even more quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a new rolling new york times thread

I can see it

On a very different income level, I'm kind of feeling that? I don't want to tell the neighbors how much my bf's kitchen reno cost because they've never spent that much on anything in their lives (they are remarkably frugal by choice even now that they don't have to be). But then, they're not asking. Would totally tell anyone who wanted to know.

We think it was about $30k btw in case anyone was wondering. Most of which was something of a windfall, saved up for the purpose.

my rule of thumb is that if anyone complains to me about renovating their kitchen, i refuse to take any complaint they have seriously ever again

People should just be content with pots and fire

i mean i understand construction in your house is a bitch and dealing with contractors sucks and its expensive and you don't quite get what you want and etc
but you own a home and you have money to spend to fix your house up to your specifications
so you are allowed to be unhappy
but maybe don't complain about it as if it's the death of a pet

here's a winner
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/14/magazine/akita-dog-ethics.html

My granddaughter recently moved from her city apartment to our small town. She was having financial problems, and my husband and I decided to buy a small historic hotel in the hope that she could turn it into an artists’ retreat. She had always told us that it was one of her dreams.

In preparation for the move, my granddaughter brought her dog to stay for a week while she and her mother went back to finish packing. My granddaughter bought an Akita puppy during the Covid lockdown, and it became very attached to her. We learned that she had not tried to train or socialize it. We built a special kennel for it because it could not be put in the existing kennel with my daughter’s two dogs; they got into a fight on a previous visit. The first special kennel we built was only four feet tall, and the dog jumped out. So we built a new kennel with six-foot-tall panels. The dog chewed through the wire mesh and escaped. The next day, when my daughter, grandson and granddaughter decided to take all the dogs for a run, the dogs got in a fight. My grandson was bitten while trying to separate them and required medical attention. Because my granddaughter needed to leave the dog while she and her mother returned home to pack, she decided to board it. The first night, the dog escaped and caused some destruction. Then it escaped again and did more damage. The kennel owner told my granddaughter that someone would have to come and pick up the dog. My husband and I had to drive an hour to get the dog. We constructed a secure pen with a roof so it could not escape. But it did, and then it got trapped in a room in the hotel we bought. It destroyed the curtains, the blinds, the bedding and an air-conditioner, and clawed the door and door frame, before crawling out a second-story window onto a roof and sliding off. The dog wound up at our daughter’s house a block away. I was upset and confronted my granddaughter upon her return. I said I did not want the dog in the house anymore.

My husband has worked with dog breeders. He says it would not be safe to allow the dog to stay, because if it escaped and injured someone, we could be liable. The dog growled at a neighbor who tried to catch it during one of its escapes. There are several Akita rescue groups in the area, and my husband wants my granddaughter to give the dog up. But she won’t, fearful that it might be euthanized. My granddaughter says she can’t stay without her dog, and her mother says that we are responsible for all of this turmoil because we changed the rules and that we should compromise. My daughter insists that the dog is just very attached to my granddaughter and is not vicious, and says that I just don’t like the dog. It’s true that it has growled at me, and I am afraid of it. What do you think? Name Withheld

me reaping: this sucks wtf

That story is like the opposite of burying the lede

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/17/dining/mary-paul-mccartney-vegan-yorkshire-pudding.html

Oh fuck off

That daughter sounds like a nightmare being enabled by absolutely everyone around her.

Shocked "we bought a hotel for our granddaughter" didn't dominate Twitter for 72 hours.

She can have a little historic hotel, as a treat

On a very different income level, I'm kind of feeling that? I don't want to tell the neighbors how much my bf's kitchen reno cost because they've never spent that much on anything in their lives (they are remarkably frugal by choice even now that they don't have to be). But then, they're not asking. Would totally tell anyone who wanted to know.

― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Saturday, December 18, 2021 9:38 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

yeah it has nothing to do with income level at all imo, contractors and other professionals hold all the cards in terms of pricing and expertise and challenge you to shop around and find "the best deal" which oh yeah may then inform the quality of the work you get. this is why trusted referrals rule the day and even then are you getting the best deal? more likely you're getting someone who's professional and doesn't suck to deal with (which is more or less how i've chosen everyone who's done work on our house).

my partial kitchen reno (counters, backsplash tile, two new custom cabinets and a few other small things) cost about $15k.

"Marriage requires amnesia, a mute button, a filter on the lens, a damper, some blinders, some bumpers, some ear plugs, a nap," writes Heather Havrilesky for @NYTStyles. https://t.co/PlNaqEycp9

— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 26, 2021

Jesus. That article is some Christmas present to her husband. Though it doesn’t exactly seem like self-respect is a particularly cherished value in the family

doesn't she run an advice column? yikes

I don't know if this is really a quiddities, there's an expensive vacation in it but it's very much not the point

Rich person airing her drama in the paper of record = agonies

i’m being told this is a ‘humor piece’ in ‘the vein of david sedaris’

it’s not very ‘funny’ tho, is it

Neither is David Sedaris.

in her 20s she wrote the daily suck.com columns iirc

David Sedaris ime is a skillful writer and usually pretty successful at couching any stinging or mocking criticism of his family and partner in well-articulated and convincing affection for them (or at least he used to be… he’s sort of drowned in his own quiddities in the past couple decades). This woman is just bitter, cruel and playing out her family dysfunction in the most public forum

That piece was so assholish it made me reconsider stuff she'd written in the past that I'd liked.

That husband is currently writing a responsive piece for submission to the Times with the working headline “I Hate My Wife, As Well”

— Patrick Monahan (@pattymo) December 28, 2021

tbf, i kind of hate her husband too

*bites nails* can't wait for the follow up, definitely going to subscribe to read it

I don't know. As long-time married guy, I thought the "I Hate My Husband" piece was kind of funny. YMMV

yeah it all seems incredibly par for the course? like if a standup did a set of this material nobody would blink. which maybe says something about the relative levels of interpersonal intolerance in standup comedy idk.

like if a standup did a set of this material nobody would blink.

In 1995, maybe.

Mrs. Borat voice “Mai husbaaaand”

lmao

"Foreskin like wizard cowl..."

https://defector.com/maybe-your-marriage-just-sucks ($)

I wonder if any of us here have been married for 15 years

I have!

28 years here.

I channel all my hate into ILX threads

"You're welcome, Mrs. eephus" -- the Dave Matthews Band

28 years here.

14 years

I didn't really care for the Havrilesky piece, but some of the reaction to it seems not to have noticed that it's an excerpt from a forthcoming memoir. It's not like she suddenly got exasperated with her husband one day and ran to the New York Times to badmouth him.

coming up on 20 years

I'm sure my wife and I could each write a list of minor annoyances about one another that we overlook because, on balance, it's a good marriage. If plucked out of the context of the larger discussion, that list would look similar.

I wonder if any of us here have been married for 15 years

28 years this past June.

I didn't really care for the Havrilesky piece, but some of the reaction to it seems not to have noticed that it's an excerpt from a forthcoming memoir. It's not like she suddenly got exasperated with her husband one day and ran to the New York Times to badmouth him.

No, but that was the excerpt she chose to publish in the New York Times, removing it from any other context (because a lot of people aren't gonna realize it's an excerpt from a book and most of the people who read it are not gonna read the whole book, since it's a very bad piece of writing that does not do much to promote the larger project).

if i had to choose between the havrilesky piece and the i-love-my-wife defector piece mookie linked i would first of all wonder what pass my life had come to but anyway i think i hate the latter more actually

Tracer OTM with respect to this Lady and the Tiger dilemma we are confronted with here.

idk, i didn't love the parts of the defector piece where he was describing his own marriage - a little too hyperbolic - but on sum i hew closer to that experience than the havrilesky one by a long shot. and i thought his takedown of the havrilesky was otm

married 12 yrs here btw, together for ~17

Married 19 years, one thing that helps preserve a matrimonial union is to avoid reading marriage-themed clickbait.

I read my wife some of the lines from the Havrilesky piece and we both chuckled about it, especially the part about the sneeze/scream that she never hears without saying "Jesus Christ!".