Stressors

Also known as "My Parents."

I know I was all excited to that they were coming to visit and I’m glad they did, but I miss my solitude. I also tend to forget all their irritating little habits when I’m not around them for a while. Like how unbelievably hard of hearing my father is. It makes going places like restaurants sort of awful because he can never hear the waiters and then tells them in this really patronizing sort of tone that he doesn’t hear well and that they need to speak up. It also makes it impossible to talk to him in places where raising your voice is frowned upon, like museums. Despite the fact that there’s practically no background noise at all, so you’re absolutely the only voice anyone hears. They also take an unbearably long time to get anywhere. They linger. This is actually a new trait, and I think they picked it up in Vermont. For example, it’s finally turned cold today. It’s in the low 30’s and windy and just really unpleasant. And both times we got out of the car, they just seemed to sit there and dawdle. I don’t even know why they did because I was already down the hill and halfway to the house. Like I was going to stand there and wait! It was freezing! And I let my dad use my computer because he said he wanted to be able to check his email. He said it was just so that he’d have something to do when he woke up at 4 AM (he always does). He spent a frickin’ hour writing an email to some friend of his and then watched sailing videos. When he knows that I’ve been working on NaNoWriMo! It’s bad enough that I have gotten almost no writing done since they got here, but he wants to take what time I get to write and waste it on videos just because he’s not used to having fast internet. So now I’m WAY behind on my novel and I’m going to have to play serious fucking catch-up once they leave. I’m almost 4,000 words behind! Seriously! Maybe when I go to bed I’ll stay up for a while and write instead of sleeping. Just to boost the numbers a little bit.

They are also eating me out of house and home. Seriously. On Monday I had more than a dozen and a half eggs. Now I’m down to five. More than a dozen eggs in three days? Come ON! I eat one a day, so that means my dad is eating three a day. WTF?! I guess I won’t be surprised when the heart attack finally comes. And they don’t seem interested in telling me what they’d like for dinner so I can’t buy anything, even though I’ve said over and over that I didn’t get a lot of food because I wasn’t sure what they’d want. o_0 It seems to have slipped my mom’s mind (as usual) that I don’t eat pork products, so she keeps suggesting BLT’s. Like we need to go through even more bread?? They’ve already used up a loaf and a half and that’s just of the bread they bought. They also took a big chunk out of the one I already had. I’m just really fucking frustrated.

On top of that, Alan isn’t even here for me to vent to, which is why you guys get to read about it. He did get a couple days off, but had to go back out in the field yesterday afternoon. Woe and suck. And did I mention that we’re broke? I swear I don’t know where our money goes! So I have virtually no money to buy more food until the 15th. And then I have to pay the bills that I couldn’t pay that were due this past week. Even more woe and suck.

Mostly, I just miss my time to myself. I’m never this busy, this "out and about." On Tuesday we went to Garden of the Gods and hiked for a while in the afternoon, then went out to dinner at the Chinese place down the street (so good). Yesterday we dropped Alan off, then went and explored the Manitou Cliff Dwellings. Today we went to the Air Force Academy, then saw "Secretariat" at the movie theater. And we’re going to go to Noodles & Co for dinner because once again, my mom suggested BLT’s. I suggested Noodles & Co because it’s cheap and easy and something different. It’s like the McDonald’s of noodles.

One more irritating habit… they turn every fucking light in the house on and leave it on! The really really fucking idiotic part of that, is that they’re really conscientious about turning them off in their own home. Why the hell should mine be any different? It’s especially stupid because they’re house is set in the woods with no streetlights or close neighbors and the windows are almost universally shaded, whereas mine has huge windows and a fucking sliding glass door. Light is NOT an issue here and I don’t usually have ANY lights on during the day except in the kitchen. And if it gets above 55 fucking degrees they seem to think it’s summer and roll down the car windows or open the door like I’m not sitting here freezing my as off. And the clutter in that second bedroom! I just…. ARGH!

So. Fucking. ANNOYING!

Ugh.

Sorry. I’m bitching a lot, I know. I’m just not used to my parents anymore and I think they’ve actually gotten worse. They never used to annoy me this much. Now it’s like I can’t stand to be around them for any length of time. When I go back east sometime next year I think I will be spending as little time in Vermont as I can get away with. My original plan was to go to Connecticut, rent a car, stay with Lisa and Kurt and Zach, and visit with my friends and Alan’s family for four or five days, then drive to Vermont to spend some time with my parents before driving back down to Hartford and flying back to Colorado. Now I’m think more like a week in CT and a few days at most in VT. It’s not like there’s anything to do there anyway.

One good side effect of my parents’ presence. I guess there was a big windstorm in CT and someone called my dad’s cell phone to tell him that his boat had blown over. Well, my dad called Cove to see what that was all about because he doesn’t have a boat there at the moment, so I got to talk to Erin for a few minutes before I had to drive Alan over to the post. So yay for that!

I think once they leave I’m going to spend fifteen minutes just standing in each room, reveling in the renewal of my solitude. LOL! I know that being social is important, blah, blah, blah, but I think I’m really happiest when I have a lot of time to do my own thing. Like writing… which is what I really should be doing with this time before dinner, seeing as I’m so behind on my word count. I know my parents want to watch "The Dark Knight" tonight because they haven’t seen it. My dad wanted to borrow it, but they don’t have a Blu-Ray player so they’ll have to use the Playstation.  I can write while they’re watching and then write a little more after they go to bed. Tomorrow we’re taking the Cog Railway to the top of Pike’s Peak (woohoo!) and then my mom’s friend, Fred is coming to pick up the harp that they brought out here for him. He’s staying the night, which kind of sucks, but I didn’t want to seem inhospitable, and he is taking us out to dinner. My dad will probably be visiting with his former ski student, Aaron, who lives in Denver. They’re meeting up in Castle Rock. At any rate, it’s easy enough to unfold the futon and fork over a couple blankets. I may just need to get more eggs and bread before then if he wants any breakfast! Hell, I’ll need more eggs if I want any breakfast. And Saturday we’re going to wander around Manitou Springs, which is always entertaining. I think I’ll bring an empty water bottle so I can try all of the springs. Anyway, I just needed to get on here to get all this off my chest. I miss Alan and I miss my peace and quiet.

~Liz

P.S. Eventually I will be feeling much less bitchy and stressed out. At that point I will describe and possibly post pictures of all the really cool things I’ve done over the past few days. But not until I’ve had a chance to break down and cry and throw things. LOL.