Accessory Tuesday: York Bow Loafer

How do you deal with a colleague who sends you large, complex assignments via long, complex emails that really should’ve been meetings? (Honestly, didn’t even know this was a thing until I worked with this person.) What she is asking for is reasonable to expect my team to do, but it often comes at the 11th hour and the content area isn’t exactly in our wheelhouse, so it takes longer to turn around. She also expects lots of drafts and revisions, so it snowballs quickly.

And, I’m not sure if it’s her writing style or what, but it takes me forever to figure out what she’s even asking for. It’s this huge, unhelpful information dump every time. She is technically senior to me, so I try to make it work but it is just not a smooth process and it’s happened multiple times now. I always ask clarifying questions and usually end up suggesting that we video chat, but she has a ton of meetings so I get replies at weird times, further delaying the whole thing and further stressing me out.

She’s a nice person but I can’t stand working with her because I think she thinks she’s being helpful, when really it’s chaotic. And it’s hard to delegate to anyone on my team when I don’t even understand what she’s looking for.

Help. How do I work with this person?

I have plenty of work to do but I don’t want to! Holiday malaise, perhaps? That is all.

I need your opinion. For Christmas, my mom wants to give us a subscription to a conservative news source (we are not conservative). She says they have children’s programming so it would really be for the kids. She already gifted it to my brother and he informed her he can’t access the children’s programming because he doesn’t have Apple TV (we don’t either). IMO this is not a great gift, but it’s pretty on par for my mom. Should I buy something fun for my kids and offer for her to give it to them? I’ve had multiple conversations with her about what my kids want. She seems to think gifts must be educational, and she doesn’t follow my requests. Like if I ask for a fire truck she will buy a garbage truck, even though my kid specifically wants a fire truck and we already have two garbage trucks. She’s local, so she will expect to see them open gifts on Christmas.

My best friend, her DH, and 2 kids 5 and 7 planned to stay with us over Xmas for 6 days. After tickets were booked and we told our kids, my friend let me know she planned to keep her kids on EST (we live in the Midwest), and so it would be better if our families ate separate dinners while she was staying in my house and that she also planned to put her kids to bed at 6:30 CST. I said we could be flexible on dinner times, why don’t both families eat together whenever is best for her. I suggested 5 pm CST for joint dinners. I also said we could go out for pizza a few times to give me a break and get out of the house. I explained that it would be difficult to keep separate eating schedules for two families living in the same house. She was very resistant to trying to keep our families on the same dinner schedule, and also explained that her daughter might melt down if she went out to dinner (even early, even just for pizza). That’s kind of where we left it. A few days later, she texted me that she thought it would be better if she stayed somewhere else because trying to keep her kids on my schedule would cause her a lot of anxiety and guilt. I am just stunned that we can’t work this out and find some compromise, and very saddened and disappointed for my kids, who were so looking forward to having her kids stay at our house. I just don’t understand how I’m supposed to be cooking dinners (including Xmas dinner) and her family won’t join us for that when they are staying in our home?! Not sure what to make of all this. She has been rigid about schedules in the past with her kids, but I assumed that was because her kids were infants.

Asking anon because I feel a bit awkward about this. I gave birth about a year ago, and haven’t noticed any issues since. But I have a bad cough these days and have noticed minor incontinence issues when I cough a lot. Is this what pelvic floor therapy is for? I haven’t done it and feel very uncomfortable about it.

Having a birthday party for my 4 year old at a pizza place with a small indoor play area. There is enough room to do some kind of party game – the play area has open space and we’ve reserved a few tables next to it. It will mostly be unstructured play, since there will be 4-5 kids around age 4 and all of them have younger siblings in the 1-2 range. Any suggestions for a party activity? Game? Pin the tail on the donkey??