outdoor lawn faucets are still in winter mode, and even though it’s almost 60° outside, we have well water which would end up being about 40° so that was absolutely not an option for today.