Are your parents mental?

my dad: yes, sort of. hes completely normal but seems to have constructed a fantasy world around him. i think hes done this since he was 8 years old

I just need to use this thread to say that my parents have been absolutely AMAZING for the last month or two. I do not deserve such amazing parents.

do we get to know why, or is it a secret?

i can feel myself getting more and more crazy as a parent. last night i lay awake for 45min or so trying to work out the best strategy to take if the house suddenly caught fire somewhere between our room and beeps' room. jump off the balcony, smash through the glass backdoor with a lawnchair, run up the stairs and hope its not too late? run into the shower with pjs still on and wet towels then run through fire and hope its not too late? can i dealing with aftermath if it is too late? no way. is 15+ too many smoke dectors for 2,831 sq ft? how the hell do we save baby + 3 cats and a dog that doesnt come when its called and keep track of them?

so, yeah, i feel for the mental parents.

Repel down inside balcony to couch, run up stairs OR
I think I could jump pretty far from other side of balcony onto flight of stair. I'd get bruised up, but I could do it without breaking anything.

Instead of wet towels, I would likely grab the fire extinguisher underneath the sink.

Argh, this is one of my worse nightmares and I don't even have kids. ;(

And yes, my parents are mental.

holy shit i forgot inside balcony! I only walk past it 10 times a day and look up at it 20+ times.

I also considered breaking through the walk in closet wall to beeps closet, grab beeps, one of us jumps the outside balcony, the other lowers kid and jumps. One of us smashes the backdoor and grabs wallet, car keys and at least one cat while the other runs to the garage door with the child. Cat is tossed into van and garage door is opened. Kid is tossed in the Honda and driven to safety of street, other is grabbing two cats and corralling dog in the backyard, dog corralled into van, other two cats tossed into Honda, we each jump in a car and head for Alaska.

the fire extinguishers are probably a good idea too

i lay awake for 45min or so trying to work out the best strategy to take if the house suddenly caught fire somewhere

this kind of neurosis helped save my life. when i had terrible insomnia in college and lived in an ancient house with bad wiring and only one functional door, i would worry about how i would escape if a fire broke out (my room was the furthest from said door). i decided that breaking the floor-to-ceiling window would be my only chance, and to that end i moved a sturdy, metal-framed chair in from the living room. the house actually did catch fire, and when i woke up and smelled smoke i was able to implement my disaster plan. i busted out the window with the chair, et voila. so keep worrying, sunny!

(nb: the windows in our house were all nailed shut, in case you're wondering why i didn't just unlock the window and climb out like a normal person.)

Man, Lauren, your house fire stories get better and better.

Ok, you've really freaked me out Lauren.

the wiring in our house is old and scary. We have one fire alarm and right now I'm not sure if it's working. MUST CHECK WHEN I GET HOME.

We could probably easily bust out a window in our bedroom if we were trapped there. Both dogs would be with us and could get away. Maybe a cat or two would be in there but I fear the cats would smell the fire first and hide. We have four of them and I despair of being able to get them all out safely. (also, if you can't move your cars away, could they explode?)

I'm imagining a scenario where I've accidentally burned toast for my midnight snack and seeing out the window my wife leaping from our second-story balcony, John Wilkes Booth style.

Other than that, how was the play?

susan, we don't know to this day if the fire was due to wiring or if our friend started it with a candle and a) didn't notice or b) noticed but was too drunk and crazy to do anything about it. still, check out your smoke detectors (ours had dead batteries) and install more than one!

I actually think that, re fire at least, my parents were like, "Well duh, open yr bedroom window, go out onto the porch roof, and drop off it in the safest way possible." But it is a really pretty safe drop to the ground from our 2nd storey, and there might even be a handy tree to slide down. Wrap-around porch roofs are also v convenient for getting from one room to another, from outside the house.

do we get to know why, or is it a secret?

I've been out of work and they've at every point just been so positive, I expected them to be nagging and stuff but they haven't at all. They've paid for me to come home when I've been particularly pissed off, helped me out with money, but above all that they've just been really trying to cheer me up and helped me feel really confident about getting work.

It's made even better by the fact I know they have their own problems. Big xmas present for parents...

My father frequently does not make sense and will not get a hearing aid. I have to yell at him before he understands, then he yells at me for raising my voice. HE CANNOT HEAR ME AND REFUSES TO GET A HEARING AID. Then he says I have to see a psychiatrist because I "yell" at him all the time. This is a very stressful situation. I love him but can't stand to be around him anymore. I think he has psychological problems if you refuse to get a hearing aid when you can't hear normal conversation.

It's just vanity, isn't it? "Old, I'm not old!"

He has a nurse come to visit him two or three times a week. She says the same thing, he needs a shrink and needs to get an ear and eye appointment but won't do it.

He even called the police on me when I said "get real, you are old and need to confront your hearing loss!" I am serious, this is crazy!

That's frustrating. You have my sympathies. My grandfather was the same way. By the end of his life, he would just sit and smile and occasionally chuckle during conversations as he tried to fake being able to hear what was going on. For my grandfather, it was part vanity and part refusal to acknowledge his hearing loss. He also swore that he couldn't afford a hearing aid despite being able to afford one just, not to mention the fact that in the US, Medicaid covers them.

To answer the titular question, on my last parental visit, I learned my parents are honest to god Tea Party members, truly believe that Barack Obama is a card-carrying member of the socialist party, and honestly think that with the passage of the health care reform act, our government created "death panels" designed to kill off expensive old people, so yes. Yes they are mental.

why does my daughter always find the perfect time not to wake up and then wake up?

coitus interruptus, eh?

no, just trying to manage two kids at once -one starting to stir - the other one waking up - aiigh! hard to manage two at once

my dad is bi-polar so yeah he is.

Are you talking about mornings, or does G still nap?! I'd be a much less mental parent if J did. She stopped just before her 2nd bday. Parents are mental because they are never alone!

mornings. there was an interesting nap battle yesterday - when I came into the room to investigate what was going on I saw the pillow had been taken out of the pillowcase and she was in it like a sleeping bag with her legs on the wall, singing.

After we close the door at bedtime, J routinely shouts herself to sleep with the lyrics to "I Love Rock and Roll". Maybe it's the kids who are mental?

I used to get G to sing Bauhaus - "we love" me
"we love our audience" her

I'm pretty sure she thinks a "jukebox baby" is an actual thing.

I don't know how you guys manage more than one kid at a time. I'd go nuts.

I am nuts.
luckily their cuteness is a great counter-measure to their trouble.
the other day when I said something that was approved of the older one said "Oooh! You're such a right boy!" like I was a kid who did something good

niw moetha ever

I used to get G to sing Bauhaus - "we love" me
"we love our audience" her

― Latham Green, Saturday, 4 June 2011 02:59 (8 months ago)

Haha this is awesome!

yes - and I now have footage of her quoting Troll 2 - "no bacon no eggs, just this Nilbog milk!"

my parents are crazy and it's pissing me the fuck off. my "father figure" (he's not my Dad) and I have not always seen eye to eye, and i am not close to him. my aunt, who is really my mom, and i are very close. it is hard for me. i know they are just trying to keep the family together but my family is my friends. in terms of my biological family, there is a lot of history, and they just don't get how it has influenced me. they expect me to be something i can't be, and i feel badly not being responsive, but at the same time, i *just* *can't*. my mom and dad are gone, and i can't replace them. i don't know how to say that to them. but i'm going to have to figure it out.