Starting next week, I'll have a ton of work coming in every week for the rest of the year. But this week there was very little work, so I took the opportunity to get some long-postponed chores out of the way.
We took two big boxes of professional clothing to the thrift store -- dresses and suits that could have been Seanette's if she had ever gotten the basic housecleaning caught up enough that I could ask her to spend a couple hours doing something non-essential like helping me clean out the closet. She chose not to do the basics, so she lost out on the opportunity to have a full office-job wardrobe for free. And has only herself to blame.
Stubbornness and slothfulness can be costly in the long run. You never know what bonuses your employer has in mind for a job well-done.
Now I'm going to spend the weekend enjoying a last burst of stitching, because once the work starts coming in, there won't be much time for that. Fortunately, I'm almost done with my Christmas presents.
11 comments:
Do you even see the irony here?
"Stubbornness and slothfulness can be costly in the long run"
That would be your own stubborness and slothfulness in never cleaning up after yourself, then??
Having FMS I know how hard it can be to move somedays, but there are tricks to make the times I do get up and about pay off.
You need to go to the bathroom, so you get up. While you are up you grab something that needs put away or thrown away, and take care of that before you hit the couch again. I know you have cats, I have several myself. I've found that if I devote less than 10 mins a day to scooping the litterbox they are good about not using anyplace else in the house. If I'm too wiped out to cook, and order pizza, I make sure the pizza box lands in the garbage can outside the next time I go out. Maybe the floor doesn't get vacuumed as often as it should, but at least I can see the carpet.
Clearly, you're not aware that CFS and fibro are not the same thing. Read http://www.ahummingbirdsguide.com/topicmedefinitions2.htm
With CFS, there is sometimes "paralytic muscle weakness" that no amount of forcing oneself to try harder can overcome -- if your muscles won't work, you can't get up and do more, because you can't get up, period.
You're also assuming the place is a mess because garbage is thrown on the floor. The only reason garbage is ever on the floor is because someone has knocked over the trash can and spilled it. I am not a slob -- there is a trash can next to the bed and a trash can next to the couch, and the trash gets put in the trash can immediately. When the trash can gets full, the bag goes in the outdoor can for pickup.
The problem is that there are things I physically cannot do, and that people who are hired to do those things for me refuse to do what they were hired to do. Unfortunately, there's truth to the saying "if you want a job done right, do it yourself." But for some of us "do it yourself" is no longer an option.
I've never been refused a bonus by an employer, because I'm a hard worker. But there comes a time in every CFS patient's life when the best they can do is not good enough. Not for lack of trying but because they are physically unable to do as much as is required of them.
Seanette could have had all sorts of "bonuses" if she had done the housework as agreed. I have a lot of stuff I would've given her for her new home if only she'd provided the physical strength to get it out of storage. She has no one but herself to blame.
Well, well, well, hateliloveva (whomever it is that's hiding behind anonymity), I think your statement is totally GROUNDLESS. Let's see, BEFORE my sister's death (two years ago this coming Sunday), I made several DISTURBING observations about someone REALLY ill with this disease! Let's see, I am on the phone talking to my sister. She is saying "I need to find my notes for my essay I have to do". You hear her looking through her stuff... ONE MINUTE has passed... she has to lie down on her bed in exhaustion. I ask her "what were you doing exactly". She says "I was moving my pile of CDs to the other side of my desk... I got to about the 15th CD and then was too tired to continue..." And then she complains to me "My room is such a mess..." I then said "Shall come over and help tidy it..." She says "Oh no, I have to do it... if I don't, it will get worse and then all the girls in the dorm have to do it for me... I soooooo wish I could cope doing it myself, but I just can't cope..."
This was part of the LAST PHONECALL I ever had with my sister and because it happened ONE WEEK before she was taken into hospital and ten days before she died, it's etched indelibly in my memory for the rest of my life. WHEN I think about my late sister, this conversation replays itself in my mind over and over.
Nathalie
But you know what, hateliloveva, my sister DID MANAGE to do things UNIMAGINABLE for someone with this disease - she wasn't the type who would allow the disease to beat her. She did charity work, she campaigned for equal rights for women in Afghanistan, she skied, she went to university to study to be an architect DESPITE having to take time off going to school for four years. In the end the world is a poorer world when the disease defeated her and took her away forever... aged 22 years (two years ago).
That is why I am always pushing Karen NOT to give up... that why Karen has the coping mechanism to keep going on... because of REAL FRIENDS LIKE ME!!! Ones who CARE...
And guess what... I am disabled so I cannot do work outside the home just like Karen, but you know what... It doesn't stop me doing such things like going on long hikes to do landscape photography or doing other physical things. SOME of us DON'T want to be beaten by the things that limit our lifestyles, so we do the BEST we can with what we have. A computer, Dreamweaver, Photoshop and PatternMaker is all I need to do LOADS OF STUFF with my life that give it fulfilment...
Nathalie
I've had FMS for years, I don't sleep well, I'm often very tired. I never asked my rheumotologist about CFS because I really don't care if I have it or not. It will make as much difference in my life as finding out that I have had FMS for about a decade before my diagnosis.
I suggested a plan of minimal energy to help maintain a house. Getting up to go to bathroom or kitchen? Grab something to throw away or put away that is on the way. Not exactly a huge extra exertion.
But apparently, Karen would rather bitch and moan about her problems in multiple forums rather than lift a finger to help herself.
Lynn (since you seemed to want my name)
Lynn wrote: I suggested a plan of minimal energy to help maintain a house. Getting up to go to bathroom or kitchen? Grab something to throw away or put away that is on the way. Not exactly a huge extra exertion.
Apparently, you've missed what I said previously about the problem NOT being things that I can do, but things that I can't do. It's not a matter of me "grabbing something to throw away or put away" as I go to another room. It's a matter of my PHYSICALLY being unable (or ill-advised) to carry boxes down the stairs or put things up on shelves. Things that I *can* do, get done. It's the things that I CAN'T do, the things I try to hire other people to do, which are the problem.
No amount of carrying things to other rooms when I go there will magically get those things up on shelves or down to the basement. And it has been proven time and again over the past 6 years that hiring someone to put those things away is simply a waste of money, because they won't do what they're told.
It's just amazing how, from 3000 miles away, you "know" what the problems are in my household better than I do. You've never seen the house to know what it looks like, where the problems are.
As far as your suggestion that the cat box needs to be cleaned better, Seanette made the same suggestion. She scrubbed it and sanitized it, demonstrating to me the correct way to clean a box so that it would be acceptable to the cats (which is pretty much the same way I clean it). And moments after she put the fresh litter in it and announced "There, NOW they will use the box," the problem child looked me defiantly in the eye while pooping just outside the box. The issue is in the cat's head, and not if the box is clean.
Lynn wrote: I'm often very tired.
CFS is more than just being "tired". Fatigue is just the tip of the iceberg. (The name was intentionally chosen to minimize the illness.)
The traditional name, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, has nothing to do with "fatigue"; it means inflammation of the brain. Neurologists have noted that the symptoms can all be caused by dysfunction of the Central Nervous System, i.e., inflammation of the brain.
Fainting is not fatigue. Paralytic Muscle Weakness is not fatigue. Falling due to balance disorder is not fatigue. Exercise intolerance is not fatigue. And the "fatigue" of CFS is not even fatigue as normal people know it -- there are simply no words extreme enough to communicate the bone-deep exhaustion.
Before we continue this discussion, Lynn, perhaps you should read up on what CFS really is, rather than continuing to assume that the whole problem is that I'm tired. There's much more to it than that.
For you to insult CFS patients with the notion that because you're "tired" you know what they're going through is as bad as any racial slur. I would LOVE to be merely "tired" -- it's a feeling I knew well when I was working 100 hours a week outside the home and having to do my housework at midnight (did you ever do that?)
It's the other symptoms that make it difficult to work. In my last month on the job, I lost my balance and fell every time I bent over the file cabinet and dropped everything I picked up. Both neurological symptoms wholly unrelated to being "tired", and both getting worse the longer I tried to stubborn it out and keep working.
You make some erroneous assumptions, Va. The things that are supposed to be thrown away are thrown into a nearby trashcan right away ... they don't need to be carried anywhere because there's a trashcan right next to the couch. OTOH, when Seanette and Bob moved out, quite a bit of their mail was found kicked under the table, because *they* were too lazy to toss it in the trashcan 2 feet away. They're the real slobs.
Carrying something toward the bathroom to put away when she goes that way isn't the problem. Carrying boxes to the basement is. Because of poor balance (a neurological factor of the CFS you wouldn't have with just fibro), Karen is unstable on the stairs. But hired cleaners are not allowed to do that, and Seanette and Bob kept making excuses not to do what they were told.
Karen also has shoulder problems. If someone else puts things up on the shelf, she can use the grabber to knock them down, but she can't lift them up there without her shoulder dislocating, and she shouldn't stand on a chair because of her balance problem. Again, the people hired to do this decided it was easier to dump the stuff in heavy boxes she couldn't move for *her* to put away than to do the work they were told to do.
Karen does as much as she can and hires people to do what she can't, but the people she hired refused to do what they were told to. They only wanted to dust (which she can do). That doesn't help her, because the dusting is done before they arrive.
Without seeing the house first-hand, you assume you know what the problem is. The problem is NOT that the house is unsanitary, but that people are hired to put things away that Karen can't carry herself, and they refuse to do what they are being paid for.
The first problem was that a hired cleaner stacked boxes in front of a bedroom window, "impeding exit in case of fire". Karen knew that was wrong and told the cleaner to move them, but he said he had to leave right away. No other cleaner was willing to carry them downstairs. Seanette and Bob made the excuse that they couldn't move the boxes because their suitcase was on top of them, instead of putting the suitcase on the bed for a few minutes. Karen was cited by the inspector for having a blocked fire exit.
Another problem was that a heavy box was on the hallway floor. Karen managed to push the box to a little-used area in front of the guest room, but again, in the inspector's view it "impeded exit in case of fire". Bob said he would assemble that shelf. He didn't. Karen physically couldn't (she had tried to do another shelf unit and couldn't manage). Her handyman has an ongoing family health crisis and didn't have time to do it, so the box just sat there waiting for someone to get around to assembling the shelf.
Citations were made for messes on the floor, but those messes weren't there a few days earlier when I was in the house -- they were created by the police knocking things down that I saw on shelves. Karen didn't create that mess, but she was cited for it.
You assume Karen is lazy. I'll tell you she does as much as she can; maybe more. But there are things she physically cannot do and things the doctors have told her she should not do. She hired Seanette and Bob to do what she cannot and they did not do what they were hired to do. That's the real problem here, not Karen.
No one who saw the condition of the house deteriorate rapidly during Bob and Seanette's tenancy, as I did, could possibly believe that the problem is that Karen is a slob. The house was mostly clean when they moved in and a pigsty when they moved out. In 2.5 months they never even vacuumed once. Their excuse was that Karen's vacuum didn't work. Why didn't they use theirs?
I'll tell you why - because they were too lazy to clean. It was costing Karen hundreds of dollars a week to feed them with their expensive energy drinks (that didn't give them enough energy to clean) and their expensive convenience foods, and they didn't do a thing to earn it. They got what they wanted out of her and weren't going to do anything once they got it, except try to guilt and manipulate her into buying more for them. They knew they were there for only 2 months, but they wanted her to get into an expensive six-month DSL contract for them! That one was so egregious I told Karen to e-mail Bob's mother about it, so she could scold them for taking advantage of someone who was already being extremely generous. They said it was a joke, but two days later they were back to hinting they wanted DSL.
What I don't understand is why after that Karen still kept paying them to help her. They would've been out of my life ASAP if they promised to do something in exchange for rent and didn't do it.
Let me tell you this, lady. You're right that Karen is stubborn.
Karen stubbornly continues to make crossstitch gifts for others and stubbornly
refuses to allow herself to be homebound.
I worked with the disabled and I have seen a lot of people who ARE the type you describe. Karen isn't one of them. She stubbornly does as much as she can and tries to push herself to do more. She stubbornly goes out when she can, even knowing she'll come home exhausted. She's not sitting on her lazy ass hoping to collect disability for the next 50 years. She's stubbornly working and trying to earn enough to get OFF disability, but whenever she goes beyond the number of hours her doctor says she is able to work, she winds up exhausted and back in bed.
I've SEEN WITH MY OWN EYES that she is exhausted and in pain and barely able to walk. You haven't. So shut the hell up with your theories, because I have facts that prove your theories are worth shit.
She is one of the most courageous people I know. And you, hiding behind a false identity, are one of the biggest cowards I know. Come out and admit to your real name, which Karen and Nathalie have told me. Are you too chicken to admit they're right about which person who hates Karen with a passion is making these scurrilous accusations against her?
Brian
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