Are YOU that guest? (spinoff)

WhatFor

Wed, Apr 19 2017, 11:32 pm

A recent post made me wonder what the other side of the story is.

Do you routinely cancel or change plans when someone cooked lunch/dinner for you or your family? Do you invite yourself over last second? Do you bring extra guests along without advising your host in advance? Please explain your side. (Is this normal in your community? You don't think the host minds? etc.)

(One poster mentioned they have fluctuating health conditions but always advise their host in advance. I am not talking about that scenario, where the poster is obviously being considerate and advising the host to prepare for an unavoidable possibility.)

The original post is here: http://www.imamother.com/forum.....53185

amother

Navy

Wed, Apr 19 2017, 11:47 pm

No. Am not that guest. Would be absolutely mortified.

But a couple of years ago, I was supposed to eat day meals of a certain yom tov at a cousins house. 2 meals. And then during chol hamoed, my in laws decided to come to me for the last days. And they refused to eat at that cousins house. They told me I can go but they will stay and eat in my house. Cousin actually called to invite them to his house when he heard they were coming.

To make a long story short, I ended up inviting cousin for those two meals. Bear in mind, it was a full family. Cousin and all his kids including a married couple. All this with 2 days notice. I was a wreck, but it was my own doing. I just figured since cousin was expecting me, the least I could do was invite him to my house. We had a beautiful time, but when I think back to it, boy was it stressful.

groisamomma

Thu, Apr 20 2017, 12:15 am

The only people we host or eat out at are close family. I'll admit this is us. All my siblings are like this but we make it work. On Friday 10:30 am we decided (two weeks before Pesach) that my sister with 5 kids would come to us for Shabbos. It's a 2 hr trip and since both of us had already cooked she just brought her food, linen, and cots for the kids. The night before Shavuos last year I decided I needed a change of scenery so I invited myself to her and we packed up the next day and made the trip. That time I hadn't cooked yet so she stayed up late and cooked. We made side dishes on YT. (DH asked me yesterday about Shavuos plans. He asked for at least 48 hours notice this year lol.) I can't count the amount of times we changed plans erev shabbos or on YT and went/invited siblings and in laws. After much back-and-forth one time, dh's brother showed up in our Succah halfway through the meal. I thought we had left off at No and my SIL thought we'd decided they would come. So the kids split their fish portions (we ran short because it was the last meal!) and everyone waited patiently for me to cook more mashed potatoes. End of story.

I think with family it's much, much easier and less stressful to make it work. I'm not sure how I would handle this outside the family.

amother

Burlywood

Thu, Apr 20 2017, 3:42 am

We live in a community where last-minute invitations are common- granted we only have one kid so far, but ~75% of the invitations we've gotten have come Thursday evening or later. Like as late as Friday night after Maariv for the next morning Smile

We have allergy issues so we usually have to decline. I'd never ask to go to anyone last minute except for close family and then only in a relative emergency like a localized power outage (nearby family is in a different neighborhood that doesn't lose electricity every other month as ours does Rolling Eyes

) or a miscarriage or other incidents of similar nature.