Expectations!

I had a couple of different situations this weekend that both dealt with the topic of the expectations we have of other people. I’m starting to think that unfulfilled expectations are the source of a lot of the distance that grows between family members and friends.

The first was a visit to my mother’s house for crepes and for Max to open his birthday presents from her. She asked my wife if she wanted to look at my old photo album, and dug it out. While I was keeping an eye on our wild young man, my mother became a little miffed that I wasn’t looking at the photos too. She wanted me to focus on her, and I was focusing on Max. During this time, he had asked her to do a jigsaw puzzle with him, but she never got around to doing it. My expectation is always that the little dude will be the focus of all of our attention, so I was disappointed that it wasn’t happening. For the record, Max was the most delightful and wonderful boy you could ask for. If you didn’t want to smootch that kid and give him piles of candy, then you’re probably a robot.

The other situation was a coffee talk with an old friend of mine. Like me, he’s been thinking about the relationships in his life and what he wants out of them. We were trying to have scheduled gaming nights to get the fellows together and have fun together, but like any attempt to organize and motivate our social circle, it fell out of favour and died a slow death. He’s found a new group of people at work to play with occasionally, but a big difference is that he refuses to attend the an event at anyone’s house. He doesn’t want to deal with the expectations that  come along with that increase in familiarity. I wonder if that’s a tenable long-term approach to take, though.

What we want from people, and what they want from us, is a basic part of the relationship bargain. It would be  comforting to be able to control the equation and limit what someone wants from you, but that’s not how the game goes. The best way we can handle it all is communicate. If you’re frustrated or hurt by someone’s actions, take a moment to consider if they even know what you wanted from them. They cannot read your mind, and it’s a tad bit arrogant to think that someone should know you well enough that they can anticipate your expectations.

Outside! WHEEEE!!

I am an enemy of being cold. I think it is entirely possible that I could spend an entire winter inside my house, maybe making one sortie to get a Christmas tree. I have made an honest effort to go outside with the little dude during these snowy, chilly days, but my enthusiasm for being in the cold freezes so quickly that I have a lot of trouble faking enjoyment. This is one of the times where my wife’s Northern upbringing really pays off, because she can go out with the fella and have a snowy good time.

But today, with the temperature climbing to a wonderful 13 degrees Celsius, Max and I went out to the park to play. Fresh Air! No shivering! Swings!

I’m not sure if he’s actually as thrilled with the swings as it sounded, or if he was just having fun saying ‘Whee! I’m going so high!’, but it was great either way. It was another great benchmark experience for me as well, a chance to compare what he can accomplish now versus what he could do last fall. He is so tall and so coordinated now.

Mind you, he’s grown recently and I think his new big feet are proving to be a little tricky to steer, leading to several fall-downs and bonks in the last couple of days. But alongside the slow fall down the back stairs ending in an awkward looking faceplant, there comes the cognitive jump. He spent a good 30 minutes in imagination play today, giving distinct voices to the toys involved and having them join together to accomplish some kind of task. They were either cleaning the barn or having a race, I’m not clear which. The very idea of being able to have him contentedly engaged in creative play without my guidance or help is thrilling.

Take that, stupid machine!

Why yes I am feeling more chipper, thank you for asking. And, I have successfully battle a misbehaving machine twice in as many days, and for now it’s submitting to my will and working like a good little washer should.

How did it break? well, I am partially an idiot. Not a full idiot, but somewhere in the ancestry there was a full-blown fool and I have a few of his dumb genes. I put a small piece of carpet into the washing machine. It had been peed on by a cat who is too dumb to successfully pee in the very large box in front of the aforementioned carpet. Her butt must have been hanging out just a little and she didn’t notice or care that her urine was errantly spilling to the carpet. So, I put the carpet in the washing machine and went back to playing games with the little dude.

When I returned later, I found the remnants of the carpet sitting in a pool of water in the washer. It seems the wash dissolved the cheap glue holding the carpet together, and now the sump was filled with carpet thread and grit. So, once the wife returned and took over kid duty, I dismantled the washing machine. I had done this once before, so I wasn’t terrified of the unknown. I set to work with a grim determination and a partially misplaced hatred of the cat.

2 hours later, the washing machine was put back together and functioning. Well, it functioned until the end of the second load. I was pretty sure that it was going to break again-there had been so much residual silt and carpet hair in the bottom of the drum that I couldn’t reach that it all plugged the sump again. So today, after I made the family dinner and ate it with them, I rolled up the old sleeves and dove into the machine’s guts again. Only took an hour this time, and boy do I feel manly.But boy, do I hope I don’t have to do that again anytime soon.