Sunday 26 July 2015

Things that bother me the most about our tiny vacation household

We are seven people in the quaint little bungalow in the camp - the General's parents, his kid, his two nephews (preteens) and me. Every day the General says to me: just three more days ... Just two more days, try to bare it... Just a little while longer. I try to tell him: what the fuck are you talking about, I love it here. I love the waterslides and of all the people that I would have to vacation with, these are the best possible choice. I really don't want to go home.
The problem is, I want him, the General, to recognize the effort I am making to be normal. It is a little harder when we are all indoors or if anyone crosses my personal space and does something that I would otherwise want to correct in someone's attitude (like leaving up the toilet seat, throwing something in the waste basket, missing and ignoring it...) And sometimes I forget and tell people not to watch something on TV, because it is too stupid or I get in the middle of a discussion when G's mum is trying to wash the dishes when it was agreed from the start the kids will take turns. She will literally sneak out of the hut with the trash, so that the kids won't have to empty the bins. Her husband, G’s dad, almost threw himself away from a garden table where he was eating dinner, when I came to join him to read there. ‘I’ll get out of your way at once!’ What the fuck, dude? Do I really strike people as someone you need to instantly remove yourself from before I explode or is this level of politeness simply stupid?

The General has a tendency to forget, although he is flawless, he is not right all the fucking time. And by this definition, making me wrong all the time when we disagree. No, I don't think  people should eat white bread and drink tea just before we go for a swim and then a long drive. Oh, so everyone got sick in the car for some other reason? Excuse me for being a trained foot-soldier and having spent seven months in a freakking desert during SUMMER.

These kind of acts just boil me up and I start to feel incredibly trapped. Of course the General has asked me not to talk or, better yet, ever say anything the way I usually talk, but more importantly, he has also forbidden me to roam around. If I can have my way, I just leave the house at dawn and explore the region until almost noon. Then we have lunch and a nap and then we go to the pools where we play and have a good time. Because I am not allowed to wander, I am restless and cranky. I read, but get bored after an hour and then I write or draw and everyone starts looking at me and kids want to draw along and then we switch to playing cards and can't agree on rules and when the time comes to clean the table, nobody is to be found. I'm not saying it's not a pleasant mess. It is. It's a family idyll. It just isn't for me.
So when I ask the General to appreciate my effort, because it really is a full throttle honest effort to smile and just agree on how hot it is all the time, he gets upset that I have to make an effort at all and to just bare it for two more days, it is almost over.
Which part of I.DON'T.LIKE.PEOPLE... fails to elude you after nine years? Which part of me even bothering to make an effort fails to come through as me demonstrating how much I appreciate the opportunity to have this vacation? I really do. I am very grateful! I respect this family, I would even go as far as to say I prefer it to mine, but trying to PROTECT them from myself is bullshit. I’m not a serial killer for fuck’s sakes. I just think these kids couldn’t be more spoiled and the grown-ups deserve to be lazy for two fucking days.
And there is another thing. By example, I bought ten small cakes for dessert and wanted to tell the kids they can eat what they like, just to make sure seven remain for after lunch. I could just see how 'grandma' would cut in, saying she is freely giving away her own cake for the kids. At which point I would freak the fuck out, crazed with her bullshit sacrificial self-denying charade, taking things away from herself to please a pack of spoiled, fed to the gills, never-for-fucking-second having to do anything to have everything kids, who expect everything to be given to them and considering the times, everything always will be. This isn’t two years after the second world war. Where even I would do a lot to try and save the smallest. This is a new phone every year and blink-and-you-shall-have it time. I think nothing of them, I think a lot of her and when she pulls that ’no, the kids can take mine' or 'no, stay on the couch, kids, I will clean up after you', that just makes me turn red. So because I am not allowed to start whipping anybody, I appear as if I am not enjoying my stay. I will never understand why someone has such a deep need to spoil already spoiled people, seeing full well that never ends well. 
Or, veering my own blog back onto talking about myself, why the General continues to expect I will someday wake up and think it's cute, what the kids do and what gran does. It is true I prefer these lot to any other six co-vacationists I can think of, but he cannot expect me to feel the same when it's seven people in a molten hot bungalow, three of which are young teenagers or when it's just the two of us. 
How would you expect Boadicea to do the house chores and smile during when three fucking preteens pretend it’s their turn to enjoy life while people who spend their whole lives working on a farm should do the cooking and the cleaning after them?


0 comments: