I found out that the guy I sit opposite in the office is off with Covid at the moment so I’m glad I still haven’t managed to go back to the office since we were allowed in September.
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yup, been and done. Results in 1-2 days
EDIT: I’d already decided to collect my laptop and work from home but it’s the ‘I’ll keep going in’ cold feels from the before times
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Today is a bit up and down. I have most probably a cold, but awaiting the pcr results so my nose hurts, my head hurts and I am tired and drained. So that is rubbish, and it will be even worse is it’s a covid. I’ll be very upset if I lose another year to long covid. Losing over 1 year already has been poop.
On the plus side got my module results today. Computer science sees me with 2 distinctions and the maths with a decent pass. I’m over the moon about the maths on account of the brain fog and the lack of maths over the last 20 years. So stoked not to have to retake and instead be in to decent grade territory. It’s up there amongst most difficult things I’ve done. It’s a shame about this damn plague…
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Ouch. Local pub had a stack of really horrid-looking boardgames; I always meant to give them some of my surplus, but never wanted to get rid of anything that would be easy to pick up quickly for non-gamers.
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Our group had a mixture of cringe and excitement when Monopoly: Richmond-Upon-Thames was announced. 
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I once went on a cruise that had scrabble, monopoly and a copy of a puzzle showing the Titanic leaving port.
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Wonder what is Old Kent Road in that edition!
Probably the road I lived on…
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Corporation Island, apparently.
https://www.richmond.gov.uk/news/november_2021/new_richmond_upon_thames_monopoly
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I’m regretting now not taking a pic of the pile of games from the batch we stayed on Labour weekend in the Coromandel. Heaps of Hasbro trash. I’m talking dozens. But hey, it is not intimidating for non-gamers, so I guess they have a point being there…?
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They are cheap and easy to get. And people know them, and play them.
We stayed at a ski resort a couple years ago. One of the bars had bunches of games, including some less mainstream stuff. What were people playing? Jenga, some trivial pursuit variation, and card games.
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I feel a bit down today. Last night we received notice from the second electrician we tried to hire for the renovations of my parental home: he doesn’t want to work for us because my dad is too opinionated and interfering. The electricity and is the most contentious part of the renovation project. But even if we cannot agree on some of the measures: we need an electrician to move forward and he has now repeatedly sabotaged us finding one while at the same time complaining that we are not getting started.
Right now he is staying with my sister so we cannot even easily talk to him. Phone calls with him about this topic usually end with me crying and my partner shouting.
The renovation is really the thing that is the reason for all my bad days this year. Well most of them anyway.
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I’m so sorry, that sounds incredibly frustrating.
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Renovations are the worst under the best of conditions, and this definitely sounds like not the best of conditions. You have my sympathies!
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Ouch, sorry to hear that…
Any chance you could book somebody and send your dad away for the day?
As in one of those programs where they redo the house while the wife is away sort of thing, but without cameras
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We were being courteous. Also this time he said he didn’t have time to attend the meeting and yet there he was. This is all about my partner wanting some cables in places … and it’s really complicated. My dad built the house–the only building he designed himself as an architect. In his profession he mostly oversaw other people’s designs being built. So this house is very special to him. Also lived there since forever and now we’re coming in wanting to change and upgrade things–everytime we say “something needs to be renewed”… it seems to tell him “you lived in something that wasn’t good enough”
More of the renovation saga inside...
My sister has offered to take him in for the worst part of the renovations (she runs a B&B in Brittany and it’s very very lovely there also his only grandchild is there) but he said “No, he has to stay and supervise” even though he told us he was not going to do that and since he also told us we were not up to the task of supervising ourselves (especially me being a woman though he didn’t say it in so many words) so we hired someone to do this for us…
It’s a really complicated situation with lots of emotions. I feel like he thinks we should be grateful to “get to move into the big luxurious villa” while my take is: we’re moving in there which is nice but we’re also investing our financial freedom into the thing. We making it possible so my dad can live there for the rest of his life and doesn’t have to go any other place. He will no longer be alone with us next door. And he doesn’t have to selll the house he built. Gratefulness comes into all of that quite late. Yes I appreciate the house, the garden, the city views… but the home is too large for just the 2 of us. It costs an awful lot of energy to run it with “all the features” (the pool alone currently uses as much energy as me and my partner in a year). On top of all that he questions every thing we want to do. And we already promised not to change the aspects important to him. The one thing that I want is a more open kitchen and I got him to agree to that years ago–1 wall gets semi-taken out. And yes the old floors have to go–but he loved the new tiles we brought. I saw him stand there and look at the huge (80x80cm) Italian light-grey slate imitation that feels like natural stone and he said “wow this didn’t exist back in the day”… I saw he liked it.
And yet he makes a fuss about us renewing parts of the water system, replacing 40 year old bathrooms with broken appliances and broken tiles, wanting to make sure the electrical system is up to the task…
This february… when the woman who rented the attached apartment said she was finally moving out (she was supposed to move out almost 2 years ago but asked to stay a bit longer and my dad let her even though he knew about all the plans of his and our move… he had proposed them and the date as well…). So he said she was moving out and so he was all motivated to do his own move and excited and so we thought: “Well, we got to show him we’re just as motivated. We do not want to disappoint him.” So we visited the house and tried to make a list of all the things that needed to be done for us to move in.
A week later, he sat in my living room crying “I can’t do it. I cannot move.” I believe there were also words said along the lines of “you want to change the house too much.” So we told him that he should take his time, come to a decision and we would make the plans for the renovations together and we were not going to change the house as much. We have a great apartment where I love living. I do not need to move.
A few weeks later, our household helper (the same woman comes both to us and my dad to help with the household) tells me that my dad is starting to renovate the apartment and is moving his things.
By May or so he had mostly completed his move and was expecting us to begin renovating ASAP. No more talks about what we were going to do… nothing. Though he knew that specifically the electrical system was something we had not finished talking about and he knew my partner especially insists on having some LAN access in all the rooms. He kept saying my partner (R) will have to compromise as it was not a new building and R will just have to live with it. He suggested something similar last Friday with the electrician “they’ll just have to move in.”
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In case it’s of any use to you, I recommend Captain Awkward as a resource for dealing with difficult family stuff and boundaries.
I hope things become less stressful for you soon
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I’m with R here, if possible put LAN access into all the rooms. Internet access is the same level as electrics now. Doesn’t help the situation and I can see your Dad’s side too, however things need renovating at some point.
Sending all the feels and love
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It sounds very emotionally charged for your father. That makes for a difficult situation for everyone. I know, personally, I will be quite a handful when I get older and am expected to rely on others for help.
I don’t know enough about cultural differences between here and there, but where I live, men of the older generations were taught to hide their feelings and so they never developed an adequate vocabulary to express how they were really feeling.
I hope you find a way to help your father cope with the situation. It sounds like he intellectually understands what needs to happen, but is struggling with it emotionally.
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Yes, the situation seems rather complex, a lot of emotional involvement from all sides. I can not begin to imagine how difficult it must be for you and your partner. Letting go and changes in general is not something the elderly tend to go well with. Finding middle ground looks like is going to be hard work…
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