My husband and I have a son who is about to turn four, and we have a baby girl on the way.

As a baby, my son developed a severe allergy to diapers. He’d get awful rashes that took way too long to get better, and nothing we did helped much. Because of that, my husband and I decided to start potty training a bit early, right before he was eighteen months old. We talked to his pediatrician and relied on cloth diapers as much as we could. After a few months of that, he’d almost grown out of his allergy, but we kept going.

Today, he’s fully potty trained. He has some (very) rare accidents, but only when he tries to delay his bathroom trips for too long. When that happens, we wash him up and replace his underwear.

My husband’s mother was firmly against our decision to potty train our son early. She insisted that it would lead to IBS and that he should wear diapers until he was at least three. She tried to convince us to change our minds for months, but we held our ground.

In early December, I had a doctor’s appointment while my husband was at work, so I left our son with [Mother-In-Law] for a couple of hours. Sometime later, she called me and said [Son]’d had a (bathroom) accident. He hadn’t had one in months. I instructed her on how to proceed, as well as where to find the spare clothes I’d packed for him.

I picked [Son] up about an hour later. On our way home, he complained about being “itchy”. I didn’t know why until I got him ready for bathtime later that night. He was wearing a diaper. (It was clean.)

He didn’t get any rashes, but the diaper was a couple of sizes too small, and he hadn’t worn one in a long time, so I think that’s where the itchiness came from. When I asked him about it, he confirmed that [Mother-In-Law] had said he was “still a baby” and put him in the diaper.

When my husband and I confronted her about it, she defended herself by saying his accident was clear proof we’d made a mistake by potty training him early, and he should go back to wearing diapers for the time being. At no point did she apologize.

We decided that [Mother-In-Law] was forbidden from babysitting, as well as from spending time with our son unsupervised. She is not our only babysitting option; my mom and stepdad, my sister, my brother-in-law, and my best friend also babysit. [Mother-In-Law] didn’t think we were serious until we went to her place on Saturday. We had to go to the hospital, and rather than leaving our son with her, we took him with us.

Now that she knew we were serious, she started calling us dramatic and ungrateful, as well as claiming that we were alienating her from her grandchildren out of stubbornness. She maintained that she was right about early potty training being a bad idea and that she was only trying to help us.

I didn’t think we were in the wrong, but this did feel a bit dramatic. My brother-in-law, who was skeptical of our decision back in the day, thought we were right to be angry but it was still an overreaction to revoke [Mother-In-Law]’s permission to babysit our son.

For a while after the diaper incident, I’d been wondering where [Mother-In-Law] had gotten the diaper from. When I asked her about it, she told me it was a leftover from when my son was younger. As much as I didn’t think that was true, it did make some sense, and she swore by it. When I asked my son back in December, he just told me she had the diaper.

After I posted about it online in early January, some people reached out to me with theories about that. I talked to my husband about them, and later that week, we decided to confront [Mother-In-Law] again. We did it over the phone after our son went to bed.

This time, she decided she wanted to “come clean” — her exact words. She admitted that the diaper wasn’t a leftover, but rather a new one she bought right after [Son]’s accident.

To clarify: rather than obey my instructions and change my son into his spare clothes, [Mother-In-Law] left him alone in her bathtub while she went to the pharmacy near her house and bought diapers. She left my three-year-old alone in her house for ten whole minutes because she wanted to prove a point.

She claimed what she did was fine because the bathtub was empty and she’d locked the bathroom door. She also said [Son] was crying when she got home, and she “comforted” him by saying it would make my husband and me happy to see him in a diaper.

And then, she had the nerve to say that it was “good to get this off her chest” and that we could finally move on from this.

Needless to say, the word “outraged” doesn’t even begin to cover how we were feeling. My husband yelled at [Mother-In-Law] for over half an hour before hanging up the phone.

My husband and I talked to [Son] about it, and he said he didn’t tell us anything because he didn’t want us to be mad at him. We managed to reassure him that he’d done nothing wrong. We promised him that he’s a big boy, and he’ll never wear a diaper again.

[Mother-In-Law] called us several times over the weekend. She gave us dozens of excuses, ranging from “I couldn’t find his underwear” (I clearly remember her announcing she had it when she called me that day) to “I left my sons home alone all the time when they were younger” (my husband had no idea).

We lost whatever patience we had that day. We decided that [Mother-In-Law] won’t be allowed near our family for the next six months. If she doesn’t improve her behavior until then, that will become permanent. She’s also uninvited from [Son]’s fourth birthday party next month and won’t be allowed to see our daughter at the hospital when she’s born (I’m due in May).

We sent her a text with the above before blocking her. Even if she does change, she’ll never be allowed to babysit our kids again. We have other people who can take care of them on occasion.

I live near a national forest, and it’s not uncommon to see minor wildlife ambling through. The biggest is a bobcat though, and we don’t have a problem with mountain lions or bears.

Unfortunately, we have a neighbor who is very irresponsible with their pet cat, whom they allow to wander around at will. Now, I don’t know whether the cat is this way because he has had to contend with various wildlife his entire life, or whether he’s just a furry little jerk, but he will fight anything his size or smaller. He’s taught another neighbor’s Scottish Terrier to fear him, and he bullies other cats mercilessly.

Then one night, he got taught a very rude lesson. It was a nice summer evening, and we had all the windows open to enjoy the cool air, when I heard a feline yowl. The neighbor’s cat had found some poor critter to pick a fight with.

Neighbor’s Cat: *Angry growl and hiss.*

Neighbor’s Cat: *Louder angry yowl.*

Neighbor’s Cat: *Furious yowling and a scream that means he’s in full attack mode.*

Neighbor’s Cat: *Sudden, very shocked, very “I regret everything in my life that led me to this moment” screech and the sound of scrambling paws as the cat flees.*

Then I uttered a string of curses and bolted for the window to close it. Outside, a small black and white animal strolled away from the light from my window.

Yep, the neighbor’s cat decided to bully a western spotted skunk, a slightly smaller, more weasel-looking kind of skunk than the usual kind. It probably looked like a small, easy victim to bully. And of course, the furry little jerk picked a fight directly outside my window, much to my dismay.

It was a week before we saw that cat again, and even then, he was never outside after dark when skunks liked to prowl.

Every time I see him, I snicker at the thought of the thoroughly skunked cat fleeing into his owner’s house: reeking to high heaven, and needing to be bathed. I also suspect his human lost a lot of blood before the stench was washed away since he was a scrappy little fighter.

Lesson learned for both of them, I hope!

I give you three instances of my ex that I have since dubbed “The Snap™”, where she could go from 0 to 1000 in an instant.

Example #1:

I’m cooking her dinner.

Me: “Hey, babe, do you want a boiled egg with your curry?”

Ex: *Extremely snappy out of nowhere* “I don’t know. Do you want to be single?”

Me: “…That would be a no, then?”

Ex: “Duh! Boiled eggs are f****** gross! If you like boiled eggs, you’re a psychopath. Why would you even ask me if I want an egg with my curry of all things?”

Me: “Because I like an egg with my curry sometimes. I guess I’m a psycho, then.”

Somehow, she is back to perfectly pleasant after that.

Example #2:

Again, a dinner incident. I planned to make pancakes, but we’re out of jam for topping, so we pop to the store.

Ex: “What flavour jam were you craving?”

Me: “Dunno… I’m a bit fed up with forest fruit, as I always have that.”

Ex: “How about strawberry?” 

Me: “Not really, either. I think I want—”

Cue The Snap™.

Ex: “OH, MY GOD! Forget about the whole f****** d*** jam, then, why don’t you?!”

Me: “—blackcurrant. Uh… is there a problem?”

Ex: *Suddenly sugary sweet again* “No… why?”

Me: “We can get strawberry if you really prefer that.”

Ex: *Still smiling innocently* “No, blackcurrant is fine.” 

These kinds of instances pop up here and there, and when I ask her about it, she first ignores it, but after a while, she confesses that she is going through a burnout and she’s just tired and depressed, and that’s why she’s snappy. We haven’t been dating for three months, and we’re not at an “unconditional love and support” level by a long shot, especially not with the way she has been snapping at me, but I try my best by her. She says she understands that I need some more love and attention than she is giving me, and she urges me to speak up about it when I need it.

So, we come to the scene of the last Snap™.

We’re at her place, sitting on opposite ends of the couch. I open my arms to invite a snuggle, but she claims she is “too tired to even lean across”.

But not two seconds later, she gets up to pluck her cat from the other end of the room and give it a very grand display of hugs and kisses.

Trying to be playful and not too “Hello, I’d like some attention” and on-the-nose with my needs, I say:

Me: “Wow, [Cat] gets so many kisses today! You happen to have one to spare for me?”

Ex: *Snappy thundercloud out of nowhere* “I don’t know. Check under the couch for one for all I care.” 

I broke up with her the week after that, and somehow she was all “Surprised Pikachu Face” about it, even after all this.

My mom regularly video calls with my niece, my sister’s child, who is two years old. My mother also has four cats. Every time my sister initiates a call, my niece asks to see the cats. I overhear the most recent video call.

Mom: “Hi, [Niece], sweetie!”

Niece: “Kitty?”

Sister: *Exasperated* “Can you at least say hi to Grammie first?”

Niece: *Cheerily* “No, thank you, Grammie! Kitty, please!”

Back in high school, I remember learning to make a circuit with wires, a battery, and a tiny lightbulb. The really smart kids also added a switch and learned how it connected and disconnected the circuit.

Present day, my fourteen-year-old turns to me and asks.

Kid: “Do you want to see my homework?”

Me: “Sure.”

They pull out all these wires and three little coloured lights — red, yellow, and green — and proceed to construct something. They’re connecting alligator clips and troubleshooting which bulbs need to be replaced. Finally, they have the whole thing put together.

Me: “Is this for an electrical class or something?”

Kid: “No. It’s for coding.”

And then they plug it into their computer and open up a program they wrote. I stare in wonder as the lights flash on and off. Red. Green. Yellow.

Kid: “That’s not right; these two are mixed up.”

They then reassemble it so they light up red, then yellow, and then green, muttering to themself as they go.

Me: “Hey, even with the signals being switched, that is still really impressive.”

Kid: “What? I haven’t started yet. This program just tests that I wired it properly. Here is my coding homework.”

And then the lights started flashing in a pattern with alternating speeds. I stood there with my mind blown, remembering my school days with the lightbulb, battery, and switch.

Kids these days.