It's at my house. Why oh why do I let it bother me so much? How will I make it through dinner without telling him he's an asshole?
But this is your HouseMate's doing, right? HM #1?
The dinner plans, the whole deal. Maybe I'm not understanding?
The dinner plans and the 'sort of meeting' bit are a stupid and all, but that's not what I'm riled agout. My beef is with the guy whom HM#1 is dating. He's a class A1 hypocrit and hypocrisy drives me up the wall.
I'm with eoe. Find someplace else to be while they're there. Sure, it's your house and all, but why not go see a movie or something?
I think I'm not making myself clear.
In reply with to the title...not so much grit and grimace more just very sad. I found a little dog about 8 months ago running around our street - we couldn't take it but our next door neighbour did. They bought another little dog as company for this one about 1 month later and I loved watching the two frolick, bite, fight then lie down exhausted, with the first dog (who was slightly bigger) act like a proud big brother of the second dog. I can say they seem to have a brotherly love for each other. But the first dog's owner found him last week and naturally my neighbour had to give it back. Now the second dog just lies there, looking very depressed and upset. He's lost his appetite too. Its quite sad looking at him like that. My neighbour says if he keeps it up, they will try to buy another dog as company but personally I don't think its just the same ever again.
My cat lost his sister to the road, and moped dreadfully for a month, while I waited for a nerw kitten.
The two have now been together for 10 years, and adore each other....they are asleep wrapped in each other's arms as we speak.
Animals CAN find love again..
littlek wrote:I think I'm not making myself clear.
F and A are dating AGAIN? why on earth? wha?
Prag, I have limited experience with pups but one thing sticks out. They're highly adaptable and can transfer their feelings if necessary from one person to the next so it stands to reason that another dog will probably be most welcomed eventually.
hearing of the death of letty's husband
this has been a bad year for A2K, cav, joanne and now letty's husband
Oh no, this is the first I learned of it...!
<off to look for more>
I only felt a bit better, after I posted that sad news.
Oh no. I'm so sorry to hear it.
dagmaraka wrote:littlek wrote:I think I'm not making myself clear.
F and A are dating AGAIN? why on earth? wha?
Dag, I know you know how that kind of thing can happen.
i was notified about jd, didn't hear about cav though. it has been a bad year for the a2k family.
My father's been visiting here; he's leaving tonight.
I feel awfully embarassed to realise that's not something that makes me grimace or grit my teeth. I'm actually quite relieved.
It's not like I've spent an awful lot of time with him; he arrived on Monday night, and I had to work usual hours on Wednesday through Friday, and a little this afternoon as well. And he really is a very pleasant, interesting, knowledgeable and kind person.
But he has such an incredibly dominant presence. There's just never a let-up. When you meet him, at least in a one-on-one situation, from the moment you meet till the moment he leaves, he takes all your attention, and thus energy. And all of it is channeled through the head (whereas I'm more a heart-person, at least nowadays, at least when I feel at ease, which I'd like to be feeling, more.)
He talks a LOT - pretty much non-stop. Well, so does my colleague / friend Cs, but she just babbles, charmingly light-heartedly about random trivial subjects. Plus, at least its always a to-and-fro. But with H (my father), it's always serious, in-depth - in short: you have to concentrate.
I'd never been much aware of the breaks and up and down of attention spans in regular conversation, when you're with someone for more than an hour or two - you know, when you browse through a mag together to see whether there's a film playing, or you listen in on the neighbours' conversation for a sec, or you just watch the passers-by and randomly remark on something you observed - never remarked much on that until I became acutely aware that with H, there are never any such moments.
Its not that I dont like talking myself, or that I'm not lively. When my Croatian friend came visiting for a week, I found myself somewhat impatient with the very low-key scribble of her activity tachometer, so to say. Just sitting quiet in a cafe with nothing to say, while around us people were bustling - something she was completely contented with. But with him, on the other hand, there's just no relief: you're soaked in and supposed to listen or at least be there with him from start to finish. I get so incredibly tired.
Its the theoretical stuff especially that gets to me. He's picked up the habit, only a few years ago I think, of digressing into what by now are proper little mini-seminars, twenty minutes on end about the pros and cons of WTO (anti-)protectionist measures, or of some political thinker or other and his legacy, links to others and current relevance. God, I just lose it, and when I notice that I'm just sitting there, clenched and waiting for it to end and realising it will simply NOT end, I panic. Close to proper little anxiety attacks.
I mean, its not that I dont like discussing politics (tho I rarely do outside A2K), about the players and numbers and current developments, but jesus. The choice is either to concentrate and get dog-tired, or kind of dissociate, but then all the sooner get this light-in-the-head panic about not having a clue anymore what he's on about.
And I don't know of any way in which to stop him, in time, without causing a conflict. Without hurting him, for one. Because really, underneath the nowadays blessfully much-eroded dogmatism, there's this screaming need for confirmation, and he takes it pretty badly when you tell him you're just not, well, interested. (At all.) That's worse than disagreeing with him, which he kind of cherishes as a new opportunity to, you know, deepen the interaction (tho I remember all too well that it can then easily scream out of control and get ugly, too).
What to do? Say it anyway, taking the conflict in stride (and he, for one, is of the school that conflict is/can be good, and thats the way to go if you want to solve things. Which made me choose, very deliberately, after some harsh teenage years, to not go that way, when I'd grow up.) So, last night, I eventually did, interrupting (unavoidably) rather rudely, and explaining. He was indeed hurt, but in turn, I have to admit, took it in his stride.
Still I just can't understand how he can really not notice. Well, he is a little older by now, a little over 65. And he's been living on his own for eons. Perhaps that explains how he appears to be just totally oblivious to any signs. When I pointed out, after some hemming and hawing, the obvious: that if I didn't (get to) say anything, at all, for half an hour, he could safely assume that he was doing something wrong, he took it in his stride too (though hurt), yet also insisted that it was not like this, at all, when he talked with my sister. Whereas my sister and I always complain to each other about how he does exactly this. (I didnt dare tell him so - that would be a bit much, all at once.)
Problem with the above, though, basically, is - the result of any such intervention is, that you end up interchanging Scylla for Charybdis. You put an end to the mindnumbing seriousness of theoretical discourse, but you unavoidably get a serious conversation about feelings, and "how that works, then, for you", et cetera, instead.
I tried already, the night before last when something similar happened, to just kind of - say what's up, get the reaction, nod, move on, skipping to a slightly more lighthearted level of interaction. I mean, you don't necessarily need a whole long conversation to make something clear - we've been around this so many times, in the past, it's nothing much more than a reminder anyway - dwelling on it in the end is just not much more than dwelling on it.
My father, however, inevitably, wants to "talk it out", when you do come up and explain that something is bothering you, like this. So last night, instead, we got into a very personal, in-depth conversation about feelings.
Now it was a constructive and interesting enough conversation - learnt some more again, about him, and the past, and perhaps he learned some too. And at least it was a two-way conversation, each chipping in, telling, waiting for the other to answer. But at the same time it kind of underscored my problem, cause it did mean I *still* was stuck in this high-intensity, full-concentration conversation/discussion. Just of a different kind. There's just no relief!
He just doesn't do the fine art of small talk, I suppose. (Tho he was notably better at it, never once launching into a 20-minute monologue, when we were three, meeting up with "Susannah" on Fri night and with Esther yesterday afternoon. Joked a lot, and everything. Was all insecure about it and everything, asking me repeatedly afterwards whether it had been OK.)
Whereas that art wasn't developed for no reason. I'm no star at it myself, but at least I have plenty of silly and playful moments instead (and, with friends, affectionate/cuddly moments that break the conv.) I mean, seriously - several times this week, I found myself going to the toilet a time or two too often, just to get away for a break. He doesn't let you breathe.
Now of course the problem is that, since we only got to meet in the evening, there wasnt any of the going on common outings and so on that dilutes the intensity a bit: it was only just always dinner again - fine dinners, though, that be said. It's less bad if you go somewhere together, an expo or something. Tho Ive even giving up on our traditional long forest walks because I never got to see much of the forest anyway, we were always just talking. And since the alternative was telling him explicitly to shut up for a bit, which results in a tense situation that only yields some quiet for a limited time anyway, it just didnt seem like a winning proposition anymore. And it's not actually that I want him to shut up, at all; it's that I want the interaction, conversation, to be less intense. Which, unless my sister and her little kid are there, seems an impossibility.)
Yep. <nods>
Basically, I've long come to preferring to only meet in full-family context, with mys sis and family there too. And I'm actually pretty much OK with that; it's something I've resigned to years ago, close to ten years ago already perhaps. But he expects much more still, I think, and whenever he gleans my attitude in this matter, he's hurt. But there's just so much politesse I can bolster. I will really have to find a way for him not to come here alone anymore.
