I went to bed at 8:30, so I had my 8 hrs.
As some of you know I spent most of Christmas week with my oldest daughter, 3 grand daughters and son-in-law. It was almost a perfect week; except for one long (ughh) conversation with my daughter.
She started out with what seemed to resemble an annual job performance review. Along the way she stated that it was not "Good for me to be alone.". She suggested a "Social Life" was what I needed. My impression is that seeing me single and happy are two states she could not in good conscience allow me to enjoy.
I managed to bite my tongue even when she said I was aging quickly. I have aged a lot in the last year or so, but that in my view has to do with the loss of her Mom, not with the state of being single. In any event I escaped without being subjected to introductions to assorted females she undoubtedly has in mind.
I got home Saturday evening to a ringing phone call from the youngest Daughter. She proposed to come over Sunday evening for a meal and a gift exchange including brother Tom. She came over to cook Sunday evening dinner. This morning I discovered that everything in the kitchen had been moved from where I wanted it, back to where her mother kept it. Her mother had a very complex kitchen organizing plan... He mom's kitchen organization plan, it seems to me, was to put everything where I could not possibly find it. The phrase... "Like mother.. Like daughter" comes to mind.
During the gift exchange I discovered the obvious collusion between the sisters. They young one started on the same subject her older one had broached. She did the, "You don't eat right, sleep right, or do much of anything properly". She was into the "what I need is a female keeper" (she did not phrase it quite that way).. when Son Tom interrupted her to say he had taken care of my poor diet problem. He asked me to open one of his presents.... It was 100 bucks worth of Mickey D's coupons.
His idea that a double quarter pounder, fries and a coke constitutes a well balanced diet, got her off my back and on to his. I need to find a way to pay that young man back. No greater love exists than a son taking heat from a female for his pop.
I wonder if any male has ever achieved the combined states of married and happy... To me it resembles the pursuit of the Holy Grail. My experience is every time a male thinks he has achieved a good situation with a mate, he finds she thinks he has done something terrible like breathing too often or being whatever she doesn't want him to be at the moment but did want him to be yesterday.
Oh... the young daughter did ask me if it ever occurred to me to mop the kitchen floor. I told her those floor stains were really a modern art representation of the Rosetta Stone ..... She has that eye roll down to a T.
Perhaps I should get to be closer to my sons-in-law.. They might help me escape these dastardly female plans to ruin my miserable future. I only fear that misery likes company.