When I underwake slightly from my alarm on Tuesday, I decide that rather than swimming laps before work, I'll go to work early so I can leave early to join them at the water park; I want to surprise the grandchildren, who have been asking what days I'm off and practically begging me to go swimming with them.
I experience an unavoidable delay in leaving work, waiting for a deliverable from a coworker who will be out of the office starting the next day for a surgery. We debate via text whether to still surprise the grandchildren or save it for another time. We decide to still try to make it happen.
I get the file my coworker needs me to have and head out the door. I arrive at the water park during adult swim time, and she asks if I want to take advantage of the chance go down the water slides. I misunderstand which one she's talking about and climb the stairs for the one that it turns out she won't do because it's too tall for her comfort level. By the time I get down it, adult swim time is over, so for some reason that means we can't go ahead and do the one she wanted to. The youngest local grandson has been dealing with an irritated eye, so he leaves the pool for the seating area, and I follow him. A few minutes later grandma gives him a hard time for not telling her he was leaving the pool area, which he probably didn't think he needed to do because I was with him. It's clear from her tone, though she doesn't say as much, that I should have told her. And there is a time constraint on when the kids have to be home, so she and our granddaughter go to get changed and I end up with only about 45 minutes at the pool with them. Basically, the afternoon activity I was looking forward to was almost a complete bust, with the additional effect of making her feel like I didn't care about her wishes.
I get home first, as she has to take the grandchildren home. She has hamburgers thawed, but it's still 90° outside, and I have prayer group in a little while, so I decide to broil them in the toaster oven rather than fire up the grill and turn myself into a sweaty mess. When she gets back from taking the grandkids home, I'm told that cooking them this way is, um, unsatisfactory. (I can't remember if the actual adjective was "gross," "nasty" or "yuk.") When we eat them, I think they turned out pretty tasty - though not as good as grilled - but don't receive any feedback from her whatsoever, so I assume that I am alone in that opinion.
I leave for prayer group, setting my expectations for afterward pretty low, probably a repeat of her late tv viewing of the last couple nights. Basically, I just prepare for the worst.
I get home from prayer group to a pleasant surprise: she's doing the dishes rather than watching tv. She has washed up a few items to empty the left side of the sink. I help out a little, but have to leave the room when I see that she is going to handle the remaining dishes four times to wash them. (1. empty the right side of the sink/stack the dishes in the left side; 2. fill the right side of the sink with soapy water and put the dishes back in it; 3. wash the dishes and set them down in the left side of the sink to rinse them; 4. rinse the dishes and put them in the dish drainer.)
I return to the kitchen and we have a laugh over where our daughters get their OCD characteristics from. I had never really noticed before, but she had.
After having handled the dishes twice to immerse them in the soapy water (rather than using the direct foam detergent that I would have selected if I had been doing the dishes), she joins me in the living room. I see that it's about 9:25, and figure that if there is any hope at all of our retiring together for the evening at a decent hour, it is going to be up to me to start washing the dishes that are soaking in the sink. So I start in on them, now not using the direct foam detergent that I would have selected if I had been doing the dishes. I am therefore now washing the dishes they way she likes to rather than the way I prefer to. Still, I manage in the moment not to be upset about either the fact that I'm doing this chore this late or that I'm doing it her way. After all, I'm pretty sure that it was not her intention for me to take this over for her. I don't think at any point that she has manipulated me into this. (If, in fact, she has, she should never tell me and never do it again.)
At about 10:05 the dishes are finished and we begin making our way to bed. I realize that the dog hasn't been let out yet, so I do that, because the alternative would be to fall asleep waiting for her.
At no point does she express any appreciation for my having cooked dinner nor washed dishes - a fair number of which were still left from Saturday evening - but in fairness regarding that latter factoid, she had been the only one to wash any of them from our dinner on Saturday. I had washed up quite a few things from my pie-baking, though.
We go to bed, and playfully hug and kid around and kiss for a few minutes, when I feel a muscle in my back starting to twitch repeatedly. Curious whether she'd be able to feel it, too, I ask her to move her hand - her left hand, the one she has wrapped around me - to her right a little. She moves it to her left, instead. When I point this out, instead of just moving it the other way, she insists that she did move it to her right. She asks why I wanted her to move her hand anyway, and I explained that I wanted to see if she could feel my back muscle twitching, but that would have meant moving her hand in the direction I indicated. Except the way I expressed that probably wasn't such a good idea: I teased that this would have required knowing her right from her left. She now has no idea which way I want her to move her hand from where it is, so she lowers it to my hip and, basically, goes to sleep. And there go my hopes for the evening, following those of the rest of the day.
I remain awake for five additional hours, moving from our bed to the upstairs sofa curled around a sofa pillow, back to our bed, to the guest bed, back to our bed again (I think; I've lost track now), downstairs to watch a recorded Mythbusters, and finally, back to our bed. I shut off my alarm, as there is no way I want to try to get up in three hours. I figure I'll just call in sick for the morning.
I sleep soundly until a thunderstorm and an upset dog awaken me at almost the exact minute that my alarm would have gone off. I do manage another 90 minutes of additional rest.
I know that this just a matter of my whole life being "crackers."
I leave for prayer group, setting my expectations for afterward pretty low, probably a repeat of her late tv viewing of the last couple nights. Basically, I just prepare for the worst.
I get home from prayer group to a pleasant surprise: she's doing the dishes rather than watching tv. She has washed up a few items to empty the left side of the sink. I help out a little, but have to leave the room when I see that she is going to handle the remaining dishes four times to wash them. (1. empty the right side of the sink/stack the dishes in the left side; 2. fill the right side of the sink with soapy water and put the dishes back in it; 3. wash the dishes and set them down in the left side of the sink to rinse them; 4. rinse the dishes and put them in the dish drainer.)
I return to the kitchen and we have a laugh over where our daughters get their OCD characteristics from. I had never really noticed before, but she had.
After having handled the dishes twice to immerse them in the soapy water (rather than using the direct foam detergent that I would have selected if I had been doing the dishes), she joins me in the living room. I see that it's about 9:25, and figure that if there is any hope at all of our retiring together for the evening at a decent hour, it is going to be up to me to start washing the dishes that are soaking in the sink. So I start in on them, now not using the direct foam detergent that I would have selected if I had been doing the dishes. I am therefore now washing the dishes they way she likes to rather than the way I prefer to. Still, I manage in the moment not to be upset about either the fact that I'm doing this chore this late or that I'm doing it her way. After all, I'm pretty sure that it was not her intention for me to take this over for her. I don't think at any point that she has manipulated me into this. (If, in fact, she has, she should never tell me and never do it again.)
At about 10:05 the dishes are finished and we begin making our way to bed. I realize that the dog hasn't been let out yet, so I do that, because the alternative would be to fall asleep waiting for her.
At no point does she express any appreciation for my having cooked dinner nor washed dishes - a fair number of which were still left from Saturday evening - but in fairness regarding that latter factoid, she had been the only one to wash any of them from our dinner on Saturday. I had washed up quite a few things from my pie-baking, though.
We go to bed, and playfully hug and kid around and kiss for a few minutes, when I feel a muscle in my back starting to twitch repeatedly. Curious whether she'd be able to feel it, too, I ask her to move her hand - her left hand, the one she has wrapped around me - to her right a little. She moves it to her left, instead. When I point this out, instead of just moving it the other way, she insists that she did move it to her right. She asks why I wanted her to move her hand anyway, and I explained that I wanted to see if she could feel my back muscle twitching, but that would have meant moving her hand in the direction I indicated. Except the way I expressed that probably wasn't such a good idea: I teased that this would have required knowing her right from her left. She now has no idea which way I want her to move her hand from where it is, so she lowers it to my hip and, basically, goes to sleep. And there go my hopes for the evening, following those of the rest of the day.
I remain awake for five additional hours, moving from our bed to the upstairs sofa curled around a sofa pillow, back to our bed, to the guest bed, back to our bed again (I think; I've lost track now), downstairs to watch a recorded Mythbusters, and finally, back to our bed. I shut off my alarm, as there is no way I want to try to get up in three hours. I figure I'll just call in sick for the morning.
I sleep soundly until a thunderstorm and an upset dog awaken me at almost the exact minute that my alarm would have gone off. I do manage another 90 minutes of additional rest.
I know that this just a matter of my whole life being "crackers."
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