The Worst Game
It would be helpful if this was more like a game show. The kind where you could raise your left hand with a blue paddle and your right hand with a yellow one. The master of ceremonies (let’s just pretend it's Travis Kelce) announces a request and then S and I quickly decide…. is this a blue situation (for manipulation) or is this a yellow situation (for legitamate concern of an aging human.) But noooo * We cannot decide quickly. Ever. We are constantly faced with situations and requests and complaints that are a mixture of manipulation and valid and there is no fun to be had.
** This isn’t how footnotes work but I wanted to point out how I cleverly used one of my favorite lyrics from my favorite 1989 vault track from the incomperable Taylor Swift.
We are equally mad when we rush to her side for a fake problem as we are mad when we ignore something that turns out to be real. This morning seemed easy. Home with sick T yesterday I was heads down deeply focused in a creative project and didn’t pay attention to the fact that it was the day I had to go refill the pill containers which meant that first thing this morning S got the call that we needed to take care of that. Of course she could have called yesterday. That would’ve been great. But she doesn’t work like that. She also shared that the smoke alarm in her room has a low battery and so it was beeping all night. (can you imagine?). So instead of starting work early I got the ladder in the truck and headed to her house to get it all taken care of. And then of course while I was there I was assaulted by the news that she really does intend to move out of the room she has been living in and put her house back the way it was. Before the fire. I didn’t have it in me to even respond. We could have set her up in the main room last year but she agreed to set up in the master bedroom right next to her bathroom. It is a large room. Maybe larger than the same space in her apartment. For sure much larger than the space she occupied in my basement. So what is the plan? If she moves the bedroom to the living room then what happens to the furniture in the living room? Don’t even think about the bedroom as a swap becuase of course the bedroom needs the bed in it. The fake bed. The bed she has never and will never sleep in becuase she prefers the couch. The couch that in no way is contributing to her ongoing back problems (just ask her). Also she didn’t like the couch in the living room before becuase she felt exposed with the door sidelight because people (what people??) could see in. Is this one of those conversations where we need to keep responding with “and then what? and then what and then what?” until we get to the part that cannot happen (living downstairs)?? I do not have near enough mental energy stored up for that. Not even close.
So I ignored it and followed her to the porch so she could ask me what was in a box. “It’s a VCR” . She tells me we’ll need to get that hooked up when we figure out whre the TV is going. I don’t tell her she doesn’t have any video tapes because I’m pretty sure they were in the “get rid of” pile but they very well could be in one of those unmarked boxes in the basement. I don’t react at all. I just move the box.
And then she tells me about problems she is having at the bank and even though I am sure I gave her the info to figure this out before and I am definitely sick of hearing about it but then she tells me what has happened this week and I am instantly mad at myself because if I had just taken over on this one task it wouldn’t have spiraled out of control to this very bad place that noone could have seen coming. I just never felt like “get to the bottom of his $18 reoccuring charge” was a priority.. particularly given how much money she just wastes on overstock each month but here we are. I guessed wrong on that one. That one was definitely a yellow paddle and I played blue.