My immediate answer to the problem of being a bore, so far:
Be giving to others.
Be nice.
Learn to listen.
The 3rd one is most difficult for me. I grew up with 2 certifiable geniuses in the house (dad and brother) an academic and going to be one. They delighted in one upmanship… I know this factoid you don’t. Since I was 12 years younger, I didn’t know wtf they were talking about most of the time, and that was “proof” acc. to my abuser that I was stupid and they were embarrassed by me.
My solution at the time was to just start talking, because otherwise I just got ignored mostly. I wasn’t interesting.
As a nearly 70 yo, I still have the “i gotta talk!” programmed into me. It’s awful. I am more and more aware of it, but still don’t know how to really stop it.
So, right now? What I’m going to explore, examine, etc. is how to shut up. After getting rid of all the excess stuff and getting the house clean, I guess I"m going to clean up my verbal act!
Question: does linen look terrible if you handwash and dry? I’m thinking of getting a linen dress to take to Europe next month where it might be quite hot.
Linen loves to be handwashed, but also loves to wrinkle. Picking it in a suitcase and not having a dryer to knock the wrinkles out will make things hard. But you can hang it in the shower to steam it, you can wear it wrinkly and it will get better as the day goes on, you can pick a style that looks ok wrinkly.
My favourite linen dress is lined in cotton. The cotton keeps the wrinkles down.
You can make a big difference in the wrinkle level if you sort of press it between your hands on the hanger while it’s still wet. Won’t be perfect, but that makes it much better.
But if you have easy dresses, that’s what I’d do unless it’s going to be very hot and they’re synthetic. Nothing beats linen for heat.
I have some linen dresses and I always have to give them a little help with an iron to keep hems and things from getting all wonky. You could theoretically get a similar effect from washing and then laying it out really flat or pressing some heavy stuff on top of problem areas.
I will sometimes take my linen pants out of the dryer still damp and then wring them vertically so I get wrinkles that are more aesthetically pleasing.
Does anybody else, when you’re lying face down… twerk? It’s automatic for me. Just alone in bed, shaking my ass. I only realize how strange this is when someone else sees it.
This morning a friend’s daughter is coming to give J2 swimming lessons in our pool. She says she charges $35 for an hour.
I know J2 will not have an hour’s attention span, so I’ve asked for two half hour lessons a week, one on Tuesday and one on Friday (both days that I work from home, so she can pick the time at her convenience, we’re here all day)
It is a five minute walk for her each way, I provide the pool (and therefore, chemicals / maintenance etc).
is $35 an appropriate payment? I feel like she is short changing herself, given that this is a private swim lesson, and the certification she needed to get to become an instructor.
(She is also giving lessons through a swim school and has been for awhile. This is a supplemental job, and she would be spending this time gaming, not that that means much her time is her time to spend as she sees fit. I’m not taking away from other paid employment though)
Editing to add - she told me that the $35 was flexible, so we could work out ‘what I thought was fair’, but she needs to know that her time is worth something.
She was J1’s paid afterschool daycare when he was gr 2 / she was gr 8, and I’ve paid her when she was lifeguard certified but not yet swim instructor certified to supervise my kids in the pool while I worked from home during covid. Husband paid her and her brother to help him put on a roof in rent-a town. So there is a long history of paying her for her time here. HOWEVER, when her family goes on vacation I take care of their pets, and vice versa, as a trade situation, and I’ve driven her places (and recently she drove me to the train when I took the scouts to Ottawa) so there is ALSO history of favours exchanged back and forth without ‘keeping track
Private lessons at our local YMCA are $70/hour for non-members or $40/hour for members. I can’t see what we paid last year for small group lessons for Kiddo last year (four students in the class over a few weeks, 30 minute lessons) but I can look later if you want.
I live in a VHCOL area but private lessons in your own pool run $75-100 for 30 minutes around here. If you use the same instructors at their pool it’s $50-70 for 30 minutes. So I think $30-35/30 minutes 2x/week is reasonable if it’s a short walk and there’s no driving transportation involved!
It’s obviously not about the money for her and since you have a history of helping each other, it’s fine! Just consider it as something nice she’s doing for your family.
Oh, she’s just a kid! She probably doesn’t even know how to value her time. Then I’d probably say $25 per half hour class. Usually it would be a higher cost per hour for a shorter class anyway.
I taught lessons in highschool, and then during college as well. Obviously going through a swim school you don’t get the full amount that is paid, but I made between $15-$20 an hour as a WSI certified instructor. I think $35 for half an hour is a great/generous especially at that age, with the experience she has
Oh I see, so will you be paying her $35 for two 30 min lessons, or $35 for each 30 min lesson? I think if you are paying her per 30 min lesson $20-$25 is fair for 30 min, but to block off time twice a week vs. once a week maybe is less convenient? But if she’s walking there and has nothing else going on…maybe not. I don’t know, it’s so hard to decide what to pay when people say “whatever you think is fair” because I don’t always know what will be fair to them!
