2001-02-12 - 3:39:38 PM

Great Advice to Ignore

Last night's visit to Julie's parents' house went well. Her Grandma was hitting on me again, but Julie was able to put a stop to it early. I always feel very uncomfortable dealing with Grandma Julia. On one hand, she's a beloved member of Julie's family. She has stage II Alzeimher's, but she means well, and it's unfair to snap at her. On the other hand, she's relentlessly annoying, and doesn't seem able to process that she shouldn't push people who aren't members of the family as hard as she does her kinfolk.

Anyway, that problem went away pretty quickly, and from there on it was all just playing with Liralyn. She was a little Mommy-centric at times, but overall she was lots of fun to play with, and she didn't tell me to go away. I've learned to be thankful for small favors.

I'm a little weirded out by some of the ideas she keeps falling back on. The worst is that anytime someone does something she doesn't understand, she responds by asking "what's wrong with him?" Sometimes she alternates that with "what does he want?" but it's still vaguely improper. It got really surreal Sunday when she kept asking what her stuffed clown doll thought. I really wanted to explain that dolls don't think, but it would have been like telling her that there was no Easter bunny. So I didn't say anything, and now I'm burning off the steam. Overall she's still a delightful and highly intelligent child.

All that said, on the way home from Chelsea I finally figured out what I should have told Julie back in December. We were having a "state of the relationship" sort of talk, and I asked her to make some changes. She said that they weren't practical, and I said that meant we weren't going to work out, and she said that sounded like an ultimatum and she didn't like that, and so on. It was a poor conversation that only ended well because we love each other and have a lot of experience with this sort of thing.

What I should have said was, "If I say that I need something different from you, and you tell me that you won't give it to me, we can't get anywhere. We have to be able to negotiate our expectations with each other to survive." Now that I've thought of it, I want to make sure it gets written down. It'll be great advice for Liralyn to ignore some day.

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