Tag: interactions

A New Set Of Tireds

Just before she lay down her beautiful head to sleep the other night, my wife took the water glass from next to my laptop (I was working on a presentation for the next day around 9:15 that night), sipped from it, and said…

“I’m f***ing tired.  The house is always dirty, I’m being disrespected, I hate this house, if I’m not here cleaning I’m off doing a bunch of other stuff just to keep the boys busy or in school, and I’m sick of it.” 

So, what did I do to respond?  What COULD I do?
She was done for the day. She had gotten up pretty early to go workout, raced home to get our kids in the car for preschool and general out-of-house tasks (what non-stay-at-home parents call Life or Work), and they were going a bit nuts the rest of the day.  I got an earful when I got home from the kids, after a long day and meeting with a local entertainment comedy talent mastermind.  Kids will wear you out.  They will grind on you and they will break you down and they are unreasonable under the age of 5 or 19 and will just beat on your brain walls and sometimes you want to tell them to shut their damn mouths and go the fuck to sleep because you are a grown up, sex has been had, you’ve thrown an angry punch, and paid taxes but not enough to really help this flailing society you want to build a wall around to protect them, so go to sleep.

But you cannot do that.  I cannot.  I’m an adult. I’m nearly 40. I have embraced and accepted all facets of Parenting, which is a much more advanced form of caregiving, and shouldn’t ever be equated to having a pet. [ed. note; Equating child-rearing to pet care is on the same shelf as equating an compound femoral fracture to a sprained finger.  It’s minimizing to do so, and you should really not do it, or I will punt your dog right down the frozen aisle of this Trader Joe’s it’s not even supposed to be in.]  Because I’m an adult.

And no, you cannot flip out on your kids at the ages of 4 and nearly 2. You look like a complete asshole, first, because the kids don’t fully fathom the rage and the cause.  You only scare them, you don’t teach them.  And it’s much much much more frustrating than you’d think it may be to tell a kid for the 5th time who knows what you’re saying to put.
on.
the.
monkey.
underwear.  Then they cry, and it’s like…

“Why are YOU crying? You did this to yourself! 5 times I’ve asked you to put your monkey underbips on and you keep trying to put your bobo on the gorilla pillow!  Put your monkey underpants on, don’t put your business on the monkey!”

As adults, we’re supposed to be in control of things.  I’m not. I control very little.  I control myself, usually (except I’m a bit of a choc-o-holic, GUILTY!), but sometimes I just have to ask somebody at a grocery store “What’s going on here?” I know what’s going on. They are blind to anything else around them, dead-stopped in the aisle, looking at their phone. I promise you, ma’am, you are NOT about to get a prescient message that has the PowerBall numbers.  I can’t always control what happens to me, but I can control whether or not I tell somebody their head is in their ass.

So here’s what I did the other night.
I wrote a note to my wife and left it up on the monitor for her to see in the morning.
This is what it read:

  1. I have a great marriage to a man who loves me and works hard to provide for our family.  He doesn’t gamble or drink or tattoo or buy cars and shit we don’t need.
  2. I have 2 great sons who are young and sometimes they are just little kids who don’t know any better while trying to be funny.
  3. I get tired and that’s OK
  4. My house is a house, not a hut, not on fire, and not a pit in a shitty jungle.
  5. I woke up today healthy.  This is a good start.
  6. My sons woke up today healthy and with food in their house.  This is a good start.
  7. My sons have two parents who love them even if my sons don’t know it yet.
  8. We will be in a new, better-sized house soon and we’ll do it the right way so that we don’t destroy our family financially.
  9. I am a great mom and wife who does what she can to make every day matter to my family.  
  10. For all of these things, I am grateful.

Here’s what I did NOT do, after she made her statement of frustration and walked away with my glass of water while I worked on my presentation…

“Hey hon?  Hon?
Could I get that water back?”

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Faithful or Paranoid?

There’s a huge difference between the Faithful and the Paranoid. I see religious people reciting or posting or quoting Biblical references all the time – this may happen with the Muslim community as well, though I’ve yet to see them quote the Koran in a facebook post – and I’m not sure why.

I was raised going to church a LOT.  And the messages haven’t really stuck.  The interactions with some people have, though.  That old saying of how you’ll always remember how somebody made you feel rings very true.  I can’t remember every sermon, hymn, or Sunday School lesson, but I do know the difference between Faith and Paranoia.

Faith, they say, is the unshakeable belief and confidence in the reality of things you cannot see.  It is usually a belief in a deity or in the doctrines of a belief system which work FOR the benefit of the Faithful.
Paranoia, however, is defined as a repetitive thought pattern fueled by anxiety about an unseen or misperceived threat. 

Faith is ordering a drink and knowing it will eventually arrive at your table and be as you expected it to be.
Paranoia is thinking the drink won’t show up on time and when it does it will be awful and probably poisoned.

The thin line between Faithful and Paranoid bisects the gray area between “Realistically Positive” and “Realistically Negative.”  And when somebody of Faith tells anybody else what they are doing is wrong and will doom them based on the doctrines of a faith the listener doesn’t adhere to, the Faithful has then become a Paranoid scorekeeper. 

Amen.

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Condo and Condon’t; What I’ve Learned As a Condo Association Board Member

… and how it pertains to real life.

  1. You are part of a community, like it or not, big or small, populated or wooded, and you can either be a good part or a bad part.
  2. Paying your dues to the association is part of being in the association’s budget so that your neighbor’s fence gets repaired with some of your money, and your backed-up sewer line gets fixed and your floors replaced with some of my money when the poop hits the Pergo. 
  3. Everybody wants a package of comfort that is packed with varying sizes of the same items: Security, Financial Stability, Quiet Hours, Nice Neighbors, Cleanliness, Rules.
  4. Not everybody, in fact, most people, won’t do much to reinforce or model that behavior.
  5. There is always, always, always a neighbor who everybody thinks is crazy and is probably legally crazy, but they always think everybody else is crazy.
  6. I wish the people of the association were all doing so greatly that there were no issues financially or physically to deal with, but that will never ever be the case.
  7. The amount of work to be done is inverse to the amount of money to pay for that work. 
  8. The priority of the work is perceived by whomever needs their walls to stop leaking.
  9. The priority of the work is determined by whomever holds the checkbook. 
  10. Never never never ever buy a condominium older than 10 years. 
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Alone In Public

We spent some time in a small berg in Eastern Washington the other day, picking the day that was both the hottest day of the year AND the most-crowded day of the year in that berg.  The effect 11 degrees Fahrenheit can have on one’s ability to throttle age or odor-related epithets in a crowd is REAL, folks.  And having a very curious toddler weaving across foot traffic into ANOTHER store selling kettle corn… WHO NEEDS THIS MUCH KETTLE CORN… compounds one’s calm demeanor, even when your dopamine levels should be up.

I don’t know if I have ever had a real panic attack.  I feel like I’ve teetered on the edge a few times, and frankly I am over-tired of people who act like my need to excuse myself from cacophonous areas and tightly-packed rooms is a weakness.  I am grown up.  I am an adult.  There are some times I can totally tough it out.  And other times I have nothing to prove to a small store full of strangers, none of us making eye contact, while a 3 year-old yanks porcelain figures off the “DO NOT TOUCH EVEN THOUGH THIS IS AT TODDLER LEVEL” display.  And as my head filled with white noise and people seemed to gear-down from “sloooow” to “barely moving,” I had to get out.  The medical term is “get the fuck out right now.”

The feeling of being stuck is bad enough for me to deal with.  There’s something about being penned-in that bothers me greatly, even though I can see there’s NOTHING dangerous happening.  I think more it’s the fact that I look at people’s faces and they seem to be totally unaffected by the mass they have created.  Same thing in traffic.  I know, I’m part of the mass, but why isn’t anybody moving?  Why aren’t we moving a little more quickly, even a half-step more? Add to that a kid who is eye-to-butt with a lot of people and is touching things he’s not supposed to only because we’ve made a horrible choice to come into the Crystal Solitude retail outlet, and how about I just scream and run out with my kid over my shoulder like the dam burst?  Because that seems more rational than the 8 minute route we’re taking to the exit.

My real issue with this is that my need to loosen up my bounds is looked upon like some personality disorder.  For some reason, be it that I don’t like crowds that cannot move properly, or I am an Aquarius and can only take some much of being surrounded, or because I’m somewhat neurotic about keeping my kid from side-arming a $395 ceramic Halloween Gnome across the room, my “must have space” need gets the stink eye from  people.  And with our society slowing down thanks to technology (I am advocating a roped-off area for all publicly-standing texters) it’s only going to get worse.  But not for me. 

I am making a pledge right now that I will be more vocal about people slowing things down, walking the wrong way, leaving their grocery carts unattended, staring at their phones, being rude, and in general, acting like they are alone in public.  Because that sounds lovely, and if I can’t have it, everybody won’t.

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