Sunday, January 20, 2013

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

Slightly annoyed with my family right now. I sometimes feel like I'm the only person aware of the happenings in this household. Of course, I'm being melodramatic, because honestly I don't really give a flying flip, but it just goes to show how things are run here.

Example: The printers in our house have been broken for about two months now. When I first noticed this, and became frustrated with this, nobody gave a shit. I was talking to myself. And so, I gave up, because no one else seemed to care about the printers, so why should I? I could always print from work.

Now the tables have turned. My sister is back in college, sure. She needs to print. Sure. But instead of asking me to help her with this issue, she has a secret pow-wow with my mother in which she complains that the printers don't work.

I actually hadn't even noticed the printer had been relocated, until my mother asked why it wasn't working. "Why isn't the printer working?" She asks me out of the blue this morning.

"I don't know, I told you guys that it wasn't working months ago." I reply.

"Oh, well if you get a chance, your sister needs you to help her fix it."

Um... Can she not ask me herself? She's currently upstairs playing her guitar, so excuse me if I don't want to stop everything I'm doing to go fix a printer. Yes, I'm doing stuff too. Reading for work & attempting to write a book, but, yes, let me drop everything to work on your problem!

Not.

I'm a bitch that way, I guess. But if she isn't going to ask me herself, and she needs to get mom to ask me, I find that insulting. Truth is, she probably just made one subtle off-comment about the printer not working, and my mom being who she is takes the driver's seat on the issue and starts hounding me about the matter. Except she doesn't come out and hound me as much as she does so covertly.

As I'm sitting down, deep in thought  she comes out and says, "Well, what does the printer cable look like?"
or, "I guess I'm going to go downstairs and look for the printer cable."

Seriously? Can you not let your 21 year old daughter fix her own damn problems? Why is it your job?

I suppose I'm just being hyper-analytical after our last big blow-out. It happened the same as last time. I wake up on a Saturday morning, and after a week's worth of work, I am mentally and physically exhausted. I choose to lay around and relax and this notion is supported. "It is ok if you take it easy, honey, you work hard all week." She says.

In her head, she feels I'm a lazy, useless, individual that doesn't do shit.

So I relax, read, check my facebook, and lounge around. But around 9AM, the questions begin. "Aren't you going to go to the post office? Don't you have some deposits to make?"

No, if I cared about the flipping post office, I would go. My mail will still be there Monday, I really don't care. If I had something to deposit, I would have done it Friday. Really don't care either, because it isn't like I'm overdrawing my account or anything. Everything can wait until next week--this is my veg-time.

Ok, so mother gets all huffy and decides she cannot wait and goes out to the post office, then she gets back from doing that and becomes irritated that I haven't cleaned this or that. So rather than say rationally walking away and finding something else to do, she either does it herself or starts getting passive aggressive about it. Yesterday she told me I should clean my bathroom, which, I had already cleaned three days earlier.

"Oh. I didn't know that."

Well, why did you think I should clean it then?

So she cleaned up the frying pans and dishes from the breakfast I had made. She didn't care about that, though, because it was nice of me to make breakfast and that was her way of helping. And she cleaned the entire bathroom, because it was stinky from the dog. And the next thing I knew I was the worst scum this planet had ever seen, because I was just "relaxing" while she was killing herself cleaning.

???????

Ask for help, you'll get it. I might not drop everything I'm doing to come running and help, but seriously!

I know I'm not perfect, and that I can be lazy, but I don't take my shit out on other people. I don't think I do, anyway. Maybe I do? I don't know, but I'm getting sick and tired of being on the receiving end of people's shit.

The other day I came home from work and Sister was listening to music. Normally I do like to have a few minutes of quiet time when I walk in from work, but this has been a bone of contention for her, so I let it slide. I made one silly joke about the song she was listening to and she jumped right down my throat. What did I say?

"Oh, this might actually be a pretty song if it didn't sound like he was singing, OH Mamamamama to his mom.It's a little creepy."

Well, boy did I hear it after that! So much for lightening the mood with humor!

Then, when she pulled a bunch of burnt tortilla chips out of the oven, I tried one and immediately inherited  the batch. I actually got scolded for attempting to try a not-burnt one from the second batch, "You already picked your serving!" She tells me.

I did? I thought I was just trying one, I didn't realize it was an eternal commitment--otherwise I would have waited for a better batch of chips. When I asked to trade a few burnt ones for a few not, I was considered rude for not asking the right way. Apparently my request was too one-sided, and it wasn't fair for mom to get burnt chips... Uhmmm ok?

So they ask me how my day went at work, and when I explain, I'm lectured about how "unclear" my description was, and that I confused them and that I needed to speak more clearly. I got crap about the vegetables I brought home, because I didn't put them away BEFORE I started searching for cough syrup. (Oh, yes, I was sick as a dog, couldn't breathe or talk, or think) I got crap about the whipped cream I didn't put in the fridge (that they left on the counter, so I assumed they wanted it out for their own strawberry shortcakes) And I got crap for not drying the dishes, even though they told me not to because I was all germy.

Umm? #@(*&@#*!(&

Are you shitting me?

Every single thing I said or did was nitpicked into a negative conversation, and finally I just said fuck it and went upstairs to take a shower.

I might be lazy, I might be forgetful, but at least I'm not intentionally bitchy.