working out for Disney

[Songbird76]

Oh yea...I grew up with a lot of really spoiled kids. So I know how some of that goes. People thought I was fancy for having a luxury brand car, but that thing was a tank, it was 4 years old when my parents bought it, and it had over 100K miles on it. Still, we had plenty of classmates who got whatever their hearts desired...sometimes even more. My best friend for a while wanted a red convertible as well, and that's just what she got. I remember one girl being given a winter and a summer vehicle, but she couldn't have the summer vehicle (a brand new Mercedes convertible) until she proved she was a good driver with the winter vehicle (a loaded Jeep Grand Cherokee). Monsters in the making...all from their parents.

I will say we grew up in an environment where we had a lot more than others, but still not as much as my peers...and so many of the kids were such snobs, it was just never good enough. I remember a girl who used to mock my parents for driving a Buick and a Oldsmobile. Her exact words were, "Couldn't they at least get something like a Peugeot or an Audi?" Like we were trash for driving anything less. My mom used to say to tell them that my father's boat and our summer house (I know...not exactly in the poor house for us either) were worth more than their cars combined and then some. But there was always someone with more who would come to her defense...like one girl who backed her up saying...not verbatim, but gist of it...we have a house down the shore as well as a place in Marco Island, a bigger boat, and my parents both drive Jaguars. If anything, it taught me that it's never enough and it's all so shallow and superficial. I did at least have to work for the designer clothes I wanted and find stuff discounted at Marshalls. I did a lot of house cleaning and yard work to earn the things I had.

I grew up below the poverty line in an area that's one of the wealthiest in Wyoming. It's coal country, and almost everyone worked at the mine...my parents were divorced, and my mom had her own business cleaning people's houses, and my dad worked security at the mines. But the security was contracted out to the lowest bidder, so while security was paid peanuts, the people who actually worked FOR the mine were paid really really well. And since a lot of kids had parents who BOTH worked at the mines, they were earning 6 figures. I had to wear hand-me-downs from friends who had daughters older than me, and I got things like new socks and shampoo for Christmas while my peers were getting stereo systems and snowboards. I remember distinctly in 6th grade, being in the bathroom and there were a couple other girls there too, and the one girl looked at me like I was disgusting and said how she would NEVER be caught dead in the clothes I was wearing. Most of these kids went "school shopping" to get a new wardrobe every year. I was excited to get a garbage bag full of clothes from someone we knew, or to go to the 2nd hand shop and pick out a new top. Most kids got a car for their 16th birthdays, and they were usually used cars, but still, I had to buy my own. I bought my own prom dress, lettermans jacket, cheerleading uniform, etc. I saved my money and bought my own things. I got bullied a lot. My kids are really lucky. We aren't rich, but they get the necessities and have never had to eat mac and cheese that had little bugs in it because it was past date. (my mom got so mad at me for picking out those little bugs instead of just eating it.) They've never had to buy anything themselves that they needed for school, or buy their own clothes. But E feels bad if I buy her new things because she doesn't think she NEEDS them, and she's probably right....she doesn't NEED it. But it's nice to be able to get her a new skirt just because it's cute rather than struggling to afford something that doesn't have holes in it, or having to darn her socks when there are holes in the toes.

 

[Songbird76]

21,450 steps today. We did an escape experience in Utrecht, but it was outside, walking through the city. I wouldn't recommend it. We love escape rooms, but usually you learn something in them. You learn about some aspect of the theme....a person, a place, an invention, a building, a religion....and if you get stumped on one thing, you can do something else and come back to it after solving something else. There's usually some sort of storyline that goes along with it and you need to use your brain to figure things out. This was not like that at all. They send you a picture of something in the city, and you have to find that place and recreate the picture with your "team" in it. When you send the picture, they give you the next "clue". But the clues have nothing to do with the locations or the theme. Like, there was a series of song clips in which there was a number...like "Love potion number 9". Each song had at least one number, you put the numbers together and it's a phone number that you call and then they send you the next picture. But because of the way it's set up, you can't move on to the next one if you couldn't find the one place. One of the pictures was of a Miffy statue, which we googled, but Utrecht is apparently where the creator of Miffy lived, and there's a ton of Miffy stuff, including a Miffy museum, that also has a statue, but it's a DIFFERENT statue and it's about 3/4 mile away from the one we needed. So we walked over a mile to get from one location to the next, only to find out we had to walk halfway back to find the right statue. Then the clue was morse code and we got one of the numbers wrong. Then one of the last locations that we needed was just a picture of a gate. There are lots of gates and google lense only recognizes that it's a gate and shows you many pictures of other gates. We did find out that it was part of the University campus, but campuses here are not like in the US....they are spread out all over cities in random buildings that are unrelated. So one building might be several miles away from another. E found an address, so we went there, but that said "Former location of University" and we were half a mile from where we needed to be, so had to backtrack again. When we finally got to it, it was covered in scafolding and scrim and you couldn't even see it was the same place. It was supposed to take 3 hours, it took us more than 4.5, and it was SO anticlimactic. When we got the last code, we got a generic message like "Yay! You solved it." There was no information about any of the places we saw, you didn't have to know any trivia or use logic to find the next location, so you got nothing out of it except walking back and forth through the city. You really needed to know they area to recognize the things in the pictures, but if you knew the area, there was no point in doing the game because you didn't get any new information or learn any fun facts or anything about the places. So it was kind of a bust, but at least we spent time together.

 

[ajrwdwgirl]

After reading all the discussion about cake, my birthday was usually from a store. It was marble cake with whipped cream frosting. Oh man was it the best! I still love that type of cake. My mom was a good baker but she never made our birthday cakes, I don’t know why I don’t think she thought she could decorate them or something. The whipped cream frosting is still my favorite non-homemade frosting.

a friend of mine makes a Twinkie style cake for birthdays and the first time she made the cake it was enjoyable. But after that she thought she would tweak the frosting recipe and adds more crisco than it calls for and that’s all that can be tasted in the cake. It’s horrible but no one is brave enough to tell her. I still eat it to be polite but usually claim the smallest piece I can get anyway with. One year she wasn’t feeling well and didn’t make the cake for her daughter’s birthday and bought a cake instead, I had a nice big slice that year!

 

[Sans Souci]

Oh yea...I grew up with a lot of really spoiled kids. So I know how some of that goes. People thought I was fancy for having a luxury brand car, but that thing was a tank, it was 4 years old when my parents bought it, and it had over 100K miles on it. Still, we had plenty of classmates who got whatever their hearts desired...sometimes even more. My best friend for a while wanted a red convertible as well, and that's just what she got. I remember one girl being given a winter and a summer vehicle, but she couldn't have the summer vehicle (a brand new Mercedes convertible) until she proved she was a good driver with the winter vehicle (a loaded Jeep Grand Cherokee). Monsters in the making...all from their parents.

I will say we grew up in an environment where we had a lot more than others, but still not as much as my peers...and so many of the kids were such snobs, it was just never good enough. I remember a girl who used to mock my parents for driving a Buick and a Oldsmobile. Her exact words were, "Couldn't they at least get something like a Peugeot or an Audi?" Like we were trash for driving anything less. My mom used to say to tell them that my father's boat and our summer house (I know...not exactly in the poor house for us either) were worth more than their cars combined and then some. But there was always someone with more who would come to her defense...like one girl who backed her up saying...not verbatim, but gist of it...we have a house down the shore as well as a place in Marco Island, a bigger boat, and my parents both drive Jaguars. If anything, it taught me that it's never enough and it's all so shallow and superficial. I did at least have to work for the designer clothes I wanted and find stuff discounted at Marshalls. I did a lot of house cleaning and yard work to earn the things I had.

A winter and a summer car?! Veruca Salt, much? I'm rolling my eyes so hard at the girl who made fun of you because of the cars your parents drove.

I think when kids grow up in that kind of environment, it's good to make them earn money either through mall jobs or chores around the house-- like your parents did. I understand wanting the best for your children, but people can go over the top. When you peak so early in life, where do you go from there? I think you can develop an insatiable desire for more and more expensive things in addition to basing your self-worth on having high end things.

 

[Sans Souci]

I think their ratio is even farther off than some. Theirs is so greasy!

I think it's things like that which keep me from investing the time and energy into the more refined frostings. Still, I think they aren't as sweet as an American buttercream, so there are pros to going to the extra effort. I tend to use mine for gluing a layer of fondant or to get a crusting effect, so my gut also says that these and an ermine would be too light for my needs. Maybe I'm wrong?

Ermine frosting is made with flour, so I don't know if you can eat it? I make it because I can't get my egg whites to whip up in my Ankarsrum, so this my compromise. I like it because it's good for piping and decorating. It is considered a type of buttercream frosting, so you might like it, but I don't want to steer you wrong. It is not a crusting frosting, though, since it is not made with powdered sugar. You might like it. I think it's kind of different.

 

[Mr Ferret 75]

A winter and a summer car?!

The Chauffeur deals with this .

 

[Sans Souci]

Just at the resorts, and yes, you place your order before you get there. I did it back in May at Trattoria Al Forno for breakfast. Boardwalk's QS breakfast options are terrible and I had to work. Took my laptop out, sat on the Boardwalk and worked, then ate breakfast on the Boardwalk. It took about 15-20 minutes after I hit "I'm here" for it to be ready.

We love Trattoria Al Forma for Breakfast. Dinner too, but their breakfast is great.

That's good news about the mobile ordering at table service. I booked Trattoria al Forno for breakfast. I like a few of their breakfast offerings.

 

[Sans Souci]

I grew up below the poverty line in an area that's one of the wealthiest in Wyoming. It's coal country, and almost everyone worked at the mine...my parents were divorced, and my mom had her own business cleaning people's houses, and my dad worked security at the mines. But the security was contracted out to the lowest bidder, so while security was paid peanuts, the people who actually worked FOR the mine were paid really really well. And since a lot of kids had parents who BOTH worked at the mines, they were earning 6 figures. I had to wear hand-me-downs from friends who had daughters older than me, and I got things like new socks and shampoo for Christmas while my peers were getting stereo systems and snowboards. I remember distinctly in 6th grade, being in the bathroom and there were a couple other girls there too, and the one girl looked at me like I was disgusting and said how she would NEVER be caught dead in the clothes I was wearing. Most of these kids went "school shopping" to get a new wardrobe every year. I was excited to get a garbage bag full of clothes from someone we knew, or to go to the 2nd hand shop and pick out a new top. Most kids got a car for their 16th birthdays, and they were usually used cars, but still, I had to buy my own. I bought my own prom dress, lettermans jacket, cheerleading uniform, etc. I saved my money and bought my own things. I got bullied a lot. My kids are really lucky. We aren't rich, but they get the necessities and have never had to eat mac and cheese that had little bugs in it because it was past date. (my mom got so mad at me for picking out those little bugs instead of just eating it.) They've never had to buy anything themselves that they needed for school, or buy their own clothes. But E feels bad if I buy her new things because she doesn't think she NEEDS them, and she's probably right....she doesn't NEED it. But it's nice to be able to get her a new skirt just because it's cute rather than struggling to afford something that doesn't have holes in it, or having to darn her socks when there are holes in the toes.

Why did your mom get angry about you picking out the weevils in the Mac and cheese? That doesn't seem like an unreasonable thing to do. That sounds absolutely awful to be forced to eat them. I am sorry this happened to you.

 

[Sans Souci]

21,450 steps today. We did an escape experience in Utrecht, but it was outside, walking through the city. I wouldn't recommend it. We love escape rooms, but usually you learn something in them. You learn about some aspect of the theme....a person, a place, an invention, a building, a religion....and if you get stumped on one thing, you can do something else and come back to it after solving something else. There's usually some sort of storyline that goes along with it and you need to use your brain to figure things out. This was not like that at all. They send you a picture of something in the city, and you have to find that place and recreate the picture with your "team" in it. When you send the picture, they give you the next "clue". But the clues have nothing to do with the locations or the theme. Like, there was a series of song clips in which there was a number...like "Love potion number 9". Each song had at least one number, you put the numbers together and it's a phone number that you call and then they send you the next picture. But because of the way it's set up, you can't move on to the next one if you couldn't find the one place. One of the pictures was of a Miffy statue, which we googled, but Utrecht is apparently where the creator of Miffy lived, and there's a ton of Miffy stuff, including a Miffy museum, that also has a statue, but it's a DIFFERENT statue and it's about 3/4 mile away from the one we needed. So we walked over a mile to get from one location to the next, only to find out we had to walk halfway back to find the right statue. Then the clue was morse code and we got one of the numbers wrong. Then one of the last locations that we needed was just a picture of a gate. There are lots of gates and google lense only recognizes that it's a gate and shows you many pictures of other gates. We did find out that it was part of the University campus, but campuses here are not like in the US....they are spread out all over cities in random buildings that are unrelated. So one building might be several miles away from another. E found an address, so we went there, but that said "Former location of University" and we were half a mile from where we needed to be, so had to backtrack again. When we finally got to it, it was covered in scafolding and scrim and you couldn't even see it was the same place. It was supposed to take 3 hours, it took us more than 4.5, and it was SO anticlimactic. When we got the last code, we got a generic message like "Yay! You solved it." There was no information about any of the places we saw, you didn't have to know any trivia or use logic to find the next location, so you got nothing out of it except walking back and forth through the city. You really needed to know they area to recognize the things in the pictures, but if you knew the area, there was no point in doing the game because you didn't get any new information or learn any fun facts or anything about the places. So it was kind of a bust, but at least we spent time together.

That's too bad that this wasn't very much fun. It sounds like a good idea on paper, especially now with corona. The escape rooms near me have closed because of it. With a better execution, this sounds like it could have been a really fun day.

 

[HouCuseChickie]

I grew up below the poverty line in an area that's one of the wealthiest in Wyoming. It's coal country, and almost everyone worked at the mine...my parents were divorced, and my mom had her own business cleaning people's houses, and my dad worked security at the mines. But the security was contracted out to the lowest bidder, so while security was paid peanuts, the people who actually worked FOR the mine were paid really really well. And since a lot of kids had parents who BOTH worked at the mines, they were earning 6 figures. I had to wear hand-me-downs from friends who had daughters older than me, and I got things like new socks and shampoo for Christmas while my peers were getting stereo systems and snowboards. I remember distinctly in 6th grade, being in the bathroom and there were a couple other girls there too, and the one girl looked at me like I was disgusting and said how she would NEVER be caught dead in the clothes I was wearing. Most of these kids went "school shopping" to get a new wardrobe every year. I was excited to get a garbage bag full of clothes from someone we knew, or to go to the 2nd hand shop and pick out a new top. Most kids got a car for their 16th birthdays, and they were usually used cars, but still, I had to buy my own. I bought my own prom dress, lettermans jacket, cheerleading uniform, etc. I saved my money and bought my own things. I got bullied a lot. My kids are really lucky. We aren't rich, but they get the necessities and have never had to eat mac and cheese that had little bugs in it because it was past date. (my mom got so mad at me for picking out those little bugs instead of just eating it.) They've never had to buy anything themselves that they needed for school, or buy their own clothes. But E feels bad if I buy her new things because she doesn't think she NEEDS them, and she's probably right....she doesn't NEED it. But it's nice to be able to get her a new skirt just because it's cute rather than struggling to afford something that doesn't have holes in it, or having to darn her socks when there are holes in the toes.

I think the biggest thing I get out of this is that no matter where you grow up or how much you have or don't have, there are always going to be some mean kids who single out some of us for being different. Proof that getting all of the stuff you want won't solve the problems in your world. We grew up with many nice things and labels, but it was almost always bargain shopping. Our neighboring town had these incredible summer sidewalk sales and you could often get all kinds of cool things for a fraction of the price. I remember some mean girls accusing me of wearing knock off sweaters made by my mom and pushing me up against a locker to inspect the garment, because there's no way I was wearing anything that expensive. Maybe if their moms went to summer sidewalk sales and got things 70-90% off, they'd have those things too. Although, I'm sure some of their snooty parents would say something like "It's ok honey, that's last season's stuff. That's why she could afford it." While my parents did buy my car, I had to get a job to pay for the first year of insurance and a gas fund. So, definitely not the full on "here ya go" some people I know had with their first cars. I think our older one has a greater sense of entitlement and doesn't yet have a good grasp on want vs. need, but I know the younger one gets at least some of it. She feels guilty when I get her stuff. Just from softball, she knows that some of the kids really rely on the fundraisers to cover the basics as well as the big stuff. Just yesterday, she saw that one of her old teammates is already selling football squares to try and pay for new uniforms. There's nothing wrong with either way, but just that it shows her that these things aren't a given and not everyone can just fork over the $.

I also had a lightbulb moment with the bed. I was was watching a show on Netflix during the first part of my workout today and I noticed that all of the teen kids has queen sized beds and stunning bedrooms...even the ones who were supposed to be playing the role of "poor kid." I'm sure some of her friends do have queens...as I know several people who have said their kids do...but if it's the norm too on all of her shows, she must think she's the oddball for having a twin. Still not caving on the bed size.

 

[Sans Souci]

Hello-

I did a "full body tabata" work out today. I like this new program I am doing, but I wish it was a little more challenging. It's only the first week, so it probably gets progressively harder every week. Otherwise, I am enjoying it.

I was supposed to go out for breakfast with my husband at Panera this AM, but it's raining and we'd prefer to sit outside.

I am going to go for a walk when the rain leaves the area. It looks like it's going to dry out this afternoon.

 

[HouCuseChickie]

A winter and a summer car?! Veruca Salt, much? I'm rolling my eyes so hard at the girl who made fun of you because of the cars your parents drove.

I think when kids grow up in that kind of environment, it's good to make them earn money either through mall jobs or chores around the house-- like your parents did. I understand wanting the best for your children, but people can go over the top. When you peak so early in life, where do you go from there? I think you can develop an insatiable desire for more and more expensive things in addition to basing your self-worth on having high end things.

It got even worse when I went to college. I knew several people with summer and winter cars, which started to make me think that I might be the oddball. Junior year in college, I started dating a guy around Thanksgiving. At that time, he was driving a cute little Acura Integra. When we came back in mid January, he was driving a nice Ford Explorer. When I asked him about it, he said summer vs. winter cars. One of my sorority sisters had it one step further. She had nice summer car, average summer car, nice winter vehicle, average winter vehicle. So, what she drove hinged on both season and where she was going. If she was going someplace nice in the summer, she was allowed to take her luxury brand convertible. If she was "slumming it," she had to take her Chevy convertible. Similar concept with the winter vehicles. Her winter vehicle up at college was a loaded Toyota Landcruiser. That's still out of my budget!

The girl who mocked my parents' cars is still like that to this day. We're "friends" on Facebook and a good friend of mine, whose also knows her, are always discussing how snobbish and superficial she is and has always been. Case in point, husband divorced her and I guess her financial situation changed drastically. Her big Infiniti SUV was in his name, so she lost it in the divorce. Rather than buy something more reasonable with whatever she had in the budget, she bought a 5 year old Range Rover with nearly 100k miles, just to look like she's still fabulously wealthy (only know because my spy friend ran the tags for more info). A year after buying it...the engine died and she was quoted $37k to fix it. People were telling her left and right that she could buy a very nice new car for that price. What did she do, she went out and bought a 6 year old Range Rover, also close to 100k miles, and again...playing it off like it's new and she paid $120k+. She tries to stage it in all of her outdoor pictures. What's really crazy...she posts all of these pictures where she stages things with her various designer bags, yet she keeps pushing a GoFundMe to get $ to cover her new husband's medical costs (for some undisclosed illness). Last night, she posted a heavily staged picture of a University of Florida trucker hat and t-shirt propped on top of a piece of Louis Vuitton luggage...saying she just can't think of packing them and possibly wrinkling them (taking her son to start college). She just wanted to show off her $3000 piece of luggage.

I would agree. Many of the kids that I know who had it all, in the material sense, wound up in rehab, because drugs and alcohol ended up becoming the crutch. I'm happy to see that many of them are sober these days and I guess they have sizable trust funds that kept them from ending up worse.

 

[HouCuseChickie]

Just finished today's workout. With Friday being my early day and both kids needing to be at school early, I decided to do my non-cardio stuff in the 30 minutes before work. I'm not sure if it's just a boost in energy or if I was rushing, but I got in my full leg workout, my full ab workout, then threw in a modified kettlebell workout, some additional floorwork (some with the ball) focusing on abs, thighs and glutes, a set of two movements for shoulders and chest, a set of 100 with weights on the twist plate, as some stretching. I then broke the bike into 10 minute segments + cool downs throughout the morning and went just a hair under 10.60 miles. I need to keep some movement this afternoon, so I see a little bit of time on the climber and maybe even some arms. IDK...just so much energy. Even this last set on the bike...I felt like I was dragging, just to see my speed and see that I was averaging close to 22mph. So, maybe it's all in the mind?

Happy Friday

 

[Songbird76]

Why did your mom get angry about you picking out the weevils in the Mac and cheese? That doesn't seem like an unreasonable thing to do. That sounds absolutely awful to be forced to eat them. I am sorry this happened to you.

She claimed she couldn't see any, but in reality I think it made her feel guilty, like she had failed because she couldn't afford better. My mom had some really strange ideas about rejection. She got really angry when I started going to a different church because I had been raised Missouri Synod Lutheran, but I didn't like the LCMS campus center at college, so I started looking for a new church home. Mom said she had already chosen my church home for me and that's where I was supposed to go. She said that if I didn't like it, it was like I was saying her choice wasn't good enough for me, and I was rejecting her beliefs, and therefore rejecting HER. So she was furious. When I graduated from high school and got a summer job, she wasn't happy with my hours and demanded that I tell my boss she needed to give me more. I told her I wasn't comfortable doing that since it was a summer job and I had no other job prospects. I had applied EVERYWHERE and this was the only place I even got an interview. Some hours was better than having NO hours, and I couldn't afford to be picky because there were a LOT of kids looking for jobs. If I complained, there were 50 other kids who would be happy to take those hours. She was mad that I wouldn't go in making demands, so she called my boss behind my back and almost got me fired because my boss decided if I didn't like my schedule, I didn't need to work there. Fortunately, she saw I was horrified that my mom had called, and that it wasn't ME who wasn't happy, so she didn't fire me as planned, but tried to work it out so I could get 2-3 more hours a week...by giving up my lunch hour. When I came home, I was livid and told her she had NO right to do what she did, it was MY job, and I was an adult. She was going to have to accept that I was a different person and she wouldn't always agree with me, but that as an adult, I had to make the decisions I was comfortable with and she couldn't go calling my boss making demands because she disagreed with how I handled things. I told her I wasn't exactly like her, so we were bound to differ sometimes. She called me stupid and when I told her how much that hurt, she said "Probably about as much as it hurt me that you said you aren't exactly like me!" She saw that as me telling her she wasn't good enough for me, because if she was, I would want to be exactly like her, but me being different was a rejection of her. She got offended by things like that, so I think me picking out the weevils was like a confrontation to her, making a big deal out of the fact that the food wasn't to my liking. She saw it as a rejection of her cooking, and therefore a rejection of her as a person.

 

[Songbird76]

That's too bad that this wasn't very much fun. It sounds like a good idea on paper, especially now with corona. The escape rooms near me have closed because of it. With a better execution, this sounds like it could have been a really fun day.

It definitely has potential, it just wasn't well-organized. This company does these in several cities here....there are like 30 different locations where you can do this, but the puzzles are the same for every single one, whether you do it in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Den Haag, etc. So basically, it's a cash grab. They don't have to do anything except answer a phone and send the next picture in that sequence. There's a file for each city with the pictures from that city. You complete a puzzle and it gives you the phone number to call. When you call that number, the person knows you've solved that puzzle and then sends you the next picture from the file of the city you are signed up for. They don't have to do anything really. There's not a guide to give you information and the clues/puzzles aren't specific to the city you are in. So you get the same puzzle as someone in Amsterdam or Rotterdam. It's only the pictures that are different. So all they had to do was take pictures in those cities and make some generic puzzles, like a sudoku, a rebus, etc and then they just use the same ones for every game. Once you have those made, you don't have to do anything for the game. There's no overhead cost for premises or an office, you don't have to go anywhere, you can just sit at home with the phone and wait for people to call in and tell you which team they are in and in which city, and then you open the whatsapp group for that team and send the next image for that city. People basically pay you for the priveledge of walking back and forth through the city to find the place where that picture was taken. You don't have to give them any information about that location, you don't have to actually meet with the people or do anything. Just hit send. If the clues/puzzles were unique and gave you some info on the locations, it would already be a much better experience, but I think the person who started this company was aiming for the least amount of work....just make it all generic so you can use the same puzzles, no matter which city a person chooses, and then you get paid for doing very very little. You can watch TV or play a computer game or whatever while you wait for the phonecall. Then you press a button and go back to whatever you were doing before and wait for the next call, and you make money while you do it. I don't think they gave much thought to the experience of the customer. They want as many people to do it as possible, so they have to keep it kind of general for the average Joe. What I don't think they realize is that doing it this way means once a person has done it in one place, there's no need to do it in another place because it will be the same puzzles. If they made it more unique, a person might have a great time in Rotterdam and decide to do it again in Amsterdam and again in Utrecht. They'd make more money with repeat customers.

 

[Songbird76]

I think the biggest thing I get out of this is that no matter where you grow up or how much you have or don't have, there are always going to be some mean kids who single out some of us for being different. Proof that getting all of the stuff you want won't solve the problems in your world. We grew up with many nice things and labels, but it was almost always bargain shopping. Our neighboring town had these incredible summer sidewalk sales and you could often get all kinds of cool things for a fraction of the price. I remember some mean girls accusing me of wearing knock off sweaters made by my mom and pushing me up against a locker to inspect the garment, because there's no way I was wearing anything that expensive. Maybe if their moms went to summer sidewalk sales and got things 70-90% off, they'd have those things too. Although, I'm sure some of their snooty parents would say something like "It's ok honey, that's last season's stuff. That's why she could afford it." While my parents did buy my car, I had to get a job to pay for the first year of insurance and a gas fund. So, definitely not the full on "here ya go" some people I know had with their first cars. I think our older one has a greater sense of entitlement and doesn't yet have a good grasp on want vs. need, but I know the younger one gets at least some of it. She feels guilty when I get her stuff. Just from softball, she knows that some of the kids really rely on the fundraisers to cover the basics as well as the big stuff. Just yesterday, she saw that one of her old teammates is already selling football squares to try and pay for new uniforms. There's nothing wrong with either way, but just that it shows her that these things aren't a given and not everyone can just fork over the $.

I also had a lightbulb moment with the bed. I was was watching a show on Netflix during the first part of my workout today and I noticed that all of the teen kids has queen sized beds and stunning bedrooms...even the ones who were supposed to be playing the role of "poor kid." I'm sure some of her friends do have queens...as I know several people who have said their kids do...but if it's the norm too on all of her shows, she must think she's the oddball for having a twin. Still not caving on the bed size.

Sounds like Sam has a pretty decent grasp of it, even if she doesn't really know how much things cost. I have to admit I'm lucky that neither of mine are at all materialistic. Neither of them really ever ask for anything. They grow, I go buy new clothes....E likes to go with me to pick things out and try things on, but she picks and chooses her favorites and doesn't expect everything. A couldn't care less. His only thing is that he's sensitive and doesn't like pants other than jogging pants. So I go to the store that sells them cheaply and buy him about 10 pairs, and then go to Primark and pick out some Star Wars, Mario, and Minecraft or Fortnite tshirts and he's a happy camper. Anything like tech gadgets.....phones, computers, game systems, they buy themselves. We help them pick them out based on the money they have and what features they want, but they pay for them. Neither of them are interested in designer clothing or specific brands like Levis, or Tommy Hilfiger, or Vingino, etc. They've never had to want for anything they needed, but they also haven't been given everything they wanted. I think that's the danger a lot of parents run into is that because they can afford those things, they buy them and the kids learn to expect them. And like you said, then they don't really understand the difference between want and need. "I need new clothes!" Yes, that may be....but you don't NEED those close to be designer labels. "I need a bed!" Yes, but you don't NEED it to be a queen sized bed.

 

[Sans Souci]

It got even worse when I went to college. I knew several people with summer and winter cars, which started to make me think that I might be the oddball. Junior year in college, I started dating a guy around Thanksgiving. At that time, he was driving a cute little Acura Integra. When we came back in mid January, he was driving a nice Ford Explorer. When I asked him about it, he said summer vs. winter cars. One of my sorority sisters had it one step further. She had nice summer car, average summer car, nice winter vehicle, average winter vehicle. So, what she drove hinged on both season and where she was going. If she was going someplace nice in the summer, she was allowed to take her luxury brand convertible. If she was "slumming it," she had to take her Chevy convertible. Similar concept with the winter vehicles. Her winter vehicle up at college was a loaded Toyota Landcruiser. That's still out of my budget!

The girl who mocked my parents' cars is still like that to this day. We're "friends" on Facebook and a good friend of mine, whose also knows her, are always discussing how snobbish and superficial she is and has always been. Case in point, husband divorced her and I guess her financial situation changed drastically. Her big Infiniti SUV was in his name, so she lost it in the divorce. Rather than buy something more reasonable with whatever she had in the budget, she bought a 5 year old Range Rover with nearly 100k miles, just to look like she's still fabulously wealthy (only know because my spy friend ran the tags for more info). A year after buying it...the engine died and she was quoted $37k to fix it. People were telling her left and right that she could buy a very nice new car for that price. What did she do, she went out and bought a 6 year old Range Rover, also close to 100k miles, and again...playing it off like it's new and she paid $120k+. She tries to stage it in all of her outdoor pictures. What's really crazy...she posts all of these pictures where she stages things with her various designer bags, yet she keeps pushing a GoFundMe to get $ to cover her new husband's medical costs (for some undisclosed illness). Last night, she posted a heavily staged picture of a University of Florida trucker hat and t-shirt propped on top of a piece of Louis Vuitton luggage...saying she just can't think of packing them and possibly wrinkling them (taking her son to start college). She just wanted to show off her $3000 piece of luggage.

I would agree. Many of the kids that I know who had it all, in the material sense, wound up in rehab, because drugs and alcohol ended up becoming the crutch. I'm happy to see that many of them are sober these days and I guess they have sizable trust funds that kept them from ending up worse.

I am laughing that you have a spy friend that ran your "friend's" tags. That's hilarious. The image of her UF hat and t-shirt propped on a piece of LV luggage is *chef's kiss*. That is too funny that someone would go to such lengths to pretend they're not trying to show something off. It is a bit sad, too, that someone feels like having a certain type of lifestyle comprises their identity.

 

[Sans Souci]

She claimed she couldn't see any, but in reality I think it made her feel guilty, like she had failed because she couldn't afford better. My mom had some really strange ideas about rejection. She got really angry when I started going to a different church because I had been raised Missouri Synod Lutheran, but I didn't like the LCMS campus center at college, so I started looking for a new church home. Mom said she had already chosen my church home for me and that's where I was supposed to go. She said that if I didn't like it, it was like I was saying her choice wasn't good enough for me, and I was rejecting her beliefs, and therefore rejecting HER. So she was furious. When I graduated from high school and got a summer job, she wasn't happy with my hours and demanded that I tell my boss she needed to give me more. I told her I wasn't comfortable doing that since it was a summer job and I had no other job prospects. I had applied EVERYWHERE and this was the only place I even got an interview. Some hours was better than having NO hours, and I couldn't afford to be picky because there were a LOT of kids looking for jobs. If I complained, there were 50 other kids who would be happy to take those hours. She was mad that I wouldn't go in making demands, so she called my boss behind my back and almost got me fired because my boss decided if I didn't like my schedule, I didn't need to work there. Fortunately, she saw I was horrified that my mom had called, and that it wasn't ME who wasn't happy, so she didn't fire me as planned, but tried to work it out so I could get 2-3 more hours a week...by giving up my lunch hour. When I came home, I was livid and told her she had NO right to do what she did, it was MY job, and I was an adult. She was going to have to accept that I was a different person and she wouldn't always agree with me, but that as an adult, I had to make the decisions I was comfortable with and she couldn't go calling my boss making demands because she disagreed with how I handled things. I told her I wasn't exactly like her, so we were bound to differ sometimes. She called me stupid and when I told her how much that hurt, she said "Probably about as much as it hurt me that you said you aren't exactly like me!" She saw that as me telling her she wasn't good enough for me, because if she was, I would want to be exactly like her, but me being different was a rejection of her. She got offended by things like that, so I think me picking out the weevils was like a confrontation to her, making a big deal out of the fact that the food wasn't to my liking. She saw it as a rejection of her cooking, and therefore a rejection of her as a person.

My mom had poor boundaries, too. She was always spying on my phone calls. I would hear her pick up the phone and she would deny it, while acting offended that I thought she was capable of doing such a thing. I might have told this story here before, so forgive me if I have, but my mom came to visit me when I moved to England. I don't know what her problem was, but I could tell she was in a mood when she got off the plane. She did nothing but tried to create discord between my husband and me (we weren't married yet). She would call my grandmother and tell her my husband and I were fighting (we weren't). She got angry because my husband had an office Christmas party and I had the flu. He went without me and offered to stay behind, but it doesn't look good not to show up at these things. Plus, even if I wasn't sick, I would have stayed behind. I'm really not a social person. She bad mouthed him to me all night long. When that didn't work, she told my husband what a rotten person I was, that I was lazy and selfish.

After two weeks of this (at which point I was just an anxious mess), she brings down her luggage and dented the wall, left gouges in the wooden handrails and tells me I am coming home with her. I was 25! I told her I wasn't. The airport was 90 minutes away and it was the longest, most awkward car trip ever. My husband got her bags out of the trunk and I tried to hug her. She pushed me away. That made my husband angry and he told me to get into the car and pulled away leaving her curbside.

About a day after she went home, I started getting phone calls from my grandmother, my brother and other concerned family members asking me if my husband was beating me and did I need help getting home! I was shocked and angry, because it simply wasn't true.

It wasn't until years later, my grandmother told me she went to pick my mom up from that flight and as soon as she got in the car, my mom started hitting her.

I finally stopped talking to her this year and I wish I'd done it sooner. I gave her so many chances, because she was my mom, but it took so much out of me emotionally. Each outburst, words of abuse, smear campaigns against my husband and me, etc. got progressively more difficult to heal from. I just couldn't do it anymore. I am sorry she has emotional issues, but it doesn't give her carte blanche to abuse people.

 

[Sans Souci]

Sounds like Sam has a pretty decent grasp of it, even if she doesn't really know how much things cost. I have to admit I'm lucky that neither of mine are at all materialistic. Neither of them really ever ask for anything. They grow, I go buy new clothes....E likes to go with me to pick things out and try things on, but she picks and chooses her favorites and doesn't expect everything. A couldn't care less. His only thing is that he's sensitive and doesn't like pants other than jogging pants. So I go to the store that sells them cheaply and buy him about 10 pairs, and then go to Primark and pick out some Star Wars, Mario, and Minecraft or Fortnite tshirts and he's a happy camper. Anything like tech gadgets.....phones, computers, game systems, they buy themselves. We help them pick them out based on the money they have and what features they want, but they pay for them. Neither of them are interested in designer clothing or specific brands like Levis, or Tommy Hilfiger, or Vingino, etc. They've never had to want for anything they needed, but they also haven't been given everything they wanted. I think that's the danger a lot of parents run into is that because they can afford those things, they buy them and the kids learn to expect them. And like you said, then they don't really understand the difference between want and need. "I need new clothes!" Yes, that may be....but you don't NEED those close to be designer labels. "I need a bed!" Yes, but you don't NEED it to be a queen sized bed.

My son is the same with jogging pants and the t-shirts! My husband goes to Target and buys loads of sweats and tons of video game t-shirts for him. He simply won't wear anything else, unless he has to.

 

[Sans Souci]

Hello-

I did 45 minute workout that was a mix of weights and cardio. Then I went for a walk, since tomorrow sounds like a wash out with Henri. Speaking of which, @MinnieM123, I hope you're staying safe!

I'm probably going to get some coffee with my husband later on--just relaxing on a Saturday.