Inconvenient Annoyances

...Dear Dr Mrs Smithsonian Institution....

Now THAT is an impressive title! 

Now THAT is an impressive title! 

I know! I was thinking about having some business cards made up with my new title. 

Mom guilt

I am totally in favor of giving up my seat on the train/Tube/etc. to a person who has a disability, is pregnant, less able to stand. In London at any rate, they actually have these pins women wear declaring "Baby on Board," so you can safely offer your seat to an expectant mother without having the horrible experience of guessing someone is pregnant when, in fact, she is not. Great!

Having said all that, this morning, two different people offered women (neither of them wearing these pins) someone else's seat on the train. First the man standing next to me asked a woman who was, in fact, pregnant if she would like to sit down--in the seat of the woman sitting next to me! This woman got up and the expectant mother sat down. Then, the expectant mother asked another pregnant woman, also with no button, if she would like my seat!

Of course I got up and gave it to her, but is it just me, or is offering someone else's seat slightly less polite than offering your own? Furthermore, how did they know that neither I nor the other seated woman was not in the early stages of pregnancy, or had a disability that they just didn't happen to see?

I am not sure it is considered quite as gallant to offer up the seat of another person, whom you don’t know.

I am not sure it is considered quite as gallant to offer up the seat of another person

Good Lord that is funny.

Would it work in other circumstances? "Ma'am you look chilly....give her your coat Edna."

Tee hee....sounds like a sitcom moment to me! 

Good Lord that is funny.

Would it work in other circumstances? "Ma'am you look chilly....give her your coat Edna."

 

I think it is tacky to offer someone else's seat.

IA 1. Spent 43 minutes of my life this morning talking to the overly chipper Dan from AT&T, getting $90 worth of texting charges off our bill. In the month we have been with them, this is the 3rd time I have called and spent a lot of time explaining I have unlimited texting and hubby has a text block because he uses Google voice for free textng. We shouldn't be charged for a single text.

IA2. After two months of explaining to my boss I need four days (9.5 hour shifts), because less than 30 hours isn't enough, he informed me today he is going to give me four days. But he is moving me to another store which is 14 blocks away compared to the two I go now, meaning more gas. And they are going to be shorter shifts. In fact, with four days I am actually going to lose two hours a week. And one day is going to be Saturday, after I have explained that hubby and I really only get to spend time together on Saturday because of different shifts, and it is the only day we can really see family and friends because he works through the week and sleeps some of Sunday to get ready to go back into work Sunday night. Then informs me that the shifts will be from 11 am to either 5 or 6 pm, depending on the day of the week, with Saturday being four hours. This means we lose two of the hours we can spend together on week days, before I go to work, and I will have to sneak in and sit quietly until he wakes up for work. The living room and kitchen are right off our bedroom (two bedroom apartment) so any noise will wake him up. I will get lots of online time, I suppose, but it will make watching anything, cooking etc, hard to do.

I think this is life's way of telling me it is time to find another job.The whole thing had me in a snit for most of my shift, and I am still not happy about it. The part that bothers me most is he is acting like giving me four days is such a huge favour, when it is less hours and the whole point of the extra day was to get more hours.

I think it is tacky to offer someone else's seat.

So do I... never seen anyone do that! 
I'm also a bit sickened by the idea of people wearing a 'Baby on Board' badge/button/pin.  I can't understand why the pregnant woman can't just speak up and say to someone whose seat they are wanting 'I'm not feeling very well, would you mind if I sat down for a few minutes?'  instead of standing there playing the martyr and expecting someone to notice them.

So do I... never seen anyone do that! 
I'm also a bit sickened by the idea of people wearing a 'Baby on Board' badge/button/pin.  I can't understand why the pregnant woman can't just speak up and say to someone whose seat they are wanting 'I'm not feeling very well, would you mind if I sat down for a few minutes?'  instead of standing there playing the martyr and expecting someone to notice them.

I agree and I was a pregnant woman who took PT every day. I would be horrified if someone offered me someone else's seat! I also would never wear that badge. I had pretty good luck with people offering me seats when I was pregnant, but I remember a friend saying she would stick her big, pregnant belly in a man's face and get no response. FWIW, most of the people who would offer me seats were young women in their mid-20s. 

I like the baby on board button, because it saves me sitting there wondering, "Is that woman pregnant?  She might be pregnant, but I'm not 100 percent sure."

But, you could just offer her a seat because she's a woman and you're being chivalrous. People do that too!

This IA has consumed my life for over a month, so I'm going to vent for a bit.

MOLD

It was an extremely wet summer here in Georgia. In fact, more than once the hubs and I joked that maybe we already moved to London and forgot. Anyway, from about early July, we all started having breathing issues.  I did EVERYTHING to help alleviate the problem, as I thought it was extra dust mites with a little bit of extra pet dander.  We have allergies, so this was not so unreasonable.

I washed dust mite covers [and melted one], washed dry clean only curtains.  Hired a cleaner. Washed pets more often. Cleaned more often.  Changed filters more often.  My house was immaculate, and yet we only got worse. I couldn't understand why washing my sheets and EVERYTHING in hot water every 5 days wasn't really helping.  Meanwhile, I was feeling worse and worse and falling behind on my work and everything else.  When I wasn't cleaning I had no energy to do anything.  I can't even say how much money we wasted on take out, because I stayed so tired.

Insert my beloved Nana dying here, end of July.  I don't want to go into that, because I haven't even had time to grieve, but it was horrible.

So then August was pretty rough, everything got worse. Kept spending money and working hard, to no real positive effect.

September brought more regular visits from my brother, who we call 'the nose that knows' because he can smell anything, and can't stand most of it.  He said we have mold.  No prompting, no questions from us.  He came in and said he couldn't spend the night..that he couldn't stand the smell.  It's mold, and it's bad. So we contacted the Landlord and started working on mold elimination. Sealing peeling paint, putting fresh filters on the vent covers, borrowed a high end air filter, bought a dehumidifier, moved completely out of a room that was really bad, then we started trying to figure out the cause of the problem. 

Then the landlord said we couldn't do any more work.  He told us he would fix it, but couldn't afford to do it immediately. He said, 'MOLD IS ONLY A PROBLEM FOR PEOPLE WITH A COMPROMISED IMMUNE SYSTEM.' But he would let us out of our lease and give us our deposit back.  But he couldn't afford to spend our rent money on constantly fixing problems.  Obviously, I was BOILING because its HIS RESPONSIBILITY.  What's more, we made a lot of repairs AT OUR OWN COST before we started asking him for money.

So we moved out immediately. It's cost a LOT of money, and will cost a lot more before we get our keys to the new place, because we are staying in a hotel in the interim, and I have to go the laundromat and wash everything that's fabric TWICE. Once with bleach to get out the mold and then again to get the bleach out. I've done research and that's the only way to sort it.  I just accidentally put on a sweater that was only washed regular, not with bleach, and I started wheezing.  I want to throw it away, and who knows how much we are going to have to chuck out in the end. 

I can't even express how much work and stress this has been so far, and I haven't even cleaned my things or moved into the new place yet. I'm trying to round up as much free help as I can, and I'm planning on paying two movers to bring the stuff from storage.  That way all my 'volunteers' can clean things before they enter my new apartment.

Also, living in a hotel room with my husband, two kids, a greyhound, a chiuaua, a cat, and my Dad, has not been easy. At almost every turn, something has gone wrong.  And we don't have enough money for our new deposit and rent unless the landlord gets off his butt and gives us our old deposit back before Wednesday.

Thank God we had a LOT of food in the freezer and cupboard, as we are covered for three meals a day all the way until next Saturday. So glad we packed the storage so we could easily get to our dry goods, and that we kept our freezer goods instead of giving them away.  We have a deep freezer, so we just took it to a neighbor's house full of stuff.

Thankful for: small miracles.
1] We gave away two bookshelves in anticipation of our UK move, and when we moved we were leaving in two huge built ins.  A neighbor is also moving and she gave us a lot of shelving! Yay! And it was exactly what we had in mind for the apartment AND to take with us to England.

2]Already washed all the bedding with bleach/regular washes and it seems to have helped.  Also, in a dust mite, dog, and cat filled hotel room and we feel a million times better.  This alieviates my worries that it was more than just mold.

3]No more garden to worry about, and living in a flat with less space will help prepare us for living in England.

4]Closer to hubby's work so he can bike. Yay for hot hubby and walking to the supermarket!

But, you could just offer her a seat because she's a woman and you're being chivalrous. People do that too!

You could, but I've been the person who offered a woman a seat (not actually saying she was pregnant, but guessing she was), and been told off because she WASN'T pregnant and didn't I feel the fool? I've also been told off by someone I thought was less able to stand but felt I was insulting him by implying he had a disability.

Maybe I just ride an unusually rude train.

Maybe standing without obviously giving the seat to someone (standing and moving to another part of the train) just in case they don't want/need to sit?

I must have been on a super friendly overground train today- it wasn't particularly packed, but there was a guy sitting in the handicapped seats (the ones that fold up).  As soon as he heard the ramp being put up for someone in a wheelchair he moved even though there was a free space in another section of the car that the wheelchair guy went to.