h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It is clear that they don't want to have to bother responding to messages left for them.

Actually, I'm getting pretty wee'd off about this attitude amongst my colleagues.

PP.

is it about the cost of returning all the calls?

PP
That is not a PH that deserves a full on explosion
Assuming that it is just that group and not some stupid edict from on high, it needs their Boss to put his flack jacket, hard hat and hobnail boots on and deal with it, before they end up at the wrong end of an inquiry into the failure of their department to do its job.

I absolutely understand your frustration and anger PP. In the past I have needed to call my local mental health team and their answer phone message suggested calling the Samaritans.

Mental health should be treated in the same way as physical health. You wouldn't expect for example, when phoning for an ambulance to be put through to an answer phone.

Waiting.

I must come back to a PH which annoys me nearly every day, but which I have now discovered in a worse form:

Those washing instructions and scratchy labels sewn into the sides of tee shirts and other clothes. My son gave me a load of baby clothes to wash, as they didn't get round to washing them before the baby was born, as he (the baby) arrived several weeks early.

Most of the little baby tee shirts and vests have those labels in the side, too. I've a good mind to take them all out before they come for the washing tomorrow.

PH Trying to help an elderly relative, who keeps trying to distract me from the issue, which means I have to virtually bully her, for her own good. What do you do with someone who won't go to bed, even though they've been up all night? It's very much like dealing with a toddler, but one who has a keen intelligence (thankfully, I suppose).

Right now we have a similar problem with Mum. Getting her to go to bed isn't the problem. She's in bed, in hospital. She had a fall a month ago that left her unconscious and she wasn't found for a couple of days. In the early days at hospital she had a stroke. She can't remember the fall and denies it ever happened, despite the evidence of a cut on the back of her head. She doesn't believe anything the doctors and nurses tell her, isn't eating much and isn't drinking enough. She's adamant that she wants to go home because she reckons she'll recover faster under her own roof, yet she isn't strong enough to spend more than half an hour sitting in a chair. And yet I love her so much that she can't really be a Petty Hate, just a worry.

Here's something I know I've moaned about before, but it's a recurring problem in the good weather we've been having. Some people don't appreciate how noise carries at night. There's somebody in our road who has a radio (or something) playing outside (or maybe they have their window open), and it's loud enough to hear it in our house. I can't hear exactly what it is, but it's loud enough to stop me getting to sleep. I've tried using a device that plays relaxing sounds, but that doesn't mask it. Last night it went on until after 1am. If I knew who was doing it, I'd go and complain.

>>She had a fall a month ago that left her unconscious and she wasn't found for a couple of days. In the early days at hospital she had a stroke.

That's why mine is just a very petty hate, because I'm fully aware how much more serious it could be.

Perhaps we should be getting up a dedicated thread on terminal aging and strategies for coping, so much of this going around.




With difficulty, I got my Mom on an oxygen concentrator and CPAP machine, supplying elevated air pressure and she was lucid, ambulatory and stopped falling.

Then she'd lapse with the therapy, relapse, have to be tenderly nursed back to the brink of good health, lapse again...

The most recent occasion, she fell, broke her arm, required lengthy hospitalization and corrective surgery.




Meanwhile that infantile affect, I wonder if it may not be remediable by means of a renewed self discipline effort on the part of people in my age group (over 60), rather than simply rejecting demands of responsibility and self discipline. ...Shades of Erikson and his ethical crisis of old age, integrity vs despair.

(See: "Erikson's psychosocial stages", Wikipedia, for starting points.

I noticed the last batch of M+S undies I bought had all the label info printed directly onto the inside of the garment. Seems like an ideal solution to scratchy labels to me Can it be any more expensive to do this than to print on a separate piece of material and then sow it on?

... ahem... sew..

Probably not, but you have to bear in mind the number of languages some companies - including M&S - use for fabric content, etc. Undies I've bought from them in recent years have had extra labels that are meant to be cut off. At least the labels in my undies are silky, not scratchy.

What I dislike most about those labels is location, especially at the nape of the neck.

No reason on God's green Earth they can't be in a less irritating location, for example on the hem of the waste line, in front and to one side or the other of the midline.




Other petty hates, notification bubbles coming up in the corners of the computer screen, blocking access to computer controls.

Smacks.

We keep our cereal decanted into a row of containers on a shelf in the dining room. In this hot weather, the Smacks have all stuck together. I have to chisel them out with the bread knife.

The best location for a care label in a top or shirt, IMO, is low down on a side seam. That's assuming there is one - most of my T-shirts are tubes with no side seam.

A flip-side of this problem is care labels you can't find. You know the type. You like a garment, usually a jacket or trousers, sometimes a skirt, and you want to find out fabric content and care instructions. The label's not at the waist or neckline (as appropriate). You end up searching the garment to find it.

>>low down on a side seam<<

And that's just what I'm objecting to. It's where the skin is at its most vulnerable.

Ideally, it should be someplace where one has another layer of fabric protecting one's skin.

I don't know about you, TC, but 'low down on a side seam' is usually level with my knickers - unless I'm wearing a long T-shirt or shirt, in which case it might be lower than that.

Yes - that's fine. Right down at the bottom, or sewn into the hem. Well below the waist. Printed onto the fabric is ideal, though.

And while we're at it - PH: washing instructions in general.

As I said, I was given a bag of baby clothes to wash. Some of them are, according to the labels, not tumble-dryable. Great. OK, so my son and dil don't have a dryer, but I do, and I had to iron those tiny little t shirts and rompers to get them soft enough for baby after hanging them on the line.

Washing instructions are rubbish anyway. Some say you can wash something at 30 degrees and it's fine with a 60 degree wash. Others say they'll take 60 degrees and are ruined the first time they're washed at that temperature. Ditto with tumble-drying.

Some things say "dry clean only" but are fine with a gentle wash. It's entirely random, so they could actually leave out the washing instructions completely, the clothes will still either be ruined or not.