To find perfect careful people annoying?

[Nospringflower]

Our neighbours seem like nice people but they are the kind of people who do everything perfectly!

So, if they wash the car the man has a boiler suit on and the kids waterproofs, it was sunny today so the children both had shades on going to school, cutting the hedge they wear ear defenders (and boiler suit), cycling and scootering yellow hi vis and helmets ... you get the picture?!

Not sure why it irritates me but it does! Probably cos I wish i was more like that!

It just strikes me as such an unbearably tense way to live your life?

We have acquaintances who are unable to do anything spontaneously, ever. They simply cannot compute that people might pop to the local pub at 9pm on a Friday night, with whatever friends were free, just very ad hoc. Even when they admit they are doing nothing that evening, they can't come because it's too last minute.

For them to accept an invite, it must be offered at least 6 weeks in advance, and then they go through the ritual of checking, and double checking all the details of the invite....dress code, location of venue, menu, prices.

If it's a venue they haven't visited before, then they do a dummy run before hand, so they know exactly where it is, where to park, what the traffic might be like at the time of travel.

Perhaps, not surprisingly, they don't have many friends, and I wonder if they live like this to simply fill up the many, many endless and empty hours of their lives?

Perhaps, not surprisingly, they don't have many friends, and I wonder if they live like this to simply fill up the many, many endless and empty hours of their lives?

That's incredibly sad if they do. My life could be endless and empty if I let it because it is devoid of friends but I fill the hours with stuff that is free and enjoyable. We're not all careful planners! I hate to make arrangements in advance, spontaneous ones are much better.

MaQueen Tense is right, we went on vacation, cabin in the woods by a lake, a couple of times with the friends I mentioned before. Least relaxing holidays ever. Spontaneity? Yeah, no. Itinerised to the minute and NO deviations on pain of death.
We spotted a sign, on a drive out to a preitinerised place of interest, to a trail leading to another point of interest and I suggested stopping to check it out on our way. DH and I do this all the time when we're on roadtrips - we're such rebels. You'd have thought I'd suggested killing and eating their firstborn. It was carefully explained to me how this would cut down our time at the place we were actually going to with the knock on effect of maybe delaying our picnic lunch and then getting back later than planned to the cabin and then dinner would be late.
DH tried pointing out that we didn't actually have to meet any deadlines and if we had dinner at say 7.30 instead of 6.30 no one but us would know and if it was too late to cook dinner or if we maybe just didn't feel like cooking dinner we could throw caution to the winds and eat at the camp restaurant. Whaat!? But...but we brought the sausages to eat today, on day 2 and we planned to have the restaurant dinner on day 4 because we'd be leaving on day 5.
Exhausting.

Chavelita I'd love to live that level of minimalist life. I'm getting there though. Last week I persuaded DH that the toaster needed to be put away in a deep drawer under the work surface once he'd made his morning toast.

If it's a venue they haven't visited before, then they do a dummy run before hand, so they know exactly where it is, where to park, what the traffic might be like at the time of travel.

My father does this, and I think he is on the autistic spectrum (though undiagnosed, but from a lifetime of witnessing how he is, and reading up on the triad of impairments when my godson was diagnosed, I'm personally in no doubt).

It's got worse with age -- he's now very anxious at the slightest novelty, even flying with the same airline from the same airport to the same airport as usual (something my parents have done at least six times a year for the last five years) but at a slightly different time of day when the schedule changed. He likes to be at the tiny, local airport three hours before the flight, even though it's tiny, there are no queues or lengthy walks, he's checked in online, and has no checked-in bags.

I realised it was getting worse when a family wedding was taking place at a church a half mile off a main road not far from where my parents live a main road my father has driven up and down multiple times every day of his life. Getting to the church involves turning off the main road at a well-signposted major junction, and driving down a straight road for half a mile. The church is the first thing you come to. We all know this, my father better than anyone. Yet it still needed a dummy run a timed dummy run, the week before the wedding.

thenight, I don't actually think it's a chic minimalist aesthetic the house is a wilderness of deep-pile patterned carpets and giant floral wallpaper, the kind of thing you would associated with far older people with a taste for knick-knacks (knick-nacks? nick-nacks? those all look wrong!) it looks the way you would expect if someone had just thrown a million Lladro figurines and lace antimacassars and potplants in macramé holders into a skip, but left the background decor.

I think that's why I find it weird.

ah now Chavelita that puts a whole different slant on it.

In-laws are massively in Lladro shitola. The say they are leaving it to us. DH and I smile. We shudder when we get in the car to come home.

Perhaps its a worth a fecking fortune though... who knows?

NavyandWhite Sat 06-May-17 14:05:58

Yesterday 20:32 Fuxfurforall

Poor kids. I grew up in a house like this.

Poor kids? Poor kids! How on earth can you decipher if these kids are poor?What just because the parents are weirdly organised? It's hardly abuse

^^ because it can go to extremes at the cost of all else, DH also grew up in a house like this and drove him utterly crazy.

Being organised and smoothly flowing through life is one thing. But extreme organization is another. Fil will always tell us what sort of clothes he is wearing if he works in garden or does something with dusty things. We just wear normal clothes or if painting simply put old crap on, but we dont feel need to tell each other or anyone else about it. its very odd.

I'm pretty damned organised, and like the house to run smoothly...but, I also do lots of spontaneous stuff and I'm not precious about anything, really. We have off white carpets but never ask guests to remove shoes etc.

It just strikes me as such an unbearably tense way to live your life?

Incredibly so, and even worse when these people keep talking down to you as though your the mad ones.

I think the more extreme ones are simply highly anxious, easier to cope with if there was some humility about it but harder when its rammed down throat as the only way to live. Ie " my poor GC growing up in that chaos"

Same here, I must admit I am naturally more dis organized but I do try. You must be one of the few in the land and certainly on MN who has whitish carpets and manages perfectly well in shoes

My dh has a boiler suit. I have to remind him to use it.
He is in charge of H&S in his workplace. I can only assume as he spends all day insisting people stop being stupid and follow the rules that he's had enough of it when he gets home.
I threatened to send a picture of him getting into our loft space to his manager. It involved balancing on the very top of a way too short step ladder. Not the top step, the handle.
Oh well.
BTW, I grew up in a house where we all had to be sensible and tidy and had picnics out of Tupperware and had to cart coats and cagoules around with us.
Fun? No. Boring and stressful? Yes.
I'm not advocating living in filth and not caring, but my childhood would have been a lot happier if my parents had unclenched a bit.
I have no envy of the perfect people, it all seems like a lot of hard work.

cigars this is how DH ^always enters and descends from our loft .

Just the way Mil says "your going away in two weeks you need to pack" drains all my joy and makes me want to cancel the holiday. I have never ever met more uptight people I really haven't, drain joy from everything.

Sounds like The Nice Family from Absolutely in the 80s!