Patience Training

Since my yearly bronchitis came four months early this year (no I don't smoke and I never have) and I hinted at this joke in another post, I wanted to get the correct joke off my chest:

Some archaeologists were

poking around a well known graveyard when they found a secret door that got them into a hidden cavern.  There to their surprise they saw one of the greatest music writers of all history sitting at a makeshift desk.  They knew who it was.  `Beethoven`, they exclaimed,  `what are you doing?`  `Huh`, answered Beethoven, and then, `Leave me alone.  Cant you see I`m decomposing?`

OK, I got that off my chest.   I wonder how the installed translator is going to write that joke?
Now back to our program.

I have advocated prospective Stay at home Dads and all Dads to work on their patience.  Patience patience and more patience is pivotal and often a problem for Dads with their children.  Lack of patience is one problem I read over and over that Dads wish they had more of.  This last week I have discovered a method to test your patience and strengthen it.

Find someone who you have problems with on occasion and even might get into an argument with, someone who you would rather not take orders from.  Have them assign you some work that they know better than you and that they have to guide you through.  For the plan to work, they have to be a bit nasty to you, you know, call you a dummy when you don't get things right and make fun of you on your lack of skills.  You, my friend, for your part, can not yell back at them, call them names and have to be subservient and accepting of any abuse that comes your way and get the project done.  The most you are allowed is a bit of sarcasm or purposely trying to exasperate them with your incompetence.  But you have to smile through the whole ordeal.  Give yourself points plus or minus when you either hold your patience or lose it and lose your temper. 

Here is the concrete blueprint for the test I am talking about.

Last weekend from this writing our family went to my Mother in laws cottage.  My wife has been going there pretty much every weekend since spring to work in the extensive garden my Mother in law has in the back of the house.  My wife has done all the work from seeding the garden to harvesting and winterizing it.  I put in one weekend a month, if that, of work on the garden and fruit trees.

The garden, the house

Understandably, my Mother in law often is in bad spirits as she has a bad back and more than often has trouble walking and doing work.  Sometimes when she is in a lot of pain it gets her angry.

Also, as I have mentioned in a past post, I think she doesn't like me so much these days as I probably haven't lived up to her picture of a successful caretaker son in law for her daughter.  In other words, her only daughter could have done better.

So needless to say, when I make it to these weekend workouts and she is in pain, the full wrath of her frustrations is directed at me.  As it was this last Sunday.

I thought I was safe on Sunday from her wrath as I had done an extensive, good job on Saturday and gotten all the trees cleaned of fruit and basically done a lot.  So I thought I could sleep in a bit on Sunday and have a nice breakfast whereas usually I just get up and get to work right away.  Bad move space cadet.

It was getting on toward 10.30am and she yelled at me hard that I was a worthless lounge about and I should expect to work hard both days when I come out to help in the garden like a student worker.  She complained that I wouldn't get all the work done that I still had to do.  I was walking behind her and it was all  I could do not to make some expletive deletive sign language with my arm and hand or just my fingers.  Or even just to mouth some curse word.  I did neither.  Perhaps because I didn't have my balance walking on a small path near a wall in the back of the house.  Or perhaps just because I didn't think of it in time.  Still, a point in my favor for holding my temper.

I had to transfer all the rotted compost from the heap to boxes and bags for the professional gardener to put in the garden in two weeks.  In the process of doing this she yelled at me for stepping into the compost and then trying to mix the wet compost with the dry compost.  "Just take it in layers whether it is wet or dry.  It doesn't matter.  What sort of idiot gardener are you?", she exclaimed.  I think that statement was made two or three more times.  And then she noticed that in fact I hadn't cleaned off all the apples from one of the trees.  That brought on a spasm of bile.  "Why did you leave those apples?", she fermented.  I said they were bad and would just rot on the tree trying to defend myself.  "Uch, you idiot gardener, all the apples have to be taken off otherwise they will just drop on the ground and we will have to pick them up anyway.  That is one more thing you will have to do.  You are really an amateur gardener."  Nobody likes to be called an amateur, even when they really are an amateur, or worse.  It is just an all around negative connotation which makes you bristle.  

I smiled and went to pick the apples off the tree. " Finish the compost first!", she screamed.  "Oh yes yes of course", I said getting into the big box to try to get better leverage on the dirt left there on the bottom.  "Stupid, you will really get your shoes dirty.  You don't have to do that.  You

look like a cat about to do its duty in its litter box."   I just ignored this, kept smiling and kept shovelling the compost into the bag she was holding open.  A bit of the compost missed the bag and got onto her garden dress.  Whoops, now how did that happen?  (Half point against me on my patience test.)

I finished the compost transferal and getting all the rest of the apples from the tree by 1.30pm and I was awarded a rest for lunch.  But I asked my Mother in law, what work left was there to do, so I could plan my lunch time and still get it all done before we had to leave on Sunday evening.  "Never you mind, enough of it that it will take quite a while, now go eat your lunch".  I stepped back inside with no comment whatsoever and a poker face.  (Extra point for me.)

After the break, I had to climb into the raspberry patch which went along the back of the yard with the neighbors and cut the branches of the NEIGHBOR`S evergreen trees because "they were blocking sunlight from the raspberry patch".  I was a bit hesitant to cut the neighbors trees as I was worried someone would see me and come out and say, "Hey WTF?  What do you think you are doing to our trees?"  From there I could either take the consequences myself, or I could say, "hey, it was her.  My mother in law, she told me I had to do it, it wasn't my idea."   Self preservation

As it was, no neighbors came out and I proceeded to bare the trees pretty much of all branches on this side, just to make sure.  The trees looked like a girl I used to know in college who shaved her head completely on one side but kept long hair on the other side.

Although I wasn't accosted by the neighbors, I was certainly accosted by the raspberry brambles.  They scratched me up and down my arms and it felt like I was in a patch of poison ivy it burnt so.  My Mother in law condescended and gave me, "that's enough", a positive comment for her.

Hindsight on that job.  My wife chopped down the raspberry bushes the next weekend, one week later, so that was kind of busy work torture work my Mother in law had put me through.  I let out a little growl when my wife told me this, but only enough to lose half a point on the patience test.

But sadly, I lost all my points in the last minute of the scrimmage.

I had brought up a box of jars of jelly preserves and pickled beets which we were going to take back with us to the city.  She yelled at me, "Why did you take the box upstairs?  We are going to put it in the car anyway which is right next to where you got the box from.  What a waste. now you have to take the box back downstairs again and put it to the car. You should have asked me first."  I broke.  "Yes, but I wanted you to see the box and make sure it was the correct box and that I should take all the jars to the car."  "Of course it was the right box and of course we are going to take all the jars. What were you thinking?  Idiot."  "I just wanted to make sure it was the correct box and wanted to bring it up to show you.   I really don't care if I have to take the box back down, its really no big deal. Don`t yell at me, stop yelling at me."  I yelled at her.

This is the same point when you are taking care of your kid(s) where you lose it with a child and something bad happens.  The temper explodes, the patience is gone and you commit a felony of bad dadism of which you are very sorry about afterwards.  The point is to never come to this point in your fathering duties.

But...

Patience all gone.  Lost all my points.  Failed my test.  Bzzzzzzzz.  Next player.  Come back in two weeks and take the test again.

Crap.

Still need to work on my patience so I can be an A class Dad.

Listened to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVeoynvRJ3c over and over while writing this post.