LW, if you were such a great mom, why does your son hate you?
2026-06-19 00:35![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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agonyauntOur son, now in his late 40s, was indifferent to his father’s decline. Our son has always been a challenge. Difficult teenage years with lots of poor decisions and rebellious behavior. He did not want to be a part of our family and has adopted other families as his own. He calls other people Mom and Dad, does not call or keep in touch with us. I have accepted his decisions.
We were not bad parents. We provided a solid family life, celebrating birthdays, Christmas and vacations. We had a loving home.
When my son was 13, he started breaking the rules, smoking and selling pot, being disrespectful, skipping school and being embarrassed by us. He was not abused or neglected in any way. He called his father’s life’s work “crap” and diminished us in every way.
Now that my husband has passed, I’m in the process of making a new will. I do not wish to leave my son anything because he has disinherited us. He will be surprised that our estate is larger than he expects. He is very detached and treats me with contempt. Should I leave a letter to explain this or just let the chips fall where they may?
– No Longer Mom
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Do you see that blue blob to the lower right of the image center?
- Using 得 (de) in compliments/descriptions of actions:
你的中文说得很好 (subject 的 object verb 得 (intensifier) adjective)
你的篮球打得真好。(zhen hao -- really well)
你的跑步跑得更好。* （geng hao -- even better)
*For verb-noun compounds, repeat the verb part: 你的游泳游得... - 不用谢 -- no need to thank, it's okay; like 不客气 I guess?
- Can't afford: V + 不起 - 买不起, 吃不起, etc.
(NB: Ha，对不起 is the same construction: can't afford face.)
NB: 看不起 is to look down on someone, lit. can't afford to look at them.
Can afford is V + 得起 (oh, hey, the same "de"?): 买得起，请得起 - Too something: 太A了: 太贵了, 太冷了。
(太棒了 = awesome!) - 可以 - you can. (I haven't figured out all the "can"s yet. There's 能 and 会, and probably others.)
- To treat someone: 请: 我请你..., 我请你喝咖啡。
- Disclaimers:
Probably/maybe: 可能
Seem, look like: 好像
I've heard: 我听说 - Phrases:
我想她没事 - I hope she's all right!（oh hey, I totally thought the "shi" in "meishi" was 是）
你怎么知道？ How did you know?
Phew!
Fandom: none
Rating: G
Content notes: None apply
Summary: icons of Spanish reales coins
( los reales )
Mako Nishimura fought her way into the Japanese underworld, but drug addiction and the slow demise of organised crime gangs almost destroyed her
By Sean Williams. Read by Ami Okumura Jones
Continue reading...GAH.
Photos from the Entre Lineas Amazonas Facebook page
This is big news--jaguars don't usually wander into town. It turned out to be dehydrated and to have a wound in its foot. It was taken to a government site devoted to environmental management that had resources for treating it, and it was resting and recovering ... but then on Wednesday evening, Colombia beat Uzbekistan in a World Cup match, and it seems that all the fireworks set off frightened it, because it escaped from that site ... and was later seen wandering around the grounds of F's old secondary school:
(I brightened up these photos and cropped the second so that hopefully you can see the jaguar in the circle--these photos were sent to F by someone)
Everyone hopes this magnificent animal can either be recaptured, so that it can continue to be treated until it's in very good health for a return to the jungle, or that it makes its way back there as it is, with no unfortunate interactions.
For those of you who missed Black Swan (2010), it's just under two hours of tightly-wound ballerina Natalie Portman getting cast as the lead in Swan Lake and then dramatically unraveling betwixt the combined pressures of controlling live-in stage mom, ambitious shadow-double understudy [ft. hallucinatory toxic yuri], and psychosexually exploitative artistic director Thomas Leroy.
Black Swan (the musical) (2026) is also two hours of a tightly-wound ballerina getting cast as the lead in Swan Lake and then dramatically unraveling, but there are some key differences; most significantly, there is no psychosexually exploitative artistic director! Instead, towards the beginning of the show, the company manager explains that the celebrity guest choreographer for Swan Lake has had to pull out unexpectedly ["cancelled," the corps mutter sagely to each other] and is going to be replaced by a different celebrity choreographer, Margaux LeRoy, who appears and immediately delivers a speech about how in her Swan Lake Reimagined there will be NO prince! NO evil wizard! It's ALL about the swans!
I admit I do think it's really funny that Jen Silverman and Dave Molloy were like 'please clap we've made a Black Swan musical without heterosexuality -- sorry I mean this cool feminist choreographer character who is certainly not our in-text stand-in has made a Swan Lake without heterosexuality. and you should clap for her.' But also I am really sympathetic to and interested in the project -- this adaptation is making an argument that voyeuristic sexual exploitation by domineering men is not the only kind of horror story you can tell about ballet, that you can focus the horror explicitly on a pressure-cooker of women in a toxic system fracturing against each other in various ways and have it be just as sharp and scary and powerful. I appreciate this as an adaptation tactic; I think the show gets like 75% of the way to being something that could, if successful, be better than the film.
( unfortunately I don't think the show actually manages to prove its point; that said there was some stuff I really liked )
Happy Juneteenth! Here are some past letters that I’m making new again while I’m off for the holiday.
1. Asking junior staff to speak for their generation
Any suggestions for how to curb the need some of my colleagues have to use the “youth” in the room — be it younger staff or interns — to speak for all people of their demographic? This happened to me when I was an intern and I hated it since it felt reductive. Now that I’m further along in my career, I feel like I have a chance to make a change, but I’m not sure how to tackle it.
An example is when we’re discussing a social media campaign video as a group and a member of staff turns to the 20-something intern and asks, “What does YOUR generation think?” then laughs.
It’s pretty casual right now and limited to two particular members of the team, but still feels inappropriate. I want people to realize we respect everyone for their opinions and expertise, ones that do not rely on age or social status, and that one person’s thoughts on a matter do not scale up to represent an entire demographic. It’s infuriating and diminishes the person’s opinion to the year they were born, not experience.
Yeah, that’s annoying — and treating an entire demographic as a monolithic block is rude. That said, it’s also pretty natural for people to see “youth culture” as something they no longer understand or relate to, and to be curious for the young people they do know to explain aspects of it to them. In other words, you may not be able to shut it down in every situation, but you can try.
One way to do it: The next time it happens, you could jump in and say, “I don’t think any of us can speak for our entire generation, but I’m interested in hearing Jane’s take as just herself.”
If someone is a repeat offender and you have the standing to speak to them about it privately, you could do that too — something like, “I’m sure you didn’t mean anything by it, but when you ask our younger staffers to speak for their whole generation, it puts the focus on their age in a way we wouldn’t do with people who were older. It used to make me really uncomfortable when I was younger and people would do that. It’s great that we’re asking for their input but I think they’d feel more respected if it we didn’t tie it to their age.”
– 2019
2. A recently-fired employee was regularly looking at another employee’s burlesque pics online
We terminated an office employee this week who was always just kind of creepy and walked the line of inappropriateness with his jokes. He was fired for something else, not because of any complaints.
Today I went through his computer because a) we need a lot of files from it b) he didn’t password protect it c) we need to know what websites he has work accounts for, etc. But oh man, he didn’t log out of or delete his browser history. As I was looking through his Chrome history to see what websites he frequented for work, I discovered that he found a coworker’s – who does burlesque – web page which has ALL KINDS OF nudey pics in it. He was regularly looking at these photos of her. This is not necessarily on his work computer, but likely his personal phone because Chrome syncs browser info. So it’s not necessarily about company property. (I also saw numerous porn sites and google searches for steroids, and I was only looking up til Dec 1.)
But the thing is … I should tell no one, right? Because he’s already fired? And because maybe the burlesque coworker gave him the link? I definitely don’t tell any bosses, and I maybe don’t need to say anything to her? I don’t want her to be in trouble. If I say something to her, it can still be considered sexual harassment, even if I’m just warning her? But no need to tell her because what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her? And she has it out in public because she wants to?
We don’t have permanent, on-site HR here, but our “home office” has acting HR people that we don’t communicate with much. I just … tell no one, right? Or document it somehow?
Tell your coworker. Maybe she gave him the link, or maybe she didn’t and would want to know and have the option to lock it down. It’s not sexual harassment to alert her to this (presumably you’re not going to be leering and making provocative comments about her photos and so forth!). You can simply say, “I wanted to let you know that when I was clearing out Bob’s computer, I found he was regularly looking at your burlesque page. You might be totally fine with this, but in case you weren’t aware of it and wouldn’t want coworkers accessing it, I wanted to give you a heads-up.”
I’m not suggesting that you seek advice from HR on this because I don’t want your coworker to deal with any hassle from them, and it could end up playing out that way. So just a simple heads-up to her, and then move on.
– 2019
3. Coworkers are planning a weekend bridal shower for me and I don’t want to go
I have a (good) problem in that my coworkers are friendly and generous. I’m getting married in the fall, and my coworkers apparently decided amongst themselves to throw me a bridal shower.
The problem:
1) I do not consider these coworkers to be my friends outside of work. That wouldn’t be a huge issue if this was a bridal shower held during lunch or happy hour BUT
2) It’s being held in a different town at a coworker’s house.
3) I don’t have a car because i live in the city, and it’s going to be a two-hour round trip for me ON A SATURDAY to go to a bridal shower in the suburbs that I never asked for.
4) None of these coworkers have been invited to the wedding, and I am happy to chat about my wedding at work as part of small talk, but I am not really interested in having my coworkers be part of any of the wedding or pre-wedding activities.
5) They’re both very conservative and religious, which is fine! But my idea of fun outside of work (pub crawl, bawdy jokes, team sports etc) does not align with theirs — sitting around, eating cake and making small talk about our families.
6) They’ve all asked their work friends to attend, but not my work friends. There’s a huge generational divide here.How can I politely bow out of this without burning a bridge? My weekends are precious to me and I also want to set a clearer boundary that I do not want or expect coworker involvement in my wedding or wedding planning. These coworkers are all my peers, not managers.
You can get out of this — just do it quickly before the planning goes any further! You can say, “It’s so kind of you to offer to do this, and I’m really grateful. My weekends are bananas right now, so doing it on a Saturday won’t work — would you be up for doing it during lunch one workday instead?”
If you don’t want to offer up that alternative, you could instead say, “It’s kind of you to offer to do this! But I think I’d rather not have a work shower — the rest of my life is so full of wedding stuff right now that’s it’s a relief to keep work more of a wedding-free zone. Still, though, it was so lovely of you to think of it — thank you for making the offer!”
– 2019
4. Company won’t hire me because I live in California
I applied for an online tutoring position for which I am well qualified. I was told that they are not hiring anyone from California due to having to make them employees per a new law in effect here, AB5, which limited companies’ ability to classify workers as independent contractors.
I make good money, have to maintain a home office and its technical equipment, and have no need of the employee protections. When I apply for a position, can I give a different address so they can treat me as someone living in a different state? It is an online position so where I live does not matter.
Where you live does matter, because the company will be subject to the employment laws in that state. If California law says they’d need to make you an employee rather than a contractor, they can’t violate the law just because you don’t care if they follow it or not! They’d be subject to penalties regardless. You can’t just opt out of the law.
Lying about what state you’re in would be fraudulent (are you going to give them a different address for your tax forms too?) and put them at risk — and would be an unethical thing to do to a company that’s trying to follow the law.
– 2020
The post asking junior staff to speak for their generation, I don’t want a bridal shower, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.
Paul writes: In my house, we reuse rubber bands from newspapers to seal up food packaging. But my wife insists they must be washed first, or else it’s unsanitary. I say that’s ridiculous. Who’s right?
Hodgman rules: I doubt you’ll have any cross-contamination issues unless you’re using these rubber bands, say, to truss a raw chicken. (P.S.: Don’t.) I, too, wrap old rubber bands around open potato chip bags, and I munch without fear, because you and I are creatures of pure logic. But that doesn’t mean your wife’s aversion isn’t real. Those chips will taste germy to her. Everyone has their “little weirdsies,” a term coined by the NPR correspondent and friend of the court Linda Holmes. These are the small, strange preferences we all have — like refusing to drink “stale” water — that our spouses accept because they’re harmless. Unless it’s truly interfering with her quality of life, leave it alone. Or embrace it. There are weirder ways to spice up a marriage than soaking rubber bands in alcohol together.
Then today we went and picked up his youngest - 45 - at the airport. Matt is a really fun guy and so nice to be around. We watched soccer and visited and went out to dinner and now they have gone down to their rooms - it's a little one bedroom guest apartment which are on the 1st floor (I'm on the 3rd).
It's bed time but I need to empty the dishwasher first so no time for a proper entry. This will have to do.
I wanted to get to the laundromat but that wasn't today. I turns out that I have two clean bath towels so no pressing need there. I might want to do the tops that would normally line-dry, and use the laundry's dryers instead, but I don't have that many of those either.
Finished little last week. Platform Decay, and a John Rhodes set at the beginning of WW2, with civilian units readying to defend the possible landing stages of the enemy and put out fires from bombing raids etc. The blurb said it was a Dr Priestley only it wasn't. Did read one, The Motor Rally Mystery, which was nicely misleading especially for a Dr. Priestley. But mostly I played around with an Excel spreadsheet and my old calendars, charting the vagaries of my weight for the last fifteen years. Well, last dozen, because my entries became sparse once I began breakfasting upstairs in November of '21. I was surprised that I kept it up through most of 2022 but after that there's a sad falling off.
I didn't do much productive and I really need to start so I'm not scrambling at the start of the semester.
My cousin's ex, my younger cousins' father passed away today which seems an odd place to put this but he has not been part of my life in years. That said, this is sad and he was a good guy back in the day. He's only a couple years older than me so that's very uncomfortable.
I borrowed some community recs from yinz so I could have a little something here.
beagoldfish A multifandom make-a-thon focusing on shortfic, fanart, and non-traditional or experimental fanworksgenprompt_bingo A Multi-fandom Bingo Challenge Community for Gen Promptstvfanfiction fanfiction for TV shows
This week's Minimum moods are: Nerdy, Okay, Sad
This week's Medium moods are: Satisfied, Mischievous, Exanimate
This week's Maximum moods are: Hopeful, Pleased, Rejuvenated
Of this week's moods, I feel like Rejuvenated might be the most difficult. (It's certainly the one I have the most difficulty spelling! Argh, I even spelled it wrong in the tags 🤦♀️ I should fix that...) With a word that means a return of youth or youthfulness, there aren't a lot of canons that you can necessarily draw literal options from here! Going with something that implies a return of energy may be the way to go. With luck, you'll have better options for Hopeful or Pleased. As for me, I featured a shooting star for Hopeful in both my Fancy Rats and clouds, since wishing on a star seems pretty hopeful to me; whereas pigeon Hopeful is staring at an ear of grain that someone might drop right in front of them perhaps maybe. Pleased, meanwhile, leans pretty close to Satisfied for me, maybe with a side of Thankful/Grateful, so if you've got extra options for those, this might be a good use for them.
What do you think? Do you actually have Rejuvenated locked down, both in mood and in spelling? What about the other moods? Do you need any help brainstorming? Or do you have things picked out and are ready to brag? Let's talk about it!
( Applegeek Stuff )
Do you have a rec for this week? Just reply to this post with something queer or queer-adjacent (such as, soap made by a queer person that isn't necessarily queer themed) that you'd, well, recommend. Self-recs are welcome, as are recs for fandom-related content!
Or have you tried something that's been recced here? Do you have your own report to share about it? I'd love to hear about it!