The Lights Go Out....And Then Back On.

My mother-in-law's husband has this odd habit of unplugging their telephone every night at 9PM if she is on it no matter who she is talking to because it is time to go to bed. This upsets her to no end especially when she is talking to family members in Peru, whom she does not get to talk to very often. He wants to run things his way and there is nothing else to consider. Tonight my wife gave me a haircut and then one to our son and afterwards she gave him a bath and then I cleaned everything up. As I started to make my way back into the kitchen to throw away the bag of hair (sadly more his than mine) I saw that she had turned off all of the lights in the house and turned off the tv which is her not so subtle way of saying that everyone should go to sleep now. Because she wants us to and not because we want to.

She fails to see that she and her father-in-law are doing two versions of the same dance. I think that in her mind we need to go to sleep at the same time and thereby we will be happier and closer as a family by doing so. The problem is that we work two different schedules and I am used to going to sleep later than she is and have been doing so for a very long time. For most people that isn't a problem at all but for us it keeps rearing it's ugly head every so often. Maybe I need to make more of an effort to realize why she feels the way she does but since I'm a man and therefore by birth a brutish beast I just keep on getting mad whenever she does this and I make sure to let her know about it. Which of course guarantees a similar reaction returned in kind from her. She is a woman after all.

Unless either of us someone manage to grow and/or adapt then we'll continue to have these little flare ups from time to time and then wait for them to blow over (usually in a few minutes). That's life I guess but sometimes I wish we could get over the bullheadedness (is that a word?) and not let the little things get us down. I try not to sweat the small stuff because honestly it's not worth it to get upset over and let it ruin your day but sometimes I think she does it on purpose just to see what my response will be. Until I go deaf or blind I probably won't progress at all as a thoughtful human. After all, I am a man.