My MIL’s love language is gifts. I have begged her to stop giving me/the kids so many presents - to no avail. To make matters worse (for me), when she asks what I want for Xmas/bdays/any other holiday, I tell her exactly what I want (size, color, brand, etc)….and have discovered she will then refuse to buy me what I really want “because then it’s not a surprise.” So I’m stuck with her riff on whatever it is that I truly wanted and end up with something that I didn’t ask for, want, or need.
Anyway. My question is: she REFUSES to tell me what she wants and then is hurt and sometimes offended when we are left buying gift cards. She is honestly impossible to buy for (you know the type) and every.single.year. my spouse and I are confounded by what to get her. I’ve tried everything to get her to understand that I will either have to buy her a book or just give her money/gift cards. She swears up and down, “it’s fine!!” and then is disappointed. I’m at a loss. We especially struggle because my “least” love language is gifts so I genuinely can’t even empathize.
Please help. Or give me the best idea for her.
Saturday, January 06, 2024
How to buy a gift for someone whose love language is gifts
Thursday, October 19, 2023
How to get a wax cork out of a winged corkscrew
Saturday, September 09, 2023
The perfect closet organizing business model
Then, when they're done, you have more closet space and 100% of the clothes in your closet fit your body.
You don't have to see which of your favourite clothes are too small for you, or go through the upsetting experience of trying on favourite clothes that ended up being too small.
They can take away the box of too-small clothes and donate them appropriately, or they can leave it with you, closed and sealed, for you to either revisit when you can cope with it or completely disregard.
Updated with a bonus round:
The closet organizer is paired up with a personal shopper, to whom they provide your measurements and the quantity and characteristics of the clothing that was removed from your closet, and the personal shopper finds suitable replacements that fit your current body.
Those lovely blouses in jewel tones that you bought years ago are now too small? Here's a selection of flattering blouses in jewel tones!
You have to give up your twirly sundress? Here are a few twirly sundress options!
Saturday, April 15, 2023
Advice for the Ask A Manager letter writer who found scales in the break room
Tuesday, November 22, 2022
Explicio via absurdum
Sometimes I find that the opposite of reductio ad absurdum is actually helpful - using an utterly absurd or extreme example to explain a concept.
With my complete lack of Latin knowledge, I've been calling this "explicio via absurdum", but I welcome any corrections to my Latin!
Saturday, May 28, 2022
The generic "you" is a useful tool for writing inclusively
Thursday, April 21, 2022
Building a better Sunshine List
Tuesday, March 15, 2022
Magic words: "and also"
Thursday, December 30, 2021
All about my Good Omens OC named Muriel
Saturday, November 06, 2021
Things the Library Should Invent: lend out external media readers
Monday, November 01, 2021
Another option for Captain Awkward #1352
Dear Captain Awkward,
I (they/them) am single, live alone, and have been working from home throughout the COVID situation – the long-term isolation has been really hard. During the last year I took up fishkeeping, which has been really great for my mental health.
But then I developed something known in the hobby as “MTS” – multiple tank syndrome – in which I, well, started to go a little overboard with new fish tanks and fishes. In addition to the assortment of tanks in my actual apartment (basically one in every room, each with different types of fish), I set up a “balcony tub” with floating plants and rosy red minnows.
Last week new neighbors moved into my building and I guess they must have seen my balcony tub because they asked if I had fish on my balcony and…I truly am not sure why…but I impulsively lied, like, “No! Of course I don’t have fish on the balcony! Ha ha ha…”
But the thing is: I do have fish on the balcony.
The fish are very healthy and happy and I don’t think it’s against the rules (I did check the lease) – although that might be because no one ever thought to make a rule against it…
Anyway, I have no idea why I lied other than like…maybe the built-up isolation of the last year and a half, and some internal sense that keeping fish on your balcony was Too Much, and therefore in order to not seem Super Weird to my new neighbors I should keep that under wraps? (Don’t ask, don’t shell!)
But now I feel even *more* awkward and way weirder than if I’d just been like “oh yeah those are my minnows!”
I lied about having fish on the balcony, and I clearly do have fish on the balcony.
In the past I’ve had good relationships with my neighbors. Is there any way I can salvage this truly awkward introduction??
Thank you in advance for your advice. I don’t think this question has been addressed before.
All best,
A Fishy Neighbor
Fortunately, “I was trying so hard not to come off as weird that I overcorrected and did something objectively weird” is an extremely relatable and common predicament, and being able to laugh at yourself (“I didn’t want you to think I was obsessed with fish, good job, me, now you think I’m a liar who is obsessed with fish! Welcome to the building!) is the best remedy I know.
In this vein of a relatable and common predicament and being able to laugh at oneself, another option, if someone should directly inquire about the fact that you specifically said you don't have fish even though you clearly have fish, is something along the lines of "Sorry, it was an attempt at a joke that clearly didn't work. My alleged sense of humour misfires more often than I'd care to admit!"
(Q: What is the attempted joke? A: The very notion that your fishy self would not have fish on the balcony is laughable!)
Benefits to this approach:
- You aren't admitting to lying, or mentioning that you lied as if it's no big deal. Some people are extremely prescriptivist about lying and think that if someone lies at all ever, they're intrinsically untrustworthy. There are also people who are wary enough of lying that they'd see "I told a lie because I panicked" as a red flag suggesting that you're untrustworthy.
- Having a joke misfire is also a relatable and common predicament
- When assholes make a joke that misfires, they tend to double down and/or blame the audience for not getting/liking the joke. In contrast, admitting that your joke misfired - and that your sense of humour doesn't do the job as often as you'd like in general - is a sign of humility and strength of character. Wouldn't you think positively of someone who genially admits that their joke didn't land and moves on?
Tuesday, August 17, 2021
Things They Should Invent: people who left this job went on to work at...
I recently had a new idea, inspired by an Ask A Manager column and my own job-hunting experience:
New rule: if you reject someone because you think they're going to leave for a better job, you have to tell them where to find this better job.
— "Impudent Strumpet!" (@ImpStrump) August 4, 2021
Today, my shower gave me an improvement on this idea: a "people who left this job went to work at..." website, or perhaps a LinkedIn functionality.
Scraping LinkedIn data (and other data if other useful sources are available), track which employers people went to after leaving a previous job, and look for patterns.
For example, if many people left Acme Inc. to work for Roarke Industries, and a comparable number left Roarke Industries to work for Acme Inc., that tells one story. If many people left Acme Inc. to work for Roarke Industries but there was no pattern of traffic in the other direction, that tells another story.
People can use this information to find better jobs and find employers who are likely to hire them based on their previous experience. Conversely, they might also be able to use it to plan their career path - for example, if Roarke Industries requires 5 years of experience and a lot of people go from university to Acme Inc. to Roarke Industries, then Acme Inc. might be the place to get the experience you need to be hired by Roarke Industries.
Friday, July 16, 2021
Things They Should Invent: concordance tool with a Boolean NOT function
Monday, April 05, 2021
Another idea for Captain Awkward #1323
There is a word people use all the time as filler in their speech. I first noticed it about 8 years ago and thought it was a quirk of my local progressive scene. (This is similar to someone hating “like” although I think my word is less common than that.) It has metastasized and is now popping up all over. I want to listen to podcasts where smart people talk about policy and cultural issues but sometimes I just shut them off because the word is driving me up the wall. I feel like I’m not old enough to hate a word used by young people but unfortunately I do.I don’t want to miss out on people’s wisdom (delivered for free via podcast or radio) over a silly word! Do you have any ideas for not caring about this anymore?
Saturday, October 10, 2020
Navigating conversations with family language barriers
When we visit my mother, she speaks to me in Hungarian, her native language, in front of my husband who doesn’t understand a word of it. He told me he feels excluded by this because he can’t participate in our conversations. I’ve told my mother her behavior is rude, but she persists, saying, “I am Hungarian, and this is my house.” She is fluent in English, so she could honor our request if she wanted to. Also, she and I speak on the phone frequently. If she had something private to say to me, she could do it then. Otherwise, she’s nice to my husband. Any advice?
My recommendation, as someone born into a family with internal language barriers, is to translate everything your mother says into English for your husband's benefit. You can do this on a turn-by-turn basis, or summarize every few turns. (It will become clear and intuitive to you which approach is best.) This is hard work and quite inconvenient, but that very inconvenience adds a lot of clarity to the situation.
If your mother is speaking Hungarian out of pure stubbornness and can in fact manage just as well in English, the delay of waiting for everything to be translated will incentivize her to speak English whenever she can manage it. If she does in fact struggle to express herself adequately in English, she should find it a relief to have someone else doing the work.
Another thing you might discover is that not everything is relevant to your husband. In the process of translating everything, you might both eventually find that there are some branches of the conversation that he just doesn't care about. This is good, useful information! It means that once you've established to everyone's satisfaction the proportion of the conversation that's irrelevant to your husband and the typical contents thereof, your husband may be comfortable with leaving the irrelevant portions untranslated.
When your husband does have something to contribute to the conversation, he should feel free to contribute in English, even if that portion of the conversation was in Hungarian. As you know, understanding another language is easier than speaking it, so, counterintuitive as it may seem to unilingual people, the conversation can still work perfectly well with him speaking English. And if your mother has some trouble understanding your husband's English statements, you can translate them for her just like you translate her Hungarian statements for him.
The advice columnist also suggests, as a last resort, that LW simply not bring the husband to visit the mother. I have no objection to that idea either, and don't think it needs to be a last resort, although I can't tell through the internet whether there's a good reason why LW is bringing the husband or whether this is one of those circumstances where married couples mindlessly do things as a couple even though there's no reason to bring both of them. But, in any case, translating the conversation is one of those things that will help if your mother's intentions are good while inconveniencing her if her intentions are bad.
Friday, July 03, 2020
Things They Should Invent: grocery pickup edition
The first time I tried grocery pickup (in this case, PC Express at Loblaws), I was making the purchase because I had immediate need of a specific item.
In keeping with the pandemic mindset of minimizing trips and keeping two weeks of provision on hand, I didn't just buy that one item, I bought everything I expected to need for the next two weeks, regardless of whether it was on sale.
Then, shortly before pick-up time, I got an email saying that my order was ready - except they didn't have that one specific item in stock! There was no way to cancel the order at this point, so I had to put on my mask, wait in line, go into a store, talk to an employee, pay for a bunch of stuff that wasn't even on sale, lug it all home and wipe it all down - all for nothing!
Proposed solution: users should have the option of marking one or more items in their cart as "essential". If the essential item is unavailable, the order is cancelled. When the user marks more than one item as essential, they can either mark them as "ALL" or "ANY". If the essential items are marked "ALL", then the order only goes through if all the essential items are available. If they essential items are marked "ANY", the order goes through if any one of the items is available.
This should certainly be programmable - it's basically a set of IF/THEN statements - and it would certainly help during the pandemic when we're supposed to be minimizing trips and contacts.
2. "Your cart contains # bags of groceries"
Another problem with grocery pickup is that ordering groceries online is much easier than carrying those groceries home - I'd almost bought more than I can carry!
Solution: tell users how many bags of groceries their cart contains, measured in the standard grocery bags found at the checkout.
People who are accustomed to grocery shopping have a good sense of how many bags of groceries they can carry and how many will fit into their tote bag or bundle buggy or bike basket or car trunk or whatever they might be using, so this would make it easier to avoid over-ordering, and thereby finding yourself at the store faced with more groceries than you can get home in one trip.
The ideal implementation would calculate the number of bags in terms of both mass and volume, because both of those are factors in how much people can carry. But I'd imagine an immediate implementation would be possible based on mass alone. Grocery stores already have a database of the mass of all their products, since the self-checkouts have a built-in scale to make sure you're not stealing. Surely someone in human history has quantified how many grams/pounds/kilograms a grocery bag will carry, so it's a simple question of division.
Saturday, June 20, 2020
Sanditon fanfic bunny, free for the taking: "I Will Toil and You Can Blossom"
I recently finished the Sanditon miniseries, and was pleased to see that my ship of Charlotte/Arthur is still a possibility.
I have a massive fanfic bunny and lack the skills to write it, so I'm posting it here in case someone else wants to write it. Steal this idea!
Premise:
Charlotte and Arthur enter by mutual consent into a companionate marriage (in the sense of companionate love as opposed to consummate love.)
This puts Charlotte in a good position to continue her work with the Parker family's business, which she found so self-actualizing in canon. (After all, it's much more respectable for a Mrs. Parker to be acting on behalf of the Parker family than a Miss Heywood.) She gets to be married to someone who is pleasant and harmless and respects her.
Meanwhile, Arthur gets to continue enjoying the simple pleasures of life without having to work too hard, because Charlotte is pulling their share of the weight in the family business. He gets to be married to someone who is pretty and personable and accepts him for who is he is without playing games. He can spend his days enjoying his port wine and buttered toast and getting down on the floor to play with the children.
(Despite it being a companionate marriage, I do imagine that Charlotte and Arthur would consummate their marriage. They've both shown themselves eager to try new experiences (e.g. sea-bathing) and sex is a new experience that's now available to them. And they may well continue to make sex part of their lives, either to have children, simply because they think it's fun.)
So where's the conflict in this scenario? From the whole rest of the town of Sanditon! Nearly everyone we've met in canon has some kind of drama, and with Sanditon being a resort town all kinds of personalities could pass through. And meanwhile, Charlotte and Arthur build themselves an oasis of peace in the midst of all the drama.
Interesting notions this fic would explore:
- A mutually-satisfying and mutually-respectful companionate marriage. In fiction, we see explorations of passionate marriages, unhealthy marriages, abusive marriages, bickering marriages. I've never seen a portrayal of a marriage between two people who like each other and respect each other and get along well, but aren't in love with each other and are okay with that.
- Sex as fun, but not passionate. I do think if Charlotte and Arthur were married, they would explore sex. They've both shown themselves game to try new experiences (sea bathing, horseback riding), and I think they would have a go at consummating their marriage in a similar spirit. After all, they're allowed - even encouraged! And if it turns out to be an enjoyable experience for both, they'd probably make it a regular part of their life. Sex in fiction tends to be portrayed as imbued with great emotion and meaning (as it often is in real life) - either positively or negatively depending on the character being portrayed. But some people must find it just...fun. (After all, friends with benefits is a thing.) It would be interesting to see that explored in fiction.
- The value of a harmless husband. We normally see the notion of a "safe option" in marriage portrayed negatively, or as a person in a safe marriage yearning for something more. But in a historical era where a wife is entirely at her husband's mercy socially, legally and financially, a harmless husband like Arthur would be quite the catch! He's cheerful and happy to be pleased, he's happy to cede the floor to Charlotte when she knows better, and he's not going to bankrupt them (c.f. he's hardly touched his inheritance).
(Charlotte is also harmless and I'm sure that has value for Arthur, but given the realities of the era, I'm more interested in how Arthur's harmlessness enhances Charlotte's life.)
- Young newlyweds growing up together. Once upon a time, I read something that said that in the 21st century, people expect to finish growing up and then to get married. But in the past, when people married younger, they'd get married and expect to finish growing up together. I haven't a clue whether that's true as a general societal attitude (I've only heard it once from a source that is lost to history), but it must have happened in some cases, and it would be an interesting thing to explore. Charlotte and Arthur, while of marriageable age in their historical context, are both very young and both still have some growing up to do. At the same time, living and working within the extended Parker family would give them a context in which they can safely do this growing up together.
Friday, May 22, 2020
Things They Should Invent: pandemic shopping edition
With some jurisdictions permitting businesses to reopen, I wonder whether the employees of those businesses feel safe going back to work, or if they have no choice.
I do need to buy more things as the pandemic stretches on (so many things, ranging from my kettle to my mesh laundry bag, have broken somehow!), but if I have the option, I'd rather buy from somewhere that respects their employees' health and safety.
I'd very much like to have a single centralized website where workers post information about how well their employer actually is keeping them safe, so customers can make informed decisions about where to spend their money.
I mean, they could do this on Glassdoor too, but I haven't seen it yet for the businesses I've searched for.
2. Shopping search engine for boycotters
There's a lot in the news lately about how Amazon is making tons of money from the pandemic, but has horrible working conditions.
I've found that if I search the internet for a product description without having a specific brand or source in mind (for example, light cotton pyjamas or 4-cup coffee filters), I get results primarily from Amazon, and to a lesser extent from Walmart (which also has bad working conditions). If I exclude Amazon from the results, I most often get wholesalers, retailers from other countries, and other such unsuitable sources.
This happens even when I use search engines other than Google. It's way harder than it should be to find an ethical place to buy things when you don't already know where to buy them!
As I've mentioned many times before for many other reasons, I'd very much like to have a single comprehensive search engine of all online shopping. But I'd also like to have it set up to help people boycott.
You could boycott a specific retailer by excluding them from your search, but it would be even more helpful to be able to boycott by cause. For example, search for light cotton pyjamas and exclude sources with bad working conditions.
"But what if they all have bad working conditions?" Then you've done everything you can and don't have to knock yourself out looking for the ethical source that doesn't exist.
Of course, the complexity is that this would only work if they could index literally all retailers.
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
How to make a "serious inquiries only" online dating system
A problem that exists in dating is there are some people who will misrepresent themselves as wanting a serious relationship when they're really only looking for something casual.
I have an idea for an online dating system that can prevent that, or at least be unappealing to people who are really looking for something casual.
Basically, the premise of the site/app is that you can only talk to one person at a time. It won't show you new matches until you have decided to stop being involved with your previous matches - which your previous matches will be informed of.
So, for example, suppose you find someone interesting, and you message them. They can either accept or decline to chat with you.
If they decline, you will be shown new matches.
If they accept, you will not be shown any more matches until you mark the person you messaged as "no longer interested". They will receive a notification telling them that you're not longer interested.
If they do not respond, you can retract your message to see more matches. There could also be a built-in time-out system - if you message someone and they do not respond within a given period of time, they're assumed to have declined communication, so your message is withdrawn from their inbox and the system starts showing you new matches.
"But that's completely incompatible with the way I use online dating! I want to cast a wide net and talk to multiple people at once!"
Then this system is not for you! Go forth and use any other online dating site in the world!
"But I have a very specific, very important reason why I need to be able to see new matches even though I'm still dating my original match!"
Then you can explain to the actual human being you're actually dating what your very specific, very important reason is, and since it's so important and you're so compatible that you want to retain the relationship, surely they'll understand when they get the "X is no longer interested in you" email.
Sunday, March 29, 2020
The three milk pitcher trick
But my mommy taught me a trick that makes it far less annoying: get three milk pitchers.
There are three bags in a 4L bag of milk. When you bring the bag of milk home, immediately put each bag in a separate pitcher. Cut open one of the bags, leave the other two sitting in the fridge.
Then, when you finish a bag, you don't have to change the milk bag, you just have to cut open the bag in the next pitcher.
I know it doesn't make sense to hear me say that, but discarding the old bag and simply opening the new bag is somehow way less annoying that changing the bag.
It also means you can wash the old pitcher with your next batch of dishes, rather than getting stuck in the "If I wash it now it will take even more time to change the milk bag, but if I don't wash it now it will be gross" trap.
I never would have thought such a simple change could save so much frustration, but it totally does! Thanks, Mom!