The Conversation That Makes Me Crazy

At my house, my "office" has the misfortune of being in a big open room, in which my desk and bookcases occupy a corner. I would like it to be treated like a private room, since there is nothing else of interest in here--no TV or anything--, just a bunch of chairs that the cats sleep on. This room does, however, have a few large windows that face the street. And my grandpa likes to join the cats in their favorite hobby: sitting on chairs and staring out the window. That, in and of itself, does not bother me.

Anytime I'm listening to music, watching a show, or have sound emanating from my computer for any reason and that sound stops (whether because it ends or I stop it), if my grandpa is in the room, the conversation will go something like this.

Grandpa: You didn't turn that off on my account, did you?
Me: No, it just ended/I paused it/I am now reading/I got sick of listening to crappy trance music, etc
Grandpa: Because if you did, you didn't have to.
Me: I didn't, I just was done listening.
Grandpa: I wouldn't want you to turn it off just because of me, in fact I like it.
Me: I didn't turn it off because of you, I'm just done with it.
Grandpa: I don't want to bother you, so you just keep listening and don't let me stop you.
Me: You didn't stop me, it was just over.

At this point, I might turn something on just to be done with this conversation. It's actually gotten to the point where if the show I'm watching is ending, I will queue up something else if he's in here just to avoid yet another iteration of this discussion. I probably have this conversation once or twice a week. It's not because he doesn't remember having it, he's just so intent on not bothering me, that he ends up bothering the fuck out of me.

This one goes out to

Today’s blog is by special request.

As many of you know, when I first cut my hair short, I shaved it down to about an inch. It definitely wasn’t stylish, but I was pretty satisfied with it anyway. I’ve since grown it out into a much more acceptably femme sort of style. It’s still really short, but it’s cuter. That is the context for this recent quotation from my dad, “I like your hair a lot better right now. When you first cut it, it looked like you had just gotten out of a camp.”

In further anecdotes about the state of my hair: I see the same stylist as my mom and my grandma. It's probably about as dumb an idea as seeing the same therapist as family members, but we do it anyway; she always makes my hair look good. When I saw her to get my hair done this week, she told me that both my mom and my grandma had been asking her when I was going to grow it out. I told her "not in the foreseeable future. And you can let them know that, too." Long hair is such an inconvenience. Plus, it is way less awesome.

My family is a little bit special sometimes.