Exchanges with People that Make Your Brain Hurt

[Lynn2000]

I was told that a newborn shouldn't sleep more than 2-3 hours between feedings.  My newest little one, however, would sleep 4-5.  Or more, probably, because I usually woke her after about 5.    I wanted to make sure she got enough feedings during the day.  She did okay being woken up for feedings, although I often had to disrobe her to keep her awake to eat.  She did that for about the first 3 weeks of life, then she started waking on her own every 3-4 hours.  Still does, now, at almost 4 months.  Fun fun.

My friend had to do something like this with her new baby, per doctor's orders. (Not wanting to get into medical stuff here--I assume the doctor had a good reason for telling her to do it.) She also had to undress the baby so he would be a bit too cool to fall back to sleep, and even dabbed him with a cool, wet washcloth (all suggestions from the pediatrician). So that doesn't seem too weird to me. I think he wasn't gaining as much weight as he should have been at the beginning.

[WillyNilly]

Seriously though, can the feeding babies stuff get its own thread?

[NyaChan]

My mom texted me the other day to share with me that her ipad's screen was cracked and the volume button ruined.  I called her to check in on her and she was crying and really upset.  Mom kept saying how she felt so stupid and that she is always messing things up.  She kept berating herself & referencing how my dad is so responsible and HE never has stuff like this happen to him. 

Cue brainhurt moment - My dad is a very very dependable and smart person.  That said ---

He has nearly taken his hand off with a chainsaw (so so lucky), almost killed himself trying to beat the garage door on foot, ripped open his palm using screw drivers/knives twice because he was holding the object he was working on in his hand rather than putting it on the table, got thrown from his bike because he was thinking too hard and didn't notice the wire stretched across the trail to block cars, got into a car accident because his engineer's mind couldn't stop debating the possibility that the house on the giant hill he was driving down was built crooked, and has crashed a grand total of 3 cars (he wasn't the cause of any of these accidents). 

I reminded my mom of the cars, and she kinda paused and goes, "Oh. Yeah.  I forgot about that."  She stopped crying (thank god! Crying freaks me out). 

[Sheila Take a Bow]

He has nearly taken his hand off with a chainsaw (so so lucky), almost killed himself trying to beat the garage door on foot, ripped open his palm using screw drivers/knives twice because he was holding the object he was working on in his hand rather than putting it on the table, got thrown from his bike because he was thinking too hard and didn't notice the wire stretched across the trail to block cars, got into a car accident because his engineer's mind couldn't stop debating the possibility that the house on the giant hill he was driving down was built crooked, and has crashed a grand total of 3 cars (he wasn't the cause of any of these accidents). 

That part's brain-hurty for me.  I've done that once, and it was painful enough that I will never make that mistake again.  (Plus I have a scar to remind me to be careful!)

[Adelaide]

One of my friends mouthed off to a Dean about how bad his course load was last semester and got some sort of permanent "mark" on his account. I know that being in law school doesn't automatically make you a slick, smooth-talking politician, but at this point in your life what don't you get about "You catch more flies with honey"? 

[ladyknight1]

He has nearly taken his hand off with a chainsaw (so so lucky), almost killed himself trying to beat the garage door on foot, ripped open his palm using screw drivers/knives twice because he was holding the object he was working on in his hand rather than putting it on the table, got thrown from his bike because he was thinking too hard and didn't notice the wire stretched across the trail to block cars, got into a car accident because his engineer's mind couldn't stop debating the possibility that the house on the giant hill he was driving down was built crooked, and has crashed a grand total of 3 cars (he wasn't the cause of any of these accidents). 

That part's brain-hurty for me.  I've done that once, and it was painful enough that I will never make that mistake again.  (Plus I have a scar to remind me to be careful!)

DH, a locksmith, has drilled the palm of his left hand and tried to catch a piece of falling metal with his left that cut 1/2" into the side of his hand. He still hasn't learned.

[Miss Tickle]

So my Mother calls  me up one day:

Mom: This computer your friend sold me is full of viruses!!! (No hello, how are ya, nothing)
Me: What?
Mom: It stopped working! It has to go back to the shop!!!
Me: uhhh..
Mom: click.

...

Mom: Now I have to bring in the peripherals too! This is INFECTED!! It's garbage!!
Me: Wait. The what?
Mom: The printer, the mouse thing, the keyboard, all of it's infected!
Me: No, that's not...
Mom: And the new keyboard and mouse were from the GOVERNMENT so we know it's not infected, it's your friend's computer that's the problem!!
Me: Do you mean the new wireless keyboard and mouse your stepson gave you?
Mom: Yes!!
Me: What exactly was the problem? How did you know it was a virus?
Mom: I turned on the computer, it started up but then nothing happened, I couldn't get it to do anything.
Me: Anything how?
Mom: The thingy wouldn't go.
Me: The what? The mouse?
Mom: Yes. the mouse thing didn't go, it froze because of the virus.
Me: Did you check the batteries?
Mom:...
Me:...
Mom: Batteries? Why would it need batteries? The last one didn't need batteries!
Me: The last one plugged in to the computer. This one runs on batteries, not magic.
Mom:...
Me:...
Mom: Well, this is going to cost me a fortune isn't it?
Me: Probably.  Please, don't do anything with the computer without checking with me first.*

Five minutes later:

Friend: Hi, uh,...
Me: Let me guess, the batteries in the mouse were dead.
Friend: How did you know?
Me: It took twenty seconds.
Friend: We have to charge her a diagnostic fee and charge for the batteries.
Me: I told you not to sell her a computer.
Friend: But we're a computer store.
Me: And I told you not to sell her a computer.

* Last time was "You're computer Is infected! Send You're CC to XXXX and We'll fix it!!" and she did. And then blamed me because I should have warned her about pop-up spam. 

[Slartibartfast]

I had a friend once who yelled at me for sending her a virus.  The "virus" in question was this image:



I'm not sure whether she just didn't get the joke or whether she got it halfway through yelling at me and then couldn't figure out a graceful way to make an exit 

[Lauds]

He has nearly taken his hand off with a chainsaw (so so lucky), almost killed himself trying to beat the garage door on foot, ripped open his palm using screw drivers/knives twice because he was holding the object he was working on in his hand rather than putting it on the table, got thrown from his bike because he was thinking too hard and didn't notice the wire stretched across the trail to block cars, got into a car accident because his engineer's mind couldn't stop debating the possibility that the house on the giant hill he was driving down was built crooked, and has crashed a grand total of 3 cars (he wasn't the cause of any of these accidents). 

That part's brain-hurty for me.  I've done that once, and it was painful enough that I will never make that mistake again.  (Plus I have a scar to remind me to be careful!)

DH, a locksmith, has drilled the palm of his left hand and tried to catch a piece of falling metal with his left that cut 1/2" into the side of his hand. He still hasn't learned.

My father has managed to have two very similar accidents involving two different table saws but the same two fingers. First time, he was left with minor scars (and he complained that they weren't bigger for all the fuss they caused). Second time, well, he still has the fingers but they're noticeably shorter!

Speaking of dad, here's a story I've been meaning to post for a while. It's not word for word since its been several months. Let's say that my birthday is on the fifth of that particular month.

I spent my birthday at my parents place. They gave me presents in the morning and dad cooked my favourite meal for dinner. After dinner I was watching TV and he started up his laptop for what must have been the first time in days. Dad sees the calendar on the screen and says "is it the second? I thought it was later than that". My response "no, it's the fifth". He made some other comment about the date which clearly showed he still didn't get it. In fact he didn't realise what the actual date was or why I was laughing at him until I told mum what had just happened and she started laughing too!

He does tend to forget my birthday, I think because I was born a few days after their first wedding anniversary so he gets the two mixed up, but he's never forgotten it on the day before.

[norrina]

One of my friends mouthed off to a Dean about how bad his course load was last semester and got some sort of permanent "mark" on his account. I know that being in law school doesn't automatically make you a slick, smooth-talking politician, but at this point in your life what don't you get about "You catch more flies with honey"? 

It's law school. Did he think it was going to be three years of cakewalks and underwater basket weaving?

[Lynn2000]

My mom has caused me plenty of brain-hurting moments with computers, too, so I feel your pain, Miss Tickle. She really, really tries and has actually learned to do some stuff on the computer on her own, that I don't know how to do, because she really wanted to do it. But then she'll call with a problem and can't really explain it to me with words I understand, and can't answer the questions I ask, and can't do simple things like copy and paste or type an address into a browser, and we both just end up really frustrated.  I'm not at all a computer person, I just use them a lot more than she does, so I really don't want to be "responsible" for her computer use and maintenance, but I also don't want to be totally unhelpful.

[2littlemonkeys]

I have a relative who tries to play on the internet but she just can't seem to figure out how it all works.  I had my computer home over the Christmas holiday and she was over.  One of the kids was playing games on Disneyjr.com or one of those sites.  She thought it was cool but said something like, "I don't think my computer has that."  I think she thinks the websites are programs like Word or Excel and you have to load them.  Or something.  I've tried but I just can't get her to understand that if she has internet access (she does) then she should be able to get to pretty much everywhere by typing in the address.

[turtleIScream]

On the radio this morning, they were doing a call-in segment, asking listeners if they paid their kids for certain things. Several callers talked about paying their kids for good grades. One woman in particular seemed to not have a grasp of financial realities. She pays her kids $100 for As. She does this because her kids like expensive things that the family can't afford, so she pays them so they can afford it themselves.

[BabyMama]

I think we have the same mom, Miss Tickle. I sure don't miss all the phone calls about how our computer was running slow and so it must be infected with viruses and it must be all my fault because I used it for "all those Internet searches"...nevermind that it was laden with thousands of pirated Napster songs downloaded by my sister, that there was no firewall or virus protection, that the poor thing had very little memory and most of it was used, and that my mom has no concept of closing windows so would use the computer with 15-20 Internet windows up at the same time. Must have been my fault by using Google to do homework. 

[Thipu1]

The thread on the New England Blizzard reminded me of this.

Several years ago, NYC got hit with 2 feet of snow in a surprisingly short time. 

The operators of a very nice Mom & Pop grocery lived over the store and could stay open longer to provide local people with emergency supplies such as diapers, batteries, cold cuts and milk. 

Around midnight we were experiencing close to white-out conditions. They were closing when there was a furious knocking at the door of the shop. 

This could be a true emergency.  Perhaps the guy was stranded and couldn't get home.  The family unlocked the door and a man entered.  He was covered in snow and gasping for breath.  He seemed to be in dire need of warmth or shelter. What could they provide?

'Do you guys have any cumin?'