u/EducationalBother994

Hello all! First-time poster. I’m a crafty person in general (sewing, embroidery, diy decor, anything that strikes inspiration within me). Usually when I have an idea for a craft that may or may not work, I have no issue experimenting; however, I’m not currently in a financial place to buy the materials for my latest idea if it turns out to be a flop. So, I figured I would turn to the experts on this subreddit!

I’m putting together a Renaissance fair costume. I go harder than your average attendee because I’m passionate and it’s fun! Going for a sorceress queen vibe this year with a gorgeous gifted dress. I have everything planned out except for a headpiece. I thrifted a lovely two panel delicate scarf (not sure if the materials, possibly silk on one side and a thin cotton blend on the other?) that I would like to drape over my head and shoulders. I’ve been thinking of getting a tiara or intricate headband to place on top of it, but I much prefer to make pieces on my own.

Last night, in a sleepless state, I was struck with inspiration: I could use hot glue to make a headpiece that looks like gold metal lattice or lace, or some kind of melted-gold-dripping effect, as a top piece to sit on top of my head over the scarf. Here is the basic vision for the process: I would make a papier-mâché mold of my head with a layer of Saran Wrap keeping my hair and skin safe (or just get a mannequin head, but the first idea is cheaper and will be more accurate); lay more Saran Wrap over the mold; draw intricate designs on the Saran Wrap for where I want the hot glue to land; “draw” over the designs with hot glue, probably multiple layers, including space to add chains (for an adjustable fit) or charms (for weight to keep it in place); cure and add the finishing touches; BOOM, headpiece done.

Now, in my tired-but-awake state, I’m wondering if this would actually be feasible. Here are my concerns:
How to color the hot glue: I know paint usually chips. I was thinking of getting the kind of pigment that you rub onto your material. I’ve tried using metallic markers in the past, but the cured hot glue made the markers stop working quickly. I could also try to find gold metallic hot glue so that I wouldn’t feel the need to seal in the color, but I’m having difficulty finding metallic hot glue in the appropriate color with good reviews.
Sealing the pigment: as previously mentioned, I think i would need to seal in pigment on the hot glue to prevent chipping or flaking. Not sure what kind of sealing would be good for this, especially if the sealer also ends up flaking.
Prevent this project from damaging the scarf: this might be my greatest concern. The scarf is delicate, and I believe that sustained contact with hot glue may leave residue on the fabric that will be difficult/impossible to get off. I also worry that certain pigments or sealers might cause a similar problem. While this scarf was thrifted for a very low price, it is gorgeous, and I want to preserve it as much as I can for other potential uses in the future. I’ve been thinking I could make the hot glue design over a fabric backing and then cut out the negative space within the glue design using my craft knife; however, this might be difficult given the dome shape of the headpiece. Difficult but doable. As for pigment/sealers residue, I’m not sure how to work around this potential issue short of finding fabric-safe sealer.

Yes, this probably sounds ridiculous—I am ridiculous and I’m happy with that. Yes, I could probably just buy something similar—why deny myself the joy of making something original? (I might buy something at the ren fair, but I’d like to already have something when I get there). Yes, I could probably just make a design out of gold fabric, but I think I need the something with a little more weight and solidity to it, plus my hands hurt from the amount of sewing/embroidery/mini painting that I do already. Yes, I could just go with a different idea for a headpiece for my costume… I’m open to that, but I really want it to hit the specific vibe I’m going for.

Any advice at all is welcome! I’ve made hot glue crafts before so I think this will work in theory. I’m also open to suggestions about different materials to work with, so long as I can afford them. If I (we?) iron out the details in a way where this works without the issues i previously detailed, I will absolutely give progress pictures!

Thanks for reading. I look forward to hearing ideas from crafters of all types.

ETA: this does not need to be durable, it does not need to stand the test of time, and it certainly does not need to be perfect. I’m hoping to get at least 3 wears out of it, but it’s okay if I need to make repairs.

I have a messy roommate. The common issues: Crumbs, splotches of jelly, dollops of ice cream on the counter very often after he serves himself food. Trash left out. Dishes not put away appropriately, leading to a scavenger hunt. Because it’s not fair to constantly be cleaning up someone else’s messes or fixing their mistakes, I try to let him know about them if he is around. If I don’t know the source or reason for something, and if it is “bigger” than the issues I just listed, I’ll put a question in our house group chat asking about it. Other roommates also do this.

So, because my roommate has a bad habit of frequent messes and mistakes, I frequently come to him saying “hey, there’s ice cream all over the counter from the bowl that you’re eating right now, could you clean it?” Or “yo, did you do the dishes last? Okay, this item doesn’t go where you put it, I can show you where it goes, also you can ask if you’re not sure.” Never mad because there’s no point getting mad over little stuff like this, maybe frustrated about repeated issues but I always try to make sure I’m calm and choosing my words very carefully, because I know he can be really sensitive about little things.

In the last 2ish years, he has started blowing up at us when we bring issues to his attention. It has been growing in intensity, and we recently learned that he has been saying extremely nasty stuffs about us to all of our friends. We asked him what his actual problem is, and he said that his issue with me specifically comes from the way I bring up issues.

He says it’s shitty of me to mention an issue without being sensitive about it. He has said that I should say something like “hey, can we talk?” rather than just saying it directly. I feel like that’s not necessary because there isn’t a conversation to be had, I’m just asking him to clean up a mess he left. No need for a conversation.

He also says that it’s shitty of me to come to him with issues at certain times, particularly late at night. I say I’m trying to address problems in the moment, because if we don’t then either the mess stays out or we are forced to clean it for him. I don’t go wake him up or even go to his room for this stuff, I’ve only ever done this if he is out and about, usually while he’s out smoking in the garage or chilling in the living room. He’s a night owl, we all are. He also says I can’t text him with this stuff while he’s at work, which I don’t do on purpose (I don’t know he’s at work); the only instances I can think of myself doing this was me putting something in our house group chat (so not directed at him), or if he texted me first, or if it’s a continuation of a previous conversation. Worth noting he has also gotten upset at me for mentioning things like this regardless of the time of day, like in the middle of the day on a day off, for example.

AITA? I always thought that the best way to resolve an issue is to be direct and to discuss it in the moment or ASAP, but maybe I’m wrong.

Hi all. This will probably be a long post so sorry in advance. I’ve told lots of people IRL about this and we pretty much all conclude that this is an insane middle-school-level soap opera situation sourced from a nearly 30-year-old man for no discernible reason (other than mental health). This has been building for a long time, so I felt the need to write it all out starting from the beginning, digging into the accusations and rumors as they come. Maybe you’ll find it entertaining—I probably would if I wasn’t involved! Curious to know what other people think.

The main players are myself (F26), my boyfriend/roommate Z(M27), and our roommate—the guy doing the crazy stuff—A(M29). Z and A have been best friends for a long time, since high school or before. There are others involved but I’ll introduce them if necessary.

I met these guys, Z and A, about 7 years ago. I had just moved to the area for undergrad. We hit it off super quickly and soon began spending all of our free time together. A quickly became one of my best friends, we would hang out together all the time, and we would pick up Z from work. The three of us became a trio of best friends. Z and I developed feelings for each other, and it wasn’t long before we entered a relationship.

In the 6 years we have lived together, we lived in 3 different places. The first was an apartment in my name that I got for us so we could all have a stable place to live during the pandemic. Things were chill. After that, we lived with a friend, B(M27), who actually turned out to be not so great. Kind of an awful roommate. Hard-rock kind of guy with band practice until 4 in the morning and beyond. A’s bedroom was right next to B’s, so A was being deprived of sleep. A eventually started calling this “psychological torture.” I don’t disagree. B had other problems—anger issues, total lack of accountability, ODD, a lot of other things that just went totally unchecked. We lived there for three years because rent was cheap. I guess we got what we payed for. Still, things between me and A and Z were pretty much fine.

Then we moved into another house. We had an unusual agreement with the landlord that I don’t want to go into detail on, but basically I was essentially the property manager. My being “property manager” just meant that I would communicate directly with the landlord about house problems (flooding, repairs, painting) and the landlord would communicate directly with me if there was something he needed to know. Nothing really beyond that. We all agreed with him and each other to do our part. Cool. We had another roommate that moved in with us, J(F same age as myself). This is when things started going downhill.

A would often complain about the fact that he didn’t have a girlfriend. J, another friend G(F21), and I started giving him pointers. A big issue is the way this guy smells. He has always had, shall we say, a distinct odor. Hygiene is not his strong suit. It’s actually so bad that he has been pulled into meetings with management multiple times at his current job because customers are reporting that he smells when they interact with him. We’ve tried to help, but he basically turned down everything—no deodorant because he didn’t like how it feels, no cologne because he didn’t like how it smells, claims he brushes his teeth and showers regularly (but those who have lived with him have their doubts), agrees to do laundry more often but has so many excuses as to why he doesn’t (claims he always breaks washing machines that he uses? not true in our experience living with him. We actually heard him throwing a huge fit in the laundry room when he tried to wash basically everything he owns all at once because we told him he has to stop rewearing things. I mean crying and hitting things). Tried getting into skincare but went too hard with the exfoliation and then never went back. His lack of a girlfriend is a major complaint of his that almost always comes up in discussions about how he is doing, how he can better himself.

A has always been a messy and forgetful person but it has just gotten worse since we moved in. When we moved in, we all went through the kitchen together and decided where things would go (a lot of stuff was left behind by the previous owner, so we mostly kept with the organization that they had, but discussed changing things and decided not to). When A cleans or puts up the dishes, things almost always go missing or end up where they don’t belong. He would also often leave crumbs or trash around. We try to talk to him about it, and at first he would say that he would do better, but he wouldn’t actually follow up with that and he would keep making the same mistakes. After a while of this, we started occasionally just correcting things on our own, but still tried to talk to him about it when we could. When we brought this stuff up to him, he would get increasingly upset at us about it—he would get upset about the time that we brought it up (we’d mention it the moment that we noticed it, and even then only when he was free, or we would just shoot him a casual text about it). He would blow up at me or whoever approached him, always finding some way to excuse his behavior. Somewhat recently, when I gently tried to tell him it was okay to ask us questions if he didn’t know where something belonged (the item in question here was something we’ve told him about multiple times), his immediate response was “do you think I’m fucking stupid?!” Yikes. More recently, asking him to clean up after himself or not do something that was gross would lead to super long arguments where he would accuse me specifically of having a shitty attitude and harassing him, or having “serious mental issues”, which people we live with have witnessed and said is definitely not true.

He wouldn’t keep up with his turtle tank like he needs to. This was an issue at past places we lived but just got worse. I couldn’t be in the hallway where his room was without gagging. J’s bedroom was next to his and she was *suffering.* People would come over and ask “god, what smells like shit?” We asked A to keep his door closed but he never really stuck with it. He also claims he can’t smell it. We had to tell him when it was time to clean his turtle tank because the smell would permeate the house. We kept telling him that he should try to set up a regular cleaning schedule for so it doesn’t get bad, like once every week or two, and he would always say “that’s a good idea!” But never followed through. He has been better about this as of late, but it’s just an example of, I guess, the way he is.

He was let go from his job after about 6 months of living in this new spot. We helped him financially with what we could. I noticed that he wasn’t doing much to help around the house despite spending all day every day at home. J also noticed this and brought it to my attention. I would ask him about it and he would agree to make more effort around the house. Time would go by and we wouldn’t see any change. I’d bring it up again. He would start making excuses: “I’m so stressed in the job search that it’s hard for me to do much, but I’ll try to be better” or something along those lines. More time would pass and we’d see no change. I brought it up again and then he would claim that he *is* doing chores around the house but I’m not there to see it, and he’d start getting mad. I’d point out that our other roommates are also noticing this and bringing it to my attention, so it’s not just me. Rinse and repeat until he got a job. He racked up about $500 in debt to me and well over $1k in debt to Z during this time.

While A was jobless, he stopped driving his car for a number of reasons (expired tags, never renewed his license after he got mugged, then the manufacturer started sending warnings that the airbag in this specific make/model was more like a claymore and had killed people). He said he was going to donate it or sell it for parts. That car sat rotting in our driveway for *a full year*. We didn’t start pressing him to get rid of it until 6 months in, in the hopes that he would have done it himself. Should’ve known better. In the year that it sat in the driveway, he had sooo many excuses. Some were valid—a family member that had the title had lost the title (but A hadn’t started making moves to actually get the title until we started pressuring him to get rid of it after a whole 6 months). He kept making promises, promising to have it gone at the end of the month, then the next month when he didn’t, then the next, then before first snow. He never actually did it. After the snow melted—after a full year of the car sitting there—I told him he actually seriously has to get the thing out of our driveway or the landlord would have it towed. A got really upset about this, saying he didn’t realize it was that serious. I reminded him that I had told him multiple times that it was serious, not only for the property but for the people that live here, and that his failure to actually follow through was building resentment toward him. He said “I mean it just didn’t seem serious because you kept pushing back the deadline.” I said “yeah, because you kept making promises and then breaking them by not holding up your end. You forced the deadline back by just not doing anything.” He got angry and it started a whole fight between me and him. This is where the more serious accusations started, which I’ll get to soon.

Throughout all of this time, it has been clear to all of us that he needs help, even A himself has admitted it. Like professional help. He has also admitted many times to needing to be on medication. He would never actually go through with it himself. His issues got so bad that it made it really difficult to live with him, and we told him a few months ago that he absolutely has to start getting treatment for his problems or else he can’t live here anymore. That was the only thing that got him to actually make the effort to get help. During all of this (before and after we told him to get medicated), I would encourage our other friends to reach out to him with support, because it was clear that he needed to know he had people on his team. Sometimes people would approach me asking what was actually going on, and I would be truthful with them, and ask them to just be there for him if he needs someone.

Well. Any effort to help, be kind, try to hold him accountable, be supportive proved fruitless—in fact, he accused me and Z of doing the exact opposite. At the beginning of this year, he accused me of “telling people to stay the fuck away from \[A\]” (definitely never did that), meddling in his romantic life and actively preventing him from forming a romantic relationship (I once told a girl to stop leading him on after she told me she had no interest in dating him despite being very flirty and touchy with him, but never spoke to any other person he was interested in), harassing him (I guess asking to clean up after himself and be mindful of shared spaces is harassment), and generally just being really shitty. He told people that Z and I wouldn’t help him, despite the fact that we are constantly offering to help him. After this happened, we asked him to get medicated and go to therapy.

It didn’t end. I started hearing things about myself from others, things that weren’t true. People started distancing themselves from me and Z. A friend of ours, G(F22) once came over and basically asked WTF was going on with me and Z vs A. We had no idea anything was going on, then she described an event that A had told her happened between the three of us, but it was so far from any interaction we had ever had. There was just no truth to it, and he had essentially said that we were out to get him and ruining his life and mental health. Someone that I trust, a friend O(M30) reached out saying that A had been speaking to O’s girlfriend D(F22) saying awful things about me and Z. Apparently A had been telling people that I had “serious mental issues”, that nobody likes me, that Z and I prevent A from having friends over or even making new friends, and that Z was “widely believed to be schizophrenic” (Z is easily one of the most mentally sound people that I know—not that he’s perfect, but nowhere in the realm of schizophrenic), along with the accusations A made against me earlier in the year. I started reaching out to other friends and many of them confirmed that they had heard similar things from A but just brushed them off because they know he can be erratic, but unfortunately there are a few that believe him.

This is where we decided to actually confront A about all the accusations and lies and his general behavior. First, he started trying to pit me and Z against each other, saying that I had accused Z of animal abuse (definitely didn’t—once, about two years ago, I told A that my cat was cowering from Z as though she had been hurt, and asked him to let me know if he saw anything weird with Z and my cat. Worth noting my cat was being treated for a deadly illness that affected her brain at that time. But definitely didn’t accuse anybody of animal abuse). Then he tried to claim that all of our friends were saying those awful things about us rather than him saying those things about us to our friends (extreme doubt). Then he said that he acts this way because I always come to him with problems at times that are bad for him and that I need to wait until he’s available to talk about issues. I said that 1. I try to just mention these things in the moment because ultimately it’s not something that needs to be emotional like he makes it out to be, that it’s nbd, and I only try to correct these things so that he can be better about sharing spaces and not because I’m mad, and 2. That I do often wait for him to be available and he gets mad even then, which Z backed up because he has witnessed it, as have others, and 3. That if A is not feeling up to having a conversation, he should just say that rather than expecting me to read his mind.

Then I explicitly made him talk about every accusation he has made against me. He admitted that he was wrong about saying I harassed him, that it wasn’t harassment. He said he didn’t remember accusing me of telling people to stay away from him. When I brought up his accusation that I was preventing him from forming romantic relationships, he went through every single girl he had courted over the last 6 years, saying that both Z and I had meddled in some way (definitely not true, we want this guy to get a girlfriend so that he won’t be living with us forever). I asked about my alleged “serious mental issues”, he said that he believed there was something wrong with me because I forgot he paid me for bills or groceries twice in a month (if that’s enough for me to have “serious mental issues” then this guy needs to be in a padded room in a straight jacket). When we asked about him saying that we prevented him from having people over and making friends, he said “I mean it’s true in a sense because I feel like I can’t have friends over!” We pointed out that that doesn’t mean we’re preventing it, and in fact that he does have friends over occasionally and we’ve never had a problem with it (unless they’re being problematic which is not often enough to note). Each time we came at him proving the things he said weren’t true, he relented and admitted that they weren’t.

I told him I’m done. I can’t be friends with somebody like this, much less live with them. I recounted everything I’ve done for him—housed him with rent and bills in my name, cleaned his wounds when he got mugged, helped him with car maintenance, stood up for him when we lived with B, helped him find doctors and therapists… all of this just for him to treat me so horribly over something as small as asking him to treat shared spaces with respect. I told him he needs to find somewhere else to live because this is such an unhealthy dynamic. Then he asked me to schedule him an MRI to see if there’s something wrong with him. Dawg, what…? He said “maybe if I get my shit together soon then I can stay!” My brother in Christ you have had an almost infinite number of opportunities to do that and you have squandered all of them.

I’m so tired. I can’t believe any of this happened. I hope he leaves soon. Unfortunately we renewed the lease recently because he promised he would work on himself more. So much for that.

Wow. This is so long, even despite the fact that I cut out so many details. Sorry about that. If you read all the way through this, thank you. Maybe I’m crazy and evil, but I don’t think so and neither do the people who have been present in this situation. I’m telling him in a few days that he has to be out of the house by the end of October (a family member of mine is moving in then so the timing will work out with that deadline for A). Such an insane situation.

I hope he gets the help he needs, but I can’t be there for him anymore.

Hello!

I recently interviewed for the team lead position in my department. We ran out of time for my questions at the end of the interview, so the interviewers encouraged me to send additional questions via email. I sent follow-up emails including questions 2 days after the interview. It has now been 4 days.

Some additional info: my interviewer was my current boss (we’re quite friendly but still professional—she knows what’s going on in my life and she shares about her own life, we share memes, that kind of thing) and the supervisor for my sister department.

So, should I send an additional follow-up email if I receive no response to my first one? I know in general you shouldn’t expect a response to a follow-up email from an interview, but my emails included questions about the position that I did not get to ask. Also I would just like for them to see my email. I’m thinking I’ll wait a week before I do anything, if I do anything. Even so, what should a follow-up-follow-up email look like?

Any advice is appreciated. Thanks for reading!

TL;DR didn’t meet my interviewers in the lobby like they requested, answered all questions nearly perfectly but I feel that I deeply fumbled the last question that they asked. Can I recover with a follow-up email? Or is it not as bad as I’m thinking?

Yesterday I interviewed for my (current) dream job: the team lead position of my current department. I have had my eye on this position for quite a while. I’m definitely qualified as I have experience in a leadership position within this department, I have experience training on all of our workflows. My boss and the supervisor of our sister department were the people interviewing me, and I was extremely confident. I was the first person that they interviewed. Several people have told me that they recommended me for this position directly to my boss and their supervisors. I felt the job was already mine.

Then I got some bad news an hour before the interview and that messed me up a little bit, but I carried on, sure that I could perform despite the new information on my mind. I honed in on the location listed on the interview invite—\*room 410,\* I kept repeating it in my mind so as to not get distracted by other thoughts. I went straight to the room. I was early. 5 minutes into the scheduled interview time, I was still the only one there. Crap. I start typing an email to the interviewers asking about the meeting, and as I hit send I receive an email from my boss: “we are here waiting for you in the lobby, when should we expect you to arrive?” Turns out I was supposed to meet them in the lobby and we’d walk to the interview room together. \*Crap\*. I don’t know how I missed that information. Other interviews that I have done with my department and our sister department had me go straight to the interview, so I must have been operating on autopilot.

When we met, i apologized profusely, saying “I was just so ready that I came straight to the interview room! Terribly sorry for the mixup.” They said it was no problem. We got started, and I was going really strong. My answers were almost perfect, really really strong. Then the last question stumped me: “what is the most complicated workflow in our software that you’ve had to learn, and how did you become proficient in it?” Here’s the problem: all of our workflows are crazy easy. So my brain tried to find one that wasn’t. All I could come up with was one that isn’t even official yet, my team is just working out the kinks. I was extremely proficient with the version of this workflow that existed in our old software before we updated last year, but I said I was proficient in this new version. When I realized my mistake, I backtracked and said “well to be honest all of our workflows are so easy that the hardest part was simply learning the new software compared with our old software. But, I’m a fast learner, so it didn’t take much to become proficient with these workflows. This new workflow is relatively easy for me because I was extremely knowledgeable with the version of it that we used in our old software, but we’re still working out the kinks.” I hope I recovered from that.

Then it was my turn to ask questions. The questions that I asked got the interviewers talking for several minutes, so I’m hoping that they weren’t thinking about my last question as much as I was. To be so honest that’s all I could think about as they were answering my questions.

Have I fumbled this beyond recovery? My boss and I are close and she knows I have a lot of bad stuff going on in my personal life right now, so part of me is hoping that she’ll cut me some slack for that reason, but at the same time, she shouldn’t do that. Or, am I being my own worst critic?

I’m typing my follow-up emails as well (one for each interviewer), and I plan to send them this afternoon. Is there anything I can say in these emails to try to recover from my fumbles? How can I reiterate that I am the best person for the job via email despite my 2 mistakes in the interview?

Thanks for reading all of this. Any advice is appreciated. I have a lot riding on this, and a lot of people are hoping I get it. I don’t want to let anyone down but I’m feeling like it’s too late.