adulting

A gentle reminder for anyone who may be, um, celebrating the holiday

Originally published here. Have fun and be polite, stoners!

And now, an excellent guest entry from xxzombierot. It is not that difficult to be good to the person who is bringing you nice hot food when you are disinclined or unable to do it yourself. xxzombierot?

• Tip! Tip well! $3-$5 is average. Keep in mind that tips are the primary wages, we use our own gas, and there is a lot of wear and tear on delivery cars.
• Open your door. Don’t look at me like I’ve got four heads through your cracked door, I’m not going to kill you.
• SPEAK. Even if you just say hi. Your delivery driver is a PERSON. 
• If it is raining or cold, maybe toss an extra dollar in the tip.
• If it is raining or cold, and you are not fully prepared when you answer your door, consider letting your driver stand in your doorway.
• Be prepared when you answer your door. When you order your food, place the money near your door or in your pocket. Don’t waste ten minutes searching your house once the driver arrives.
• Turn your porch light on. Especially if your walkway is hazardous, or your house number is on your door.
• If you live in a gated community, remember to leave a name to look up or a gate code.
• Answer your phone! Sometimes houses are hard to find, or we just want to make sure that we are at the right place. We don’t want to wake anyone up who didn’t order food.
• If your house is hard to find, leave instructions. “Corner house” is incredibly helpful.
• If you are letting a child pay for your food, instruct them to tell the driver to keep the change. (I can’t tell you how many times parents have run out after me with a tip, or to collect change) Also, this is good practice for them.
• Be home when your driver gets there. If you order food, wait to go to the store, or leave your money (and tip instructions) with someone else.
• If you only have a $50 or $100 bill, it’s a time saver if you ask the store if a driver can even break it.
• Control your pets. This one doesn’t bother me because I love dogs, but some people are really scared of dogs, and being greeted at the car by an unleashed pitbull/German shepherd/any dog is probably not very fun for them. Little dogs running around your yard are hard to see, so it’s probably safer if they aren’t.

Delivery is a service. If you don’t want to leave your house for your food, appreciate the person who brings it to you.

Also, a gentle reminder that if you are, shall we say, not at your sharpest and/or ordering for a large group, write down everything you want and all details/modifications before you call. In fact, do that anyway.

Song and Chore Pairing: Lil Wayne’s “Rich as Fuck” and everythingggg

I realize that few are as dedicated to Weezy as I am. HOWEVER. The hook of this song works perfectly for any number of domestic chores:

“All my dishes look washed as fuck!”
“All my shirts look folded as fuck!”
“All my lightbulbs look changed as fuck!”
“All my pillows look fluffed as fuck!”

Etc. I like to listen to this song while hard at work then pause at the appropriate moment to holler whatever applies. Flashy, triumphant Blingee under the cut!

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How to Job Hunt as a 20-Something in 2013.

“THE ALL-IMPORTANT RESUME. Things to include: Name, Contact Info, Experience, Skill List, Education, preferably in that order.”

Excellent, excellent stuff.

vintage-aerith:

I wanted to share some knowledge I picked up during 8 months spent unemployed. This is a conglomerate from personal experience, trial and error, and input from other friends who have been through the same.

This is really long, and I hope none of it is really painfully obvious, but I hope it helps somebody out.

Read on for tips on resumes, applying, interviewing, and following up! 

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Step 296: Master sweeping, and put brooms in their place

Sweeping! Let’s talk about it.

I hate sweeping. If chores had personalities, sweeping would be so passive-aggressive and undermine-y. “Noooo, you’re doing a great job, except for all those little cat hairs, which, you know, are so small, right?”

So first things first: if you have a pet, you are a LOT better off just vacuuming. Yes. Your hardwood, linoleum, whatever floors will get much cleaner. Most vacuums have a setting for it.

But if you must sweep, here’s how it goes:

1. Clear everything on the floor out of the way. This means rugs, small tables, chairs, that pile of shoes, whatever.

2. Divide the room, mentally, into 3-foot by 3-foot squares, then sweep one at a time.

3. Sweep slooooooowly. Like, much more slowly than you’d think. When you sweep even at a moderate pace, you’re kicking up a ton of dust and your broom is laughing at you (“Oh, that’s sweet. She thinks she’s cleaning!”). Do it in even, overlapping parallel lines.

4. Make little piles. Remember your 3 by 3 squares? Well, nine of them together are a 9-by-9 foot square. Sweep toward the center of this, then once your pile is neatly contained, use a little handbrush (like this) to get it in there. DO NOT USE THAT FUCKING ASSHOLE BROOM because it will invariably be wider than your dustpan and roll its eyes at you.

5. Once you have a pile, go ahead and dispose of it then, otherwise you’ll forget and then traipse through it seven minutes later.

6. CELEBRATE MANKIND’S ONGOING TRIUMPH OVER OUR DUST AND BROOM ENEMIES.

“Wow. All these people angrily disagreeing with my Facebook post have really changed my deeply-held beliefs!”
— Said absolutely no one, ever.

Caveat: If someone’s said something vaguely sexist/racist/what-have-you, or have offended you, by all means, politely say something or defriend/ignore them. But you are not going to change people’s views on abortion/gun control/etc. with an angry Facebook comment.

Quote of the Day, from Mr. Rogers

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

― Fred Rogers

Step 295: Print this out for your laundry room

Step 294: Follow the rules of the Kvetching Rings

And now, an amazing strategy to be good to people having any kind of crisis:

Draw a circle. This is the center ring. In it, put the name of the person at the center of the current trauma. For Katie’s aneurysm, that’s Katie. Now draw a larger circle around the first one. In that ring put the name of the person next closest to the trauma. In the case of Katie’s aneurysm, that was Katie’s husband, Pat. Repeat the process as many times as you need to …

When you are done you have a Kvetching Order. One of Susan’s patients found it useful to tape it to her refrigerator.

Here are the rules. The person in the center ring can say anything she wants to anyone, anywhere. She can kvetch and complain and whine and moan and curse the heavens and say, “Life is unfair” and “Why me?” That’s the one payoff for being in the center ring.

Everyone else can say those things too, but only to people in larger rings … 

When you are talking to a person in a ring smaller than yours, someone closer to the center of the crisis, the goal is to help. Listening is often more helpful than talking. … If you want to scream or cry or complain, if you want to tell someone how shocked you are or how icky you feel, or whine about how it reminds you of all the terrible things that have happened to you lately, that’s fine. It’s a perfectly normal response. Just do it to someone in a bigger ring.

— Susan Silk and Barry Goldman, writing in the LA Times

Seriously, the whole thing is so great. Go read it. And thank you to LN for submitting it!

Step 293: When someone gives you a valid piece of criticism, don’t try to argue them out of it

Maybe it’s a boss, or a friend, or a significant other. You’ll know it’s valid because you’ll feel the sting of recognition instead of the sting of unfairness, the former being a lot more difficult to swallow.

When that happens, just be quiet, externally and internally, for a second. You can’t undo what they said by debating it, so be a grown-up, accept that you do some things imperfectly and try to do better.

It’s not the end of the world, I promise.

I am way more into my new hobby than my new hobby is into me.