Primo: When I get home, we'll get busy, right?
Me: Your flight doesn't arrive until 9:45 p.m.! We won't be home before 10:30!
Primo: But I will have been gone over two weeks! You need to sacrifice!
Me: Not that much.
Primo: Sweetie!
Me: OK. But only if it is the first thing we do. I am not waiting for you to unpack and then go upstairs and get on the computer. Remember me? The one with the job? The job that is letting you spend all this time with your dad?
Primo: Oh yeah. And I am having so much fun.
Me: If you promise --
Primo: You should wait for me!
Me: Here's a big difference between you and me: I enforce boundaries. I will not accept unacceptable behavior.
Primo: But you should!
Me: I will stay up late because of your plane. I will not stay up late so you can unpack, as you could unpack just as easily on Thursday morning.
Primo: I guess you have a point.
Me: Or you could look at it this way: do you really want to delay getting into bed with your wife after being gone so long?
Primo: You know, when you put it that way...
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This sounds so much like my husband. He always unpacks first. Unpacks the car, unpacks the suitcase. Goes through the mail. I'm with you, straight to bed if you want any fun or I'm going to sleep.
ReplyDeleteEngineer! It has to be done in order! Dishes must be done before going to bed!
DeleteI am comfortable with chaos (a little - dishes in the sink overnight do not bother me) and I am not waiting up for someone doing stuff that can wait!
Oh, yeah. He's a civil engineer. We met in structures class. He lines all his stuff up. He'll fill the ice cube trays while the rest of us are sitting at the dinner table. We have 3 kids and the oldest is also a civil engineer. When he was little and playing with his little people the blue guy always went in the blue car, green guy - green car, etc.
DeleteBut he's great at packing moving trucks and making sure we have everything we need when we're going some where.
I am obsessed with not letting things like that slide, but I have found that I have a very strong executive function, such that I keep checking back on my mental task list, and so I don't feel the need to do them IMMEDIATELY. I do use tricks, like I often put my overnight bag on top of my hamper, so every time I am in the bedroom I am reminded that I have to empty it. I see the social engineering of my habits in order to accommodate others as an even higher achievement than being "most efficient" when that will inconvenience people I care about.
ReplyDelete(BTW, I'm probably not at all like you'd imagine me from my comments here and on AAM. I overthink *everything*, including my social interactions, in order to deal with my insecurities, but I do it to such an extent that I'm actually very social and very adept at it, from what I hear from others. It's just hard to convey that when trying to compose thoughtful comments online.)