Discombobulated Thoughts — Parental Units Edition

• My parents are visiting.
• I love them very much.
• My father is just a tad bit too set in his ways.
  • Since he’s arrived, I’ve had to remove the closed caption from my tv, which means that I only get about half of what’s said on the shows.
  • We all have to find seating in the living room depending on where he wants to sit, even if someone is already in that seat.
  • He has a real “issue” with the way I’ve set up my lighting in the living room. (This was a serious point of contention on the last visit.)
• They’ve decided that I need to buy a house and they won’t let the subject drop. It’s just depressing the hell out of me because I don’t have the money to put down on a house, I don’t know how anyone ever saves enough money to put 10% or 20% down on a house in Maine, and all of the houses I could afford if I had savings and and made payments equivalent to my apartment rent would be smaller than my apartment, which is not what I want at all. The dream is to have more space, right? At the very least 1500 sq. ft., preferably 1800 sq. ft. With a little garden? A bigger kitchen? Somewhere to actually have a kitchen/dining table? *sigh*
• They’ve really been very helpful during their stay and I’m grateful — my mom actually got down on her hands and knees and cleaned some spots in my carpets that I had trouble with and my dad fixed my outside light and tightened up my entertainment center, adding a few more months’ life to it. Plus, Mom made her famous stroganoff and spaghetti the first two nights.
• Retirement has made them slow to go anywhere. This makes me cranky.
• My routine has been thrown way off.
• My kitchen and living room are extremely cluttered and I never realized how much clutter bothers me when it isn’t mine.
• I am quite sure that they aren’t listening when I tell them things.
  • I have told my father twice that I want to take him out to dinner at Outback (his favorite place and my least favorite) for an early birthday dinner while he’s here. Today when I asked which night he wanted to go, he grumbled, “I can go to Outback back home.” — He was using the tone he uses when he’s tired of spending money on going out to eat. (Mind you, I’ve caught a couple of meals and we’ve eaten in a couple of nights.)
  • I have explained how to use the remote control for the cable several times every day since they’ve arrived to each of them. Last night, after I explained it again to him, I caught him actually berating my mother for not understanding how to use it yet. When I tried to point out that I had just explained the same thing to him, he got pissy.
  • I told my parents multiple times that I’ve trained Pugly not to jump out of the car, but when my dad and my uncle took Pugly with them on their day out, my dad couldn’t understand why Pugly wouldn’t get out of the car and left him in there. Then when he told me this, my mother pointed out that he’d been told that and he insisted he hadn’t. *sigh*
• I love my parents.
• They are very quirky.

Tags: parents, discombobulated