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Saturday, January 7, 2006 My Moment Of Clar >
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January 2006
1/10/06
The Silence Is Broken (Part 4-Final)
1/7/06
An Email Funny
1/7/06
What? Who? Me?! WOW!
1/6/06
We Interupt This Rant In Progress.....
1/6/06
The Silence Is Broken (Part 3)
1/6/06
The Silence Is Broken (Part 2)
1/6/06
The Silence Is Broken (Part 1)
« January 2006 Archive
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Subject: The Silence Is Broken (Part 4-Final)
Time: 8:53:00 AM EST
Author:  ravenlark2
Mood:  Worried


Good morning Everyone,
Just another day in paradise...least that's what I keep telling myself. It's Tuesday, I work 12 noon to 8 tonight, closing for the Radio Shack crowd. I worked 2 to 8 last night and still can't make up my mind if I like working till close or not. I guess it depends on who's closing with me. All I gotta say is I don't even want people looking at me to vacuum again tonight. When my own home hasn't even been vacuumed in the last two weeks and yet I've vacuumed the store already 4 times in that same time period...something is amiss!

Ehhhh...anyway....back to my previous rant. Remember I said my father would be his own entry? Well here he is. My father has been living with my husband and I since 2000. He had quad-bypass done that year and was told by his doctors that he had to do three things.

1.) Stop Smoking
2.) Stop Drinking
3.) Stop Working

So, me being the daughter that I am (Pushy and over protective), I got Daddy to move in with hubby and I. Well, while things have never been completely "good" with that set up, they have gotten worse in the last couple of years. The hubby and the father don't talk because Daddy thinks Hubby has the worst accent and because the hubby talks so low that Daddy can't hear him. My father is suffering partial hearing loss and can't hear my soft spoken hubby unless he's looking at him to see his lips move. The hubby hasn't quite figured this out yet...don't ask me why because I've told him a million times. The hubby however, swears Daddy ignores him because he says "I'm talking and he just walks away."

Well DUH!

So I am constantly in the middle, making amends for one or the other. Fighting with the hubby because I think he's unreasonable sometimes and then fighting with the father because I think he's unreasonable sometimes. More often than not, I take up for Daddy cause I'm just protective like that. I've been told that you really shouldn't do that...you know...fight with the hubby for sake of the father.

PHHHIIIFFFTTTT....okay..guess I missed that class day when I was sent to "Good WifeSchool".

Well all of that came to a screeching halt a few weeks ago. One of the major rules of the house when Daddy moved in was that he could not smoke in the house and he could not have beer in the house. Yeah...as you guessed already, Daddy didn't do any of the three things the doctor told him he needed to. Well lately (last couple years thing), Daddy has been going further and further in ignoring those rules. At first it was just a beer being carried in from outside. Then it went to putting a single beer in the fridge and bringing his cigarettes in the house. Then it went to a couple beers and finally...a whole 6 pack of bottled beer has taken up residence in my fridge, the hubby is ready to explode and I'm sitting back in my office one night (which is right across from Daddy's room) and I smell.....cigarette smoke....IN....MY...HOUSE!!!!!!

Now just a side note so you all understand...Jose and I don't smoke nor drink and I have mild asthma. I absolutely cannot stand cigarette smoke which makes my throat tighten up so bad I feel like I've got someone choking me. There were good reasons for our rules of not wanting that stuff in our house and yet....I'd been fighting with the hubby so he wouldn't come down on my father for almost 2 years and now I had cigarette smoke in my house?! I got up and went to Daddy's room and what I found chilled me. My father was sitting on the end of his bed, leaned back on an elbow, cigarette lit and dangling about two inches over his electric blanket covered bed.....and he was sound asleep!

I went off! Yes I know..bad daughter, bad daughter but I lost it.

"Daddy! What are you doing? Wake Up!"
"Huh? Oh...Wha?"
"Daddy..put that out...what are you doing? You can't be smoking in here. Are you trying to set us on fire? Put it out!"

My father sat up and dumped the ashes off in his hand but I had to tell him a third time to put it out before he got up and went into his bathroom to douse the cigarette in the sink. I was in shock and just watched him come back into his room in disbelief. When I started trying to talk to him about what had just happened, I swear ya'll, I felt like I had a 17 year old boy living with me.

"Daddy...you can't do that. If it had been 20 minutes later, me and Jose would have been asleep in our bed. Don't you know you could have set yourself on fire and burned this house down? You could have killed all of us, Daddy!"
"Yeah Yeah Yeah...don't lecture me."

Don't lecture him? Excuse me? I had to walk away. I was torn between the knowledge that he was my father and wanting to verbally eviscerate him for his childish attitude about it. I saw that as serious and he brushed it off with a "yeah yeah yeah...don't lecture me?!" Now the tables were turned and Jose was coming to my father's defense because he came and took me by the hand and led me away from his door, knowing that if I kept stewing about it, my father was going to get a bushwhacker unleashed on him...parent or not. I couldn't figure it out. I had no idea why things were getting worse and worse to where now I was afraid of going to sleep with my father in my house for fear I'd wake up to sirens, smoke and the pretty dancing flames of my home being destroyed...if I woke up at all!

Some of you all might think I'm over reacting about this. I know I wont have much support from smokers but that scared me and all I could think of was what if something happened and my father or my husband burned to death because of a nasty habit like smoking? It made me sick to my stomach to think my father would be so careless.

Anyway....I think I've told you all this before but the manager of the store where I work has been good friends with my father and my late step mother for 20+ years. So, I went to her and asked her about this situation. It was a long talk one morning before the store opened but she said one thing that made me start to think.

"Have you ever thought that this just might be your father's way of getting out of your house? That maybe he's not happy there but doesn't want to come right out and tell you because he doesn't want to hurt your feelings?"

My father? Not Happy? *GASP* But it did make sense and the more I thought about it, the more positive I became that I was going to talk to him when I got home. Well I did and it turns out that she was right. My father believed himself to be under foot and that he needed his space as well as hubby and I did.

"But Daddy...if you move out...who's going to take care of you? Who's going to cook for you? You know you don't eat right if no one cooks for you."
"I've been taking care of myself for over 40 years baby...I'll be fine."

In the end, we had a long discussion and I found out that Daddy has wanted to be on his own again for the last few years and just didn't know how to tell me. The arrangement had worked for a little while but he was feeling that it was time for him to go back to living instead of just existing. Yeah...now I feel guilty for making him stay here but I worry about him being gone.

When did I become the parent?!!!!

My father moved out of the house yesterday. It's odd to see his room empty. It's odd to not hear his keys hanging from his belt loop and jingle as he walks down the hall. I'd gotten use to him being here. I keep trying to tell myself that this is great because now I'll have an extra room to do something with. Maybe I'll set it up as a guest bedroom. Maybe I'll use it to put my treadmill and total gym in so I have an exercise room. Maybe hubby can use it as an office of his own. I keep telling myself that this is what would make Daddy happy and that maybe Jose and I will stop fighting now because of the things he does. Daddy can smoke in his own home now. He can have a whole fridge of beer and bring people over, which he never did here. Jose and I never told him he couldn't have people over but I guess Daddy just didn't want to bring them here...as if this wasn't his house...just a place he was staying.

I still worry about him and even now am sitting here nearly in tears because I worry that he'll fall asleep in his own home with a lit cigarette. I worry he wont eat right or that he'll be too alone in his new home. I guess the one thing that I need to keep in mind fully though is that this is what he wanted or what he thinks is best. I may not like it but he's still my father and that's all that matters. I just hope he's happy, safe and living instead of existing now.

Rant officially over...for now.

-Raven



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