LOL..I am loving these stories! It's True Confession time. :-) As a young bride I decided to try to make gazpacho as one of the courses for a small family dinner party we were having. I thought a clove of garlic was the whole bulb. You can probably guess the rest. LOL The worst part was watching our family choking down the soup and pretending it was good so as not to hurt my feelings. As soon as I took the first sip, I stood up and removed every bowl. ACK! The second story came from a friend, also a young bride at the time, who was cooking dinner for her new in-laws. The recipe called for chopped green peppers. She kept slicing bell peppers and then tossing them into the garbage. Her MIL came over and asked what was wrong. My friend said, "There's something wrong with these peppers. I keep slicing them and there's nothing inside, just some seeds. I think they are rotten.". :-) Somehow her MIL kept a straight face through this conversation. LOL Marilyn

Pal & Shannon - why am I not surprised to hear that? I want to be, but I'm not and I'm sitting here shaking my head. Oakley - yes I am writing the Thank You for the lunch since boss is treating me to lunch too and voiced as much right away to everyone. I guess after so many yrs of just doing it for prior Doc that I worked for I've never given it a 2nd thought. Scratched my head at first but did it. And indeed I did think of just putting my name on it while stating in the Thank You that WE enjoyed lunch very much. Quite honestly I decided to wait to send the Thank You until after the patient comes in again. I want to see if she mentions anything to me about the beer. If she does then I will include a nod to the beer in the Thank You (if Tech brings any back for me) but I will still only sign my name thanking her on behalf of the rest of the staff. Luckily there haven't really been any other 'side tasks' for me. The last Doc that I worked for was crazy w/ the side tasks stuff but he was also the head of the practice and the chief of the ICU so I ended up more like his medical/ personal assistant. He compensated me very well for it though and there were many times when I would tell him that something was his responsibility not mine. I had a brief talk w/ the Tech this AM where he protested 'But she said it was for all of us' at which point I said 'Really? If that's the way that it was presented then why didn't you immediately turn to share it instead of putting it w/ your back pack? It wasn't until you were prompted that you thought of sharing. Now how do you think that made me feel? She didn't stop to say anything specifically to me - she barely even looked at me before running out the door. That's because she was uncomfortable - she didn't expect for me to be in the back w/ the rest of you and she was caught off guard.' Pammyfay - what a lovely start to a wonderful week! Thank you and HAPPY MONDAY TO ALL!

Dear Mommabird, Sounds like you had a rough night. Hope you can de-stress and get some restorative sleep tonight. Seems like you have been trying your whole life to prove that you're not "lazy." You don't need to prove it to anyone else! Believe in yourself, lady. Don't let those voices echo in your head. It'll make ya crazy. I am going to confess to you that I did a little mental exercise one day. Maybe I repeated it a couple more times. I imagined my ex-husband, who I had not seen in over a decade, who had been psychologically but not physically cruel. I remembered all the pressure I felt from him. Then I imagined myself telling him that he could not live inside my head any longer. I went into great detail to explain exactly why he was no longer welcome in my head, and I tried very hard to imagine him somewhat reluctantly but peacefully leaving. Ya know what? It seemed to do the trick. So I did the same with my own mother, who is still alive and well. Then my mother-in-law, who I actually see more often than my own mother. I used to feel their influence even when they weren't around. Even when I had not spoken with them for several days. After that exercise, the feeling of being pressured by others is significantly diminished. I'm no psychologist, but I don't think it matters whether you are "lazy" or not. What matters is how happy you are about your living situation. And it sounds like you're not happy with the way things are. I'm going to guess that the disorder in your life is not due to laziness, but due to lack of communication and cooperation and coordination with the rest of your family. You need to get them to do all the tiny actions that keep the house neat and organized and clean. I'm not saying that YOU have to change THEM. It's not easy to do it that way. But maybe if you tell them how you feel, and ask for a bit of help, just MAYBE they will want to help you out, by making small changes in their everyday habits. Perhaps changing things around to make it easier to put away stuff might be all it takes. I can't say. I don't know everything you know. This is just my two cents, and I hope it helps you find a solution. May you find peace.

My parents method seemed harsh to me at the time, but it proved quite successful and I intend on (mostly) repeating it with my own children. I was told from an early age that once I graduated high school I had to either move out or, if I was attending college, I had a room. If I wasn't going to attend college then I would be expected to pay rent. Furthermore, once I made the decision to move out, I would not be allowed to move back in under any circumstances. There was no safety net, I had to make it or break it on my own. They would also not pay for any college so if I wanted that, I had to either excel in my grades and apply for grants and scholarships or I had to work to pay my way or get loans. Most people I've told this to feel it was overly harsh, bordering on cruelty to basically tell an 18 year old that they were in charge of their life. It was very much a tough love mentality BUT, it's not like it was suddenly sprung on me at the last minute. (THAT would be cruel in my eyes) My parents spent YEARS not only driving home the message but ALSO teaching my brother and I that nothing in life is free and if you want something, you had better be prepared to work for it. They also taught us how to cook, clean, manage our finances, etc. We both had jobs during high school, balancing school, work and extracurricular activities. I chose to move out 2 weeks after I graduated high school due to an acrimonious relationship with my parents. My brother chose to live at home while attending college. We are both successful adults with no debt from schooling. The only other real world examples I have to go off of are my friends and my husband. My husband was actively discouraged from working while in school because "you should focus on school!!" (Yeah, because real life and bills will just stop for you to focus on only one aspect of life). We spent years paying off his student loans which were acquired because of the "only focus on school" mentality that his parents instilled in him. Real life doesn't work that way and the sooner you learn that lesson, the better. My closest friends came from much wealthier families than I did and they all screwed around and wasted their parents money for a few years before getting their acts together. One figured it out soon enough that she was able to finish college and get her degree before the cash flow stopped. The other took a bit longer and by the time she had her head on straight, she had burned through all the money her parents had set aside for her education. She is a very skilled and competent lawyer now, but she has almost 200K in student loan debt. I don't really blame either of them. It was their parents fault. Their parents didn't prepare them to be adults; they treated them like kids and mommy and daddy took care of their problems. Children aren't forever children; they are future adults. Talk to them, teach them and prepare them for that role because that is the role they will have for the vast majority of their lives.