This is a bit like 'on the cusp' ..
Our son has gone to a music festival and we are due to pick him up from the station at about 11 - not sure exactly when.
We set off far too early instead of waiting for a call and are parked on the street for forty-five minutes ... no problem with that.
Then we get a message that he is five minutes away and so I drive down to the station car park ... she decides that paying £2.50 is uneconomic and so we have to go round the block and find another spot nearby.
None of that is really an issue and the extra walk is about three minutes - but saving £2.50 ... really?! When there is virtually no economy made anywhere else?
It is all about petty control.
I bring down a particular pyrex dish to put something away, she wants another one. I want to do some specific shopping today and she suddenly has the need to do some tomorrow and I should wait till then.
One evening she specifically asks me to wipe down a particular part of the worktop - next to the sink. I do as requested and go upstairs for the evening. But clearly not to her satisfaction. 'Don't worry, you don't need to come down.' 'What for?' 'For cleaning the side of the sink - I will do it.' Passive-aggressive?!
Then, I do make a mistake. I had taken her passport in the side pocket of my shorts as ID to collect something for her. Despite reminding myself several times, I had not put the passport back in its usual place and it remained in the pocket when I placed the shorts in the washing basket. She must have found it when placing the wash - thankfully. 'You have my passport - do you know where you have kept it.' I remembered, and realised straight away that she was being passive aggressive again and said, 'in my pocket and you have found it.' My mistake and at least no blow-up I suppose. I should have but did not apologise and nor was one demanded.
Our lovely cleaner comes on Friday mornings and the guest room - where I sleep in the week - is cleared out by my wife in preparation. (But surely our cleaner is not so stupid that she does not understand that we sleep apart!) But seven, seven, pairs of shoes lie around in the hall! I can only imagine the lecture I would have got had I been the culprit.
I did a half-marathon last Sunday. Its finish was not so far from our place and I said that I expected to arrive at about 12:15 or 12:30. It turns out I start a little early and finish quicker than I thought and am done by 12.
I ring. 'We are about to set off,' she says. And the journey she was planning would have taken at least fifty minutes to an hour. So I walk to our friend's house where we are meeting for lunch.
I don't mind that she and our son were not there at the finish. I really could not care less. But is it not, at some level, evidence of a lack of care?
If she were reading this, she would say that she had had to do the weekly shop on Sunday morning - when shops do not open till 11.
And that is quite right. But I had offered to do that on the Saturday and been told that I could not / must not!!!
As I say, whether she was there or not, not an issue. But no or little idea of time, saying she was expecting 1:30 pm when I had specifically said 12:30 or so - she lives in her own world.
Her brother was visiting over the summer from India - staying away in the week but coming to us on the weekends. One evening he rushes home - even takes a taxi from the station - so he is with us by 7:30. Because she has told him that we always have dinner at 7:30 and he has believed her. We do keep earlier hours when I am around and organising the dinner, but certainly not by way of routine otherwise.
The brother was here on another evening, which apparently is her 'ironing evening'. And he is mystified why she is not ironing. So am I - why would she say this? She hardly irons anyway. I used to do the bulk - certainly mine and 80% of our son's. The volume has reduced as sheets are no longer done and lockdown means my shirts have reduced. But, in her mind, she probably lives in a world which is close to my mother's - doing all the work from shopping to cooking to ironing, and everything timetabled and to a routine. Couldn't be further from the truth! (When my parents were alive and we used to visit them, She used to take ironing with her and do it at my their place. At that time she was not working and, more pertinently, I did the bulk of the ironing anyway!! What was she trying to prove?)
Away from these incidents, it is a little peck here, a little peck there, sometimes a kiss. How can the same person exhibit such different behaviours from moment to moment?
