Please tell me we all don’t end up like this

[Queijo]

Just spent a few days with my parents who are now entering their 70s.

The FAFFING. It took 25 minutes(!) to serve up lunch because they couldn’t find the right teapot, and then, horrors of horrors, it wasn’t the right ham. So they had to have a very intense discussion about the properties of ham. Whilst I’m slowly dying in the corner from hunger and frustration.

Cups of tea take decades to make, is this the cup you want? Do you want decaf? No? Oh ok I’ll just get the special non-decaf pot down. Are you sure you don’t want decaf? Right. Sugar? No sugar?! Since when?

Can’t say no to cup though or there’s 3 days of fraught discussions.

Lunch at 12 noon dinner at 6pm. CANNOT under any circumstance deviate, and if anything is taking slightly too long to cook it’s the end of the world. God alive 😂

I’m exhausted. Please tell me I’m not going to end up this way.

LIGHTHEARTED before anyone starts! I love them dearly but they never were like this before.

Thank you. That's appreciated.

I wouldn't see that as faffing AnnaSewell.

Faffing for me is during the time everyone is going to loo and grabbing coats having a prolonger conversation about which coat - covering all options - getting involved in others coat choices maybe trying to change their minds - just as everyone is about to leave changing mind then back again or leaving maybe coming back to change again and half way down road realising money or phone something vital to trip has been left - and then it taking another 10 minutes to leave as they run though everything discussing options so it doesn't happen again - stuff that no faffers did first time round.

Or FIL focused on small stuff like bags or stuff MIL has sorted and going on about it using up all the time and focus than having to turn taxi round as forgotten phone, train tickets something he was in charge of gets left.

It's the mysterious neatly aranged little piles of detritus that appear on kitchen surfaces, bedside cabinets, side tables next to the armchairs and any ledge/surface by the front door as well.

It's as if once you reach a certain age, nothing important should ever be put away in a drawer because it's too much effort to keep getting them out again. The piles vary depending on the room they are in, but generally include a biro, some spare glasses, glasses cleaning spray, a little notepad, bottles of medication, keys, more keys, a mini pack of tissues, some coupons, appointment cards, a comb, a Radio Times, a newspaper, some important hand written lists, some post (mostly bills) a packet of Rennie, a boiled sweet or some Polos, the recycling calendar from the council, a paper clip, a button and a battery.

As I get older I am finding that my anxiety levels have risen. I try to ignore this, but inevitably if travelling on my own, I am checking passport, ticket, timetable, etc. In other ways I think I have got sharper. Experience means that I know how things work and how people are likely to behave. My younger self was dozy but carefree.

Appreciate OP that you started this as a lighthearted thread and this is not meant as any criticism but the thing is that getting old will happen to everyone if you are lucky enough.
There will be things you can’t cope with, changes you don’t like, things you will forget and things you set as a routine because perhaps that is all you have to make some structure in your life.
Make allowances in the hope that when the time comes someone will do that for you too.
My mum would have been 92 now but she died at 41 when I was a young child. I would love to have been able to accommodate her faffing all day long if I’d had the chance.

Used to take my mum half an hour just to make a very ordinary cheese sandwich. Drove me mad. I do think it must be something to do with filling the day. I used to wonder what on earth did my mum do with herself pottering in her little flat all day.

OP, although you say this is a lighthearted thread, you sounded judgemental. Old people often get tired and slow and forgetful. It is disconcerting when you see your parents changing, but it comes to most of us who live that long.

Are you actually getting worried by their changed behaviour? The anxiety, the difficulty in organising everyday thing, the forgetting things they’ve known for ages eg whether their daughter takes sugar?

They retired early, so there could be health reasons you may not have known about. It’s not necessarily dementia, though it could be. Maybe they need to take up some new interests?

My mum is 66 and works and is not a faffer - obviously as she is still young. My dad however is 78, barely leaves the house and faffs around all fucking day. If I stay with them he will go up and down the stairs a million times to faff around with the windows in the room I'm staying in - then will talk to me a million times about how he has set up the windows in the room, it is open but just a crack so it's there's some air in there but not too much and don't open it more because it'll open too wide and I can just leave it the way it is there should be fresh air coming in...
I swear he goes around the house locking and unlocking and locking doors all day long. Leaving the house involves a lengthy process of locking doors and windows and going for one last wee.

I do think though that if he had ANYTHING to actually occupy his brain with in the daytime like work, volunteering, a hobby that involves other people - he wouldn't be this bad.

It's the mysterious neatly aranged little piles of detritus that appear on kitchen surfaces, bedside cabinets, side tables next to the armchairs and any ledge/surface by the front door as well.

Yes, that was my parents to a T. Piles of coppers and 5ps and mysterious screws, fixings etc that 'belonged to something' (never established) as well.

I’m in my thirties and have a friend of similar age who I go on holiday with quite regularly. I can only handle 4 nights away with her max because of her faffing. It takes forever to get out of our accommodation each day. It’s like:
What shoes to wear? Finally decide on a pair, but it’s the pair which rubbed her the previous day so she spends ages applying plasters.
Take a water bottle or not? Eventually decide to take one, but realises bag is too heavy and then debates what she can leave behind.
Applies suncream VERY slowly.
Realises phone isn’t charged so has to dig out powerbank from bottom of suitcase.
Then decides to change outfit.
Reapplies suncream to newly visible patches of skin.
Do we need to book restaurant for the evening? If so, where?
And so it continues…..

Not much going on in their life is the key. The mentally sharp, non-faffing elderly people I know are the ones who have given themselves plenty to do and think about. Things like spending time on an absorbing and stimulating hobby, volunteering, or church activities. When I retire there are things I plan to do, and I hope I don’t just give up and spend my days getting fixated on the right teapot or why next door are painting their garage again.

My mother was like this - the faffing was unbearable.
She'd make a steak pie for dinner then spend 20 minutes making sure every person had the same amount of beef - moving pieces from one plate to another then back again over and over again. The result - everybody had cold dinner and she didn't believe in microwaves "because they give you cancer" so we couldn't heat it up.

Don't get me started on her house keys. She'd start looking for them a mile before we got to her house. Couldn't find them - looked in every compartment of her handbag several times then find them in the first place she'd looked. I told her to always keep them in the same section then she'd know where they were but she didn't. Her response - "You'll be old some day"

Drove me round the absolute bend.

I know someone in their forties who does that when their partner is trying to tell a story. They always have to set all the details straight, no matter how insignificant those might be.

We had a dear friend like this, even when we were in our thirties and forties, he could never say 'We went to Dover for the ferry' we would get details of every lamp-post on the route, it could take him twenty minutes to describe a routine 120 mile journey.

Has anyone else noticed the One Bag, Two Bag, Three Bag....Insanity phenomena? Ten years ago my Mother was happy to just carry one, neat handbag when she came to visit. Then I noticed her using her neat handbag plus a tote bag. Overtime this developed into one large handbag, one tote handbag and a bag-for-life to cart around a tonne of useless items, incl slippers, spare slippers, yesterday's Daily Mail as a conversation starter, that day's Daily Mail to read, random item of crockery she no longer wanted, half packet of biscuits, mints, medication, spare medication, emergency spare medication, wipe wipes both full and travel size, hand gel, spare hand gel, small clear bottle of liquid that was assumed hand gel. Tissues. More Tissues. Well you get the picture.

One day she actually tipped over into Insanity and arrived with four bags and I had to put a stop to it, please just no more.

I know a few of those, but I think of them as bores rather than faffers.

Every. Single. Time my mother went shopping at, say Tesco, if she had an Asda or Lidl bag for life with her, she'd say "Am I allowed to use this bag in a different shop?"

My mother took her shopping bag everywhere, even for an evening outing. I once had to forcibly prevent her from taking it to a funeral.

I would argue that the young faff more than the old in some respect. Spouse and I have the ability to sit and watch a TV programme or film. We sit there. We watch the whole thing through. When it's finished we discuss it.

Daughter will sort of watch, but be faffing about with her phone, checking, texting, messaging. But when the young do it, it's not faffing is it? Because faffing is a pejorative term and the younger generation are always in the right!

Younger women may also do a lot more faffing in their pre-going out rituals to do with showering, washing or styling hair, putting on make-up, trying on what they consider to be appropriate clothes. Women of my own age tend to be rather lower maintenance.

In our thirties we had a sideboard with four drawers that were, I agree, a dumping ground. OH decided to organise them, each drawer had left/right and back/front, so 16 spaces across the four drawers. He replaced everything and noted on an index card the location and the content, eg 1LF passports. A few days later I asked where something was and he proudly said the cards would tell him but he couldn't find the 16 cards and up until the day we left the house 3 years later we never found them! No, I didn't throw them away!

Ha ha, I hope not but its happened to my parents and the in-laws.

Went on holiday with the in-laws and nearly lost the plot, up at the arse crack of dawn but couldn't get them out the accommodation before 11.

Breakfast (toast and marmalade (fine shred) and a small bowl of cornflakes), took 2 hours.

Lunch (2 tins of beans and 4 slices of toast between 5 adults and a small child) ditto.

I went to the shop and brought a bottle of gin, it was the only way I was going to make it through the weekend 😅

Is it the right way around to say that those who have meaningful things to do in retirement don't faff? Or is it more that faffers don't have the energy or inclination to engage in more demanding things than they need to?

DH would deny it, but like his family he is definitely at the faffier end of the spectrum, in spite of having an intellectually demanding job, and not being the type to sit around watching TV all night. He'll tell me what he plans to do on a weekend day, and I know that at least half of it won't get done because of the faffing: going in and out of sheds and cupboards; losing glasses, phone, wallet, keys, not once but twenty times; checking the weather forecast repeatedly, and updating me constantly about it. At least he's too busy to worry about food being served on the wrong plate, which is a mercy. For now.

But that's not faffing, that's hyperbole for comic effect.

A PP said (paraphrasing here but this is the jist) that cognitive decline is coming all our ways eventually.

I think some there's an element of personality bias, from what I've seen. My parents, although on the ball with work and doing life etc in their prime years - even then, they were prone to faffing and inefficiency.

Despite living in a very muddy semi-rural area, for example, and requiring wellies frequently, it was an eternal surprise that they would need them and then they'd have to hunt them down where they'd last been seen and then one would have been left in the rain so would be wet etc. Just that sort of thing, inefficient and haphazard but over and over again. Whereas after the first or second event I'd be thinking "Need a box with a lid on it for those wellies, or a wellie stand" and would buy one and put it up and then forevermore enjoy a stress free wellie experience .

Even when they were in their prime, they just never did do things to make things run smoother. Bad storage, no organisation of important documents, household items haphazardly all over the place, never a proper home for the scissors and sellotape etc.

My mother took her shopping bag everywhere,

My mother was the same with her handbag. It came absolutely everywhere. We would go for a walk and she needed basically nothing but her front door key and was taking the bloody handbag. When I asked her why she was taking it, she replied, "For company". I thought I'd heard it all..........

I don't think that's the kind of faffing that anyone here means. It's the fussing, hesitating, prevarication and dithering over small, straightfoward, everyday decisions that shouldn't need much discussion or planning.