Unsolicited, unappreciated, undesirable

If anyone has read anything I've written so far, you'll know I am very easily annoyed. One thing that has been REALLY annoying me lately is unsolicited advice. It gets really bad when you're pregnant, then even worse when you actually have the baby.

We had no electricity this morning and my boobs were numbingly painful due to my milk coming in with a vengeance this morning. So Peter had to drop me off at Jenn's to use her electricity to use my breast pump to relieve some of the pressure in my pecs. We were discussing this whole pet peeve of unwanted advice, being in similar situations. This is what we decided.

Unsolicited advice from neutral parties/strangers? Slightly OK. Inconsequential, so you can take it or leave it without taking anything personally.

Unsolicited advice from acquaintances? Can go either way. Depending on the person and the relationship you have with them, you can take it into consideration, ignore it, or get annoyed. In most cases, they're just trying to be helpful. But really, who are they to tell me what to do or suggest that they know better? I, being easily annoyable, most usually just get annoyed.

Unsolicited advice from family members/in-laws? The worst. For some reason, they can say the EXACT same thing that a friend said, but when they say it, it makes you angry. You even feel rebellious. Why is that? Why is it that when you get unwanted advice from these kind of people, you want to do the opposite? Is it just to hack them off and somehow get a weak dose of revenge?

Peter and his mom got in an argument today when my dad came over to see the baby. She was telling my dad that the baby will catch a cold because we don't dress him warmly enough. This, although widely believed by most old wives, has been disproven by actual scientists in actual labs. Peter and his mother have had this same argument repeatedly, one of those times also in front of my dad. Peter gets annoyed when she dispels "medical advice" that goes against what he knows to be true, but I think that these old wives' tales are inpenetrable. Doesn't matter how much science contradicts, people will always believe them. On the same note, when my mom came by earlier, she yelled at me for not wearing socks. I am now doomed to have arthritis when I am an old wife myself.

I love how most Korean old wives' tales are full of doom and gloom. Being more Americanized, I hardly know any. For those of you in the same boat, let me share a couple I learned from Alice. Sleep with the fan on, you will die. Drink soda after eating crabs, you will die. I can't remember the others, but they all foretell imminent death.

Anyway, don't give me advice unless I ask you for it. That's the conclusion of this long drawn entry.