Daddy's girl
Jun. 18th, 2007 09:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
constanceBoy, am I glad to be back at work, after a Father's Day spent with a father determined to pretend (very badly) not to be angry at me, pretend badly enough that I recognize immediately that not only is he angry with me after all, but that he wants me to see that he is angry with me and that he is furthermore martyring himself by pretending not to be angry so that we can spend Father's Day together without being at odds. He wants credit for his goddamn generosity, man, but he kind of cancels out the generosity by being, as is often the case, a pigheaded control freak in a towering rage.
Of course, I totally asked for it by having the execrable taste to be backed into in a parking lot two days before Father's Day. Damage: slight (a cracked fender and a scrape which is mostly paint off the other car). Liability: hers and not mine (she backed into me, as I was driving down an aisle, and what's more, she hit my back fender, which means she had plenty of time to see me and stop before she hit). Do these things matter? Not a jot. Not when my father is primed to be angry.
This is what life with my dad is like sometimes. It is a little like having a four-year-old for a father. His capricious temper more or less unrelated to logic, his constant implication that anything done which puts him out in any way could somehow have been avoided but deliberately was not avoided. His constant need to make certain that we are wrong and he is right at all times, even when he contradicts himself while voicing this need. (Sample conversation from yesterday: "I don't wear an XL shirt. I wear a 2XL." "But Dad, when I got you those shirts for Christmas, you got mad because they were 2XL and not XL." "I couldn't have -- I wear a 2XL." "Well, you did." [curmudgeonly silence])
I love my father, despite these traits which make me perfectly crazy (in him, and by extension in anyone who shares them). But sometimes he just exhausts me, when I spend all my time trying to second-guess his mood and guess how best to deflect his rages. Life at work is easy by comparison. :/
:::
At home, I am beginning to make some attempt to plumb my guest room sink (the bathroom was left half-complete when the last owner moved out). Wish me luck. *gets out waders and washers*
Of course, I totally asked for it by having the execrable taste to be backed into in a parking lot two days before Father's Day. Damage: slight (a cracked fender and a scrape which is mostly paint off the other car). Liability: hers and not mine (she backed into me, as I was driving down an aisle, and what's more, she hit my back fender, which means she had plenty of time to see me and stop before she hit). Do these things matter? Not a jot. Not when my father is primed to be angry.
This is what life with my dad is like sometimes. It is a little like having a four-year-old for a father. His capricious temper more or less unrelated to logic, his constant implication that anything done which puts him out in any way could somehow have been avoided but deliberately was not avoided. His constant need to make certain that we are wrong and he is right at all times, even when he contradicts himself while voicing this need. (Sample conversation from yesterday: "I don't wear an XL shirt. I wear a 2XL." "But Dad, when I got you those shirts for Christmas, you got mad because they were 2XL and not XL." "I couldn't have -- I wear a 2XL." "Well, you did." [curmudgeonly silence])
I love my father, despite these traits which make me perfectly crazy (in him, and by extension in anyone who shares them). But sometimes he just exhausts me, when I spend all my time trying to second-guess his mood and guess how best to deflect his rages. Life at work is easy by comparison. :/
:::
At home, I am beginning to make some attempt to plumb my guest room sink (the bathroom was left half-complete when the last owner moved out). Wish me luck. *gets out waders and washers*
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Date: 2007-06-18 05:58 pm (UTC)And you are so right that picking out presents is a horrifying ordeal! I was so careful about this shirt, too! I mean, I got him something else as well, but I also made him a t-shirt, in the size I was sure he wanted, a Godfather (http://www.phoneuploader.stellernet.com/dl.php/699/Godfather_God_Father_001.jpg) image photshopped to read The Grandfather (which plays on both his love of gangster movies and his personal choice for his Grandfather name, which is Parrain, French for Godfather). And I still got it wrong -- but at least I can make him another in a size 2XL, assuming I can control my own temper enough to start over without leaving scorch marks all over the shirt.
Come to think of it, dealing with him is a little like what I imagine dealing with a mafia boss must be like! Only without the good chance of actual death, of course. :D