I Am Completely Serious

Is he just being passive-aggressive at this point

Mon, 14 Dec 2015 19:21:36 GMT

I spent the week house- and pet-sitting for my parents, and except for pet-wrangling and some IT stuff, I spent every motile moment cleaning.

They are really bad about cleaning, okay! They have one of those huge wheeled garbage bins, and I filled it all the way up.

I did about ten loads of laundry, mostly bedding, because Dad leaves blankets lying around everywhere in the winter and the dogs lie on them. They came back late last night. I hadn't yet gotten the last load out of the dryer and into the closet before I went to bed - this load contained a blanket Mom likes and their good flannel bedsheets.

Obviously, when I got up this morning he'd 1) put a pair of his muddy shoes on the table and 2) put the contents of the dryer on top of the shoes.

comments

Tue, 30 Jun 2015 23:20:47 GMT

Dad had a bad day at work or something, so he came over just now and started painting the deck without 1) removing all the deck furniture, 2) clearing off all the acorns and twigs and stuff, 3) bringing enough paint, 4) bringing enough brushes, 5) using up all the paint which he did bring (he got mad at himself and and left), 6) putting away the leftover paint before stomping off, or 7) checking the weather report. There's supposed to be a thunderstorm shortly.

He also left the shed open and knocked over a lamp.

comments

Dad makes bad decisions.

Fri, 03 Apr 2015 16:01:11 GMT

A lot of them hiring a client to fix something because it's cheaper than hiring a professional, which leads to damage and inconvenience substantially more costly than actually hiring a professional would have. Interestingly, lately this has specifically mostly been water damage.

1) He hired some of his criminal defense clients to replace the roof, and said roof naturally began to leak during the first rain of spring. When my parents attempted to contact these people, they had cancelled all of their phone numbers and "gone incommunicado." Apparently not even their children know where they are.

2) He hired a client to work on the basement. This guy disappeared without fixing the basement's primary problem, viz, the dryer is venting into the laundry room. This had already caused major moisture damage to the walls during the time he has refused to address it at all; now that the guy has disappeared, he claims that there is nothing at all that can be done about the problem.

3) He has suggested that I deal with the damage which his car-repair-crimes client caused by pretending to repair my car by trading my car in.

comments

Dad decided when I was ten or so that I should totally start helping him practice law.

Wed, 14 Jan 2015 07:09:15 GMT

This was basically just spell-checking pleadings and asking me if his “wording made sense.” He didn’t actually usually change his wording if I said it didn’t, he just enjoyed it when I tried to tell him he was lawyering wrong.

When I was thirteen, though, he had a case in which someone had been found to have some illegal material on his work computer. This guy assured Dad that he’d just gotten said illegal material as attachments to spam, and that he hadn’t wanted any of it.

The prosecution gave us copies of the emails in question with full headers, and the headers obviously rendered these documents far too intimidating for Dad. He got home, handed them to me, and asked me to look over them and explain them to me.

I hope that the information which I have presented here has instilled in you an appropriate sense of dread.

The actual illegal stuff had been redacted out, but the “benign” files had not. These included a photo of a woman posing suggestively next to her horse. This image formed an important part of a long-running conversation that Dad’s client had been having with her!

I have never stopped telling my dad that he is lawyering wrong.

comments

Dad coaches basketball at the high school where I used to teach.

Sat, 10 Jan 2015 00:52:30 GMT

my former student: Is Mr. Pin there?

me: Nope, sorry. He's out of town until Monday.

my former student: But we've got a basketball game tomorrow morning! He's been telling us we've got this game for ages!

me: Um. Well, I'm sorry, but he didn't leave me any kind of message about that, and he's definitely not going to be back until Monday. Unless the principal or any of the teachers -

my former student: Well.

*he hangs up, then calls back a minute later*

my former student: How about you take us to the game! You can be coach!

me: Yeah, no. I cannot do that. I can't even really drive safely right now.

my former student: Well. Guess we'll just - go to Sunday school, then!

me: Good idea!

my former student: Guys, no game, we're all going to Sunday school tomorrow!

other kids: *chorus of complaints and sarcastic cheers*

me: Okay, enjoy yourselves.

my former student: We will!

comments

Fri, 26 Dec 2014 19:39:45 GMT

Trying to talk my Dad out of watching The Interview is like trying to talk the ocean out of watching The Interview.

the ocean: No, I’m not just watching it out of a form of childish pseudo-rebellion against a genuinely dangerous political actor whom I view as a sort of cartoon villain for a lot of fucked-up reasons I need to examine - I mean, Seth Rogen’s a really good actor -

me: Which is why you never mentioned the movie before the hacking - it was all just, like, washing against the sand, evaporating to form clouds, concealing giant squids. Not one mention of this movie about which you’re suddenly so enthusiastic -

the ocean: I did mention it! I did, maybe not to you, but I - and anyway Seth Rogen’s a really good actor.

me: He’s not! He’s not.

(I know, I know - I shouldn’t even bother talking to the ocean.)

comments

Dad basically just comes over here to see the cat.

Thu, 18 Dec 2014 00:31:34 GMT

Mom has forbidden him from bringing home any more animals, so he's trying to get me to adopt some for him to play with. Earlier today, I for probably the dozenth time explained to him that I think Dubiety the Cat needs to be a lone cat, given that he is terrified of Tragedy the Cat - who is seventeen years old, half his weight, badly arthritic, deaf, and going blind.

So he comes over to the house this evening, sits there playing with Dubiety for a while, and then asks me hopefully, "do you think he'd like a friend?"

I gave him the cookies I fucked up. I don't think he noticed they tasted funny.

comments

Today's horrifying dish-drainer discovery.

Fri, 31 Jan 2014 23:45:52 GMT

Dark-colored coffee cup covered in pale, highly-visible streaks of dried-out improperly-incorporated instant cappuccino, sitting innocuously alongside several other ostensibly "clean" dishes.

I have informed Dad that he is not even allowed near the sink anymore. Put your dishes in the dishwasher and back away slowly.

comments