the deal

For the uninitiated, my dad is 81 years old, and of the men in this household, he is definitely the more needy. Every day, as soon as I walk in the door, I am inundated with immediate demands to look at what came in the mail, to listen to every detail of everything that's happened in the x hours since I left for work, to explain this for him and do that for him.

What I really want when I walk in the door after work, tired and irritated, is to, oh, read my own mail, maybe get something to drink, begin cooking dinner in blissful silence as I decompress. So today, after he stuck a piece of mail in front of me fifteen seconds after I entered the kitchen and began peppering me with questions about what it meant before I could even read it, I went off on him. "Why are you yelling at me?" he asked sadly.

So then I felt bad. "Listen," I said. "This is the new deal. When I come home, you say hi to me, then you leave me alone for half an hour. After that half an hour, I'll do anything you want."

He thought about it. "Half an hour? No. That's too long. No deal."

I was, like, what do you mean 'no deal'? That's the deal. There's no other deal.

I told you people my negotiation skillz suck. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

xoxo