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.

In my experience, it's not necessarily 'older' people. I've heard mums castigating their teenage offspring about having 'no sense of urgency' while they stand faffing with their phones, having to be told to put things into bags, or needing to be told that the trolley won't magically make it's own way to the back of the checkout if you leave it where it was when you unloaded the shopping.
It is in some cases, but l think it's very much a 'person' thing. And my colleagues at work say much the same. There are some customers we dread because they faff so much. And they're not all older people.

It's infuriating isn't it? My mum does this even though she only went 10 minutes before but of course has to try to sqeeze "one more out" before she can leave the house!

I do this. It's based in loo anxiety. As you age bladder muscles weaken and certain conditions such as irritable bladder can make it quite stressful to not know when the next loo will be available. I hope I'm not just infuriating my children. Although I doubt it.

In my 30s 40s and 50s no problem at all. I was perfectly confident to be out all day. Let's hope none of you ever face this problem.

I'm a faffer, as is my mam and nanna. I've also been accused of being a "feeder". I like things done in a particular way. I always have. My DH is a planner. We are well suited most of the time. My kids are mostly understanding. It's the world that is in a rush.

I'd be careful, deciding on tea pots and decaff the day before may well put you in the overly anxious faffy bracket going by some on here..

I know this was supposed to be lighthearted but its starting to feel throughly unpleasant.
Cognitive and physical decline are coming your way , whether you like it or not.
How cruel we are to older people

Yep. Have a bit of fun at the expense of the oldies. And mostly not very well disguised.

Appreciate them whist you have them. You won't have them forever.

Not all of us are like this. I couldn’t care less about ham or soups. If you rock up for lunch, then take what you get.

I haven’t got time for faff.🍾

I have to absolutely agree with this! My husband is a faffer and he is early 40s 🙄 has been since the day I met him

Re the 'we're busy as we go to the farm shop on Saturday even if you are flying in from Australia' saga.

DH asked them if maybe the farm shop and garden centre could be done another day. He was on FaceTime so I heard most of the conversation and it involved them getting the 'big calendar' from the kitchen to debate what day that could be. Lots of days discounted for other minutiae being on the agenda ( e.g it couldn't be Thursday as that's when the library books needed to go back, Tuesday is bridge club etc)

I just yelled back that them it's fine to go to the farm shop on the day we arrive. It doesn't make much difference as it's only an hour or so out of the day. Or maybe they could go to the farm shop on the way back from the library. This caused much bogglement at the idea of doing more than one thing a day.

We finally settled on arriving later on Saturday when the farm shop visit was completed but that was only after half an hour of negotiation.

They were visiting here recently and because their routine was thrown out there was a distinct lack of faffery. I was amazed.

MIL did like to interrupt me though when I was WFH and on actual calls to enquire whether This Specific Jar was able to go in the recycling bin and she had "washed it but not taken the label off is that okay because at home they tell you you have to but Joan says that she puts them in with the labels on and nothings happened but when they were in France the labels have to come off so I wonder if I should take the label off anyway but sometimes they don't come off very well do they oh I should have brought that sticky stuff I've got at home thats great to get labels off although Asda has stopped selling it so I have to go to the big Sainsbury's to get it and it's the other side of the town...."

Agggggghhh!!!!

@InTheTimeItTookMeToEatAnEggSandwich

I just love this guy's mum and dad! The cutaways to the Charles and Di biscuit tin !!

Thing is, some traits are annoying and it does lighten things to laugh at them. My husband laughs at me, He’s not being unpleasant, just teasing and I do the same to him. I’m getting old now and recognise things in myself highlighted in this thread-it’s fun to read, not unpleasant or intolerant-just pointing out traits in our loved ones and finding humour in it.

Is there a difference between those who faff and those who write angry letters to a CEO (and then explain, in excruciating detail, "just what they told them")?

My mum's the latter. The CEO doesn't give a fuck mum! That's why you had to wait / were sent the wrong size / were charged the wrong price. They don't care and your letter is not going to make them care!!

To be fair as well it wasn't just PILs who annoyed us during that trip back to the UK.

One couple friend (good friends for years) said they couldn't come and meet us for dinner on any of the three dates we offered them because on one of the nights the fella played 5 a side, the other she had some work drinks planned and on the other one of their kids was going to a child's birthday party.

I literally said fuck it then and we didn't see them. I got a message from her saying 'oh dear so sad you were too busy with others to see us, maybe next time'

I've told DH we aren't going back again if Daves fucking weekly five a side or the farm shop visit is more important than seeing us once every 5 years.

I think the point is that some people fall into routines that they cannot countenance could be changed and if they do they are sent into a tailspin. PILs when away from home simply stopped the faffing because the dull routine was out the window. They seemed to come alive if I'm honest (could be the sun and sea air of course)

The first pizza is cut up and shared out. Everyone then waits 20 mins for the second pizza to be cooked - and so on!

This gives me grumpy flashbacks to my hen do.

The one bit I was narked about was that I wanted one of those mega takeaway pizza deals, and instead my bridesmaids painstakingly delivered one pizza at a time to split between ten of us in my house over the course of two hours.

I'd have gladly paid £60 myself as a thank you for organising, instead of some sort of pizza tasting menu.

Would love to try this. My only fear is I wouldn't escape & how long they leave you 😂

My parents, especially my mother, is like this....74.

She will start telling you about something that happened that sounds like it could be quite interesting but...."It was after I went to the church council meeting on Tuesday" Pa - "No we were at the hospital for my eye appointment on Tuesday, must have been Wednesday" Ma - "No, it was definitely Tuesday because......" and then half an hour about which day it was, which has absolutely NO bearing on the story in question. By the time they have sorted it out (or fallen out, which is more usual) I get "What was I telling you about?" At which point I lie and say I cant remember as I simply cannot face anymore back and forth!

The tea has to be in the right cup, the milk cannot come from Tesco as their milk goes off faster than Coop milk and if it is somehow Coop milk then "Does this taste funny to you?!" so another half an hour to make another pot with new milk as the old milk (which was fine) has been thrown away. Sorting out the meat from the freezer....ffs. They want a chicken. There are just the two of them, but they have 3 freezers full of meat. So it has to be sorted every time to make sure the chicken is rotated properly. I suggested that they simply stop ordering meat for a month, empty the freezers and just use one....this was met with the same reaction you would expect if I had said "Live of shit and dust for a month". Neither were deprived as kids.

One in particular was about a scarf. She had a lovely outfit on and a lovely scarf that went with it. Didnt like it, farted about for so long finding the one she knew she had that go with it that we ended up having a sandwich at home as we lost our lunch reservation. The scarf did look nice .

@PyongyangKipperbang Ha, some of this is very familiar- I do honestly love my father in law dearly and he's been really good to us too, but blimey sometimes when he's totally gone off tangent for long periods I can feel myself glazing over- I do realise though I may go like this so try to look perky and interested.

@MoreCandles now that's more like it!! I like your style

The dog having his own suitcase cracked me up there 😂😂

My parents are late 70s and have both been retired since they were 60 so a long time.

They set the table for breakfast. They won't have a tub of butter or a milk bottle on the table so decant everything into dishes and jugs.

It feels like such a faff to me. God forbid if I'm staying and say I don't want breakfast.

@Throwyourkeysup

My DM was saying the other day that their housing situation may become a little difficult in the future as if my DF predeceases her (most likely unfortunately) she will likely lose entitlement to the house she's in now. The thought of her potentially, even albeit temporarily while we sort something else out, having to move in with us filled me with an enormous amount of anxiety!

What would cause that to happen? And can it be addressed whilst they're both still alive? 🌹

Hi Newestname002 I think you meant to address your question to ConsistentlyElectrifiedElves 😃

Oh God I feel your pain OP -same C with my parents who are in their 80s and scary that people only in their 60s are like that.
I am 63 and always looking fur new adventures/iseas/friends/activities. Currently on my own skiing in France having chucked mr skis in the car and driven here. Got a new lease of life when left miserable marriage 2years ago. Recently done some extreme day trips eg Stockholm for the day etc and taken up new demanding physical sport
I do work full time as a teacher and being with young people helps and required being constantly agile/flexoble/adaptable. Is so as o my third career so used to change.
My friends are getting younger because those who have retired seem to get much more routine-bound, talk a lot anbout ailments and endlessly telling me I should retire and ‘put my feet up’ Never!!!!

It's a person thing, not an age thing. My DH is already a faffer and he's in his 30s. We can literally be ready to walk out the door and he'll be wondering if his coat is warm enough, just needs a last wee, and to blow his nose, and have a drink of water, and actually shall I make us a coffee to take with us? He has a few times attempted to do this when I've got the two kids strapped in their car seats.

He bought himself a fancy coffee machine that I swear is designed specifically for faffy people. First he keeps an array of coffee beans to choose from, then you can choose the fineness of the grind, the heat of the water, the quantity of coffee, all of which change dependent on the type of coffee bean and coffee you want. It takes him 15 minutes to make a coffee sometimes. Fortunately I'm a tea drinker, but it drives my parents so mad when they come that they bring instant which they claim to prefer just so they don't die of thirst waiting for a coffee.