Spent as much time in the vicinity of My Fucking Father than I have in, well, years. He pissed me off, and then he also treated me well, and so I gave him both reactions in return. I guess this is what a normal relationship with your father looks like.
I came home last night seeing a huge pail on a dining room chair. It had dirty water in it. Besides that being fucking gross -- he complains about me keeping my room dirty and yet he lets brown water sit on a dining room chair the whole night? -- that set my plans for tomorrow. Man, I hoped he would be in a good mood so I could just lie in the filth of my bed and watch football all day. But now I had to, gulp, fuckin' clean.
Oh well. They erected the LCD TV I bought at Target Black Friday, so I might as well watch there as I blog and clean the plant of dust. One of the big reasons I haven't started cleaning the house or my room is, pains me to say it, I don't know how. I mean, there's a formula you use for the cleaning solution; you don't use water. But what do you use? Detergent? Dish soap? Windex? Just water? And how much water do you carry? And where are the rags? And when do you dispose of the water and get new water?
In the end I just went downstairs, grabbed a pail and turned on the water. I was wiping the leaves of the plant while watching football, with some broom-and-pan work and some taking-the-pop-out-of-my-car-and-put-it-outside-the-refrigerator work sprinkled in. That was working well, and I was feeling productive, so I decided to do something that had been bugging me for some time: I finally cleaned my air vent and the dust and shit that settled on the bottom. Man, it really felt good to get all that stuff out of there and wipe it clean. Now I won't think that I'm breathing crap when the heat turns on.
I didn't finish before my parents came home, and it was a somewhat strategic move. I didn't think Father was going to be in a good mood. I don't like to be manipulated into doing things by non-verbal messages such as a left-out pail of dirty water, but I didn't want to hear any bullshit from him about not cleaning. So I left it out to show him that I did do something this afternoon.
That's when he started to ... well, not piss me off but exasperate me. I had the broom and dustpan out. He saw it, then told me to move some of the furniture around, but not before cleaning the floor under it. "You want me to wipe it down?" I ask him. "No, just sweep," he said. I did all that. OK, you're home, you're not angry, I can drain the water downstairs and take a nap, right?
No. While I was finishing cleaning my vent, he took the pail of dirty water, walked across the way to the living room (which we rarely use) and starts wiping everything down. What is he doing? It may not have been the cleanest, but it certainly didn't need a wipe-down right that second (although this is coming from a guy who can live in filth for a long time). But that's exactly what he did.
Now, another reason why I never cleaned around the house is because I hated the thought of doing it alone. There's so much space to cover, so much shit you have to move around, and if you really want to do a good job, you'll have to devote a large amount of your time. It's football season, so, no, maybe I'll do it in the summer. However, if there's someone there to share the burden, someone that could halve the time it takes to complete such an arduous task, it's that much more tolerable. And I really didn't want him to do all of this alone.
So, I joined in. It was no fun spending time working on my hands and knees, getting into places I don't think I crawled in since I was a kid. But there was a lot of dust in the corners of the living room, especially under and on the piano. Not anymore, even though what we did was a half-ass job.
Done! No, not so fast. My Fucking Father then went back to the other side, the side where we moved all the furniture, and started washing the entire fucking floor over there -- even the areas where he told me to just sweep. Why are you going back there? I felt I had no choice but to help out, so I went to the other corner and started scrubbing away at the somewhat-nasty area in front of the back door, where all the show tracks were.
Meanwhile, Father was really getting into it. He took the dishwasher soap from the kitchen and poured in onto the floor! Can you do that? Is that what dishwasher soap is intended for? Then he grabbed the steel wool and started scraping away and Buddha-knows-what at where the floor meets the wall, all along the wall. Then, without sarcasm, he says, "See? If you clean, you feel good." You fucking kidding me? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!?! I knew My Fucking Father was strange, moody, even juvenile at times, but this is a different new low altogether.
I had to dial it back at this point; if he says that and means it, I can't ever clean to a level that'll make him happy. And since I basically ran out of places that would even merit a second thought to clean, I stopped. Throughout this afternoon he told me to get away from him or stop and watch football, and he does this by repeating it very quickly: "nonononono," or "don'tworrydon'tworrydon'tworry," or "OKOKOKOKOKOK," or "stopstopstopstopstop." I couldn't really stop until I realized you love to clean shit, Dad.
But eventually he did stop, the sign where I knew he would being when he took that fucking pail downstairs and didn't come back up with it -- but not before cleaning the stairs. I actually thought about cleaning the stairs too, so I did a little, prompting Father to again say, "nononononono." Maybe it was because I was doing the same thing he was, but he quickly took the pail away.
I didn't quite know what to do at that point. I hovered around him so long, and dinner was about ready, so when he sat down on the chair that was moved to that new spot, I sat on a dining room chair and we both watched football for a half-hour. He wasn't being a dick; he actually talked about some things going on in the game. And I responded normally. It was like a father and son watching the game on a Sunday afternoon. I don't think I've done that in a long time. It was actually quite pleasant.
But then during dinner my Grandmother came home and gave me $100 because she won a lot of my at the casino this afternoon. And then My Fucking Father shot me and said, "Why are you taking that? You don't need the money. Give it back to her!" Unlike you, I listen to what she has to say, and besides, she still does owe me money. Asshole. Good thing my mom stepped in and said to hold onto it until she asks you for more money. He dropped the subject and talked about football again. Good to know you're not holding on to things, dad. I'm even starting to believe you.
And then he showed off even more of his moods later when he needed to copy his Medicare card. He destroyed a copy he did have when he forgot to take it out of his jeans before washing them. But the copier/printer we had was out of ink. He didn't know how to change it, so I had to come down -- right before the plane crashed on Desperate Housewives -- and change the ink cartridges for him. I rushed myself just because I didn't want to be judged in case he didn't like what he did, and sure enough, I screwed up. There were these orange stays that held up the notches you push to slide the cartridges into place. The cartridges didn't fit in exactly where they should have, and now I couldn't pull them back up because those stays jammed them in there. So I had to get My Father, who used a screwdriver to pry them out. I didn't tell him what I did wrong, but he figured it out. He didn't yell at me, and in a sign of our thawing relations, I don't think he thought bad of me, either.
But it still didn't work. The magenta worked fine and the yellow seemed to be OK, but there was no black. He waved me off again, saying, as usual, "OKOKOKOK, ItakecareItakecareItakecare," so I went back upstairs to see the Vikings lose, only to hear him yell at Mother, who was kind of taunting him, and so I went back downstairs.
He wanted to copy his Medicare card now, and badly, even though Mother told me they could easily do it with the fax at the store tomorrow. There was some ridicule on her part, but I kind of took my father's side because he was right in being somewhat exasperated that it wouldn't copy. We fucked around with it, didn't work, and then we stopped.
Until 10:30, when I wanted to try just one more time. And soon as I fuckin' sat my ass down, out comes My Father like Lassie to Timmy, telling me what he now thinks is the problem. He was nice to me because he wanted something, but I think I got it to the point where it would totally copy the card, even though it came out rosy red. Good enough for Mom, who cut out the copy and stuffed it into the envelope, and so I went upstairs to see the last 10 minutes of Seinfeld, 20 minutes after I planned to quitl
I didn't realize until I typed that last paragraph that he was acting like a helpless child following me to the computer room when I tried to fix the printer/copier again. He couldn't do it himself. But at least he wasn't being a prick.
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